The Scott Peterson case: a new American tragedy

By David Walsh

12 December 2004

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One must allow oneself sometimes to be genuinely horrified by contemporary American reality. This does not mean plunging into despair or throwing up one’s hands. Russian socialists in another epoch regularly referred to the barbarity, poverty and “extreme backwardness” of their country, without relenting thereby in their effort to overcome that terrible reality through the means of social revolution. America today has its own barbarity, its own poverty, physical and spiritual, and its own extreme, one might say malignant, social backwardness.

The Scott Peterson murder trial in Redwood City, California, has provided more than ample evidence of this. Peterson was found guilty four weeks ago of murdering his 27-year-old pregnant wife Laci at their home in December 2002 and dumping her body in San Francisco Bay. The latest phase of the trial, during which the jury determines whether Peterson will face the death penalty or life in prison (pending the judge’s final decision), is particularly gruesome and macabre. Hundreds of journalists are poised to report the decision. If the jury settles on the execution of Peterson, the media will announce via the most modern means of instant communication (in many cases, exultantly) a decision worthy of the Dark Ages.

In his closing argument in the penalty phase of the trial, prosecutor David Harris called Peterson “the worst kind of monster,” “the worst of the worst.” Mr. Harris ought to be careful. Someone might place this assertion under the microscope. “The worst of the worst?” This seems a remarkably sweeping claim to make about a 32-year-old fertilizer and irrigation system salesman, particularly since it comes in a nation whose military has caused the deaths of 100,000 Iraqi civilians over the past 18 months for no other crime than living on land rich in natural resources. Peterson stands convicted of committing a horrible crime, but he is not in the same league as a Rumsfeld, a Bush or a Cheney, responsible for mass slaughter.

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