Scott Peterson Found Guilty of First-Degree Murder

Scott Peterson was charged with the murder of his pregnant wife Laci Denise Peterson and their unborn son Conner Peterson, who disappeared sometime between Dec.  23 and Dec. 24, 2002. The badly decomposed remains of Laci and the couples fetus washed ashore in April 2003, not far from where Peterson said he went on a solo fishing trip the day she vanished. Peterson was arrested April 18, 2003, in San Diego, the day that the remains of Laci and Conner were officially identified. The Prosecutions Theory The prosecution believed that Peterson meticulously planned the murder of his pregnant wife because he did not want to give up his lifestyle and be tied down to a wife and baby. The problem for the prosecution was the lack of direct evidence that proved Peterson committed murder or disposed of a body. Prosecutors believed that he purchased his 14-foot Gamefisher fishing boat two weeks before Lacis disappearance for the sole purpose of using it to dispose of her body. They also believed that Peterson originally planned to use a golf outing as his alibi. For some reason, however, dumping her into the San Francisco Bay took longer than planned, and he was stuck with the fishing trip as his alibi. Because there was no direct evidence, the case was completely constructed on circumstantial evidence. Prosecutor Rick Distaso told the jury that Peterson used an 80-pound bag of cement he purchased to anchor Lacis body to the bottom of the bay. He showed jurors photographs of five round impressions in cement dust on the floor of Petersons warehouse. Only one anchor was found in the boat. Petersons Defense Defense attorney Mark Geragos promised the jury in his opening statement that he would present evidence showing that Peterson was innocent of the charges. He relied mostly on witness testimony to offer the jury alternative explanations for the states circumstantial theories. Ultimately, however, the defense failed to produce any direct evidence that pointed to another suspect. Geragos brought the defendants father to the stand to explain that Peterson had been an avid fisherman since an early age, and that bragging about major purchases like the fishing boat would have been unusual. The defense also offered testimony that indicated that Peterson used the remainder of the 80-pound bag of cement to repair his driveway. They tried to attribute his clients erratic behavior after Lacis disappearance to being hounded by the media, rather than trying to elude or deceive police. The case for the defense hit a major setback when an expert witness—who testified that Conner was still alive after December  23—did not stand up to cross-examination, which implied huge assumptions in his calculations and called his credibility into question. Still, many courtroom observers, even those with backgrounds in criminal prosecution, agreed that Geragos did an excellent job poking holes in almost every aspect of the prosecutions circumstantial evidence. Jury Deliberations In the end, the jury decided that the prosecution proved that Peterson premeditated the murder of his pregnant wife. He was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Laci and second-degree murder in the death of his unborn son Conner. They reached a verdict on the seventh day of deliberations, after three jurors were replaced during the trial, including the first foreman. First, Judge Delucchi replaced juror No. 7, who reportedly did her own independent research or investigation into the case, contrary to court rules. The judge told the jury to start over in their deliberations. They responded by electing a new foreman, juror No. 6, a male alternate who was a firefighter and paramedic. The following day, Delucchi dismissed juror No. 5, the former foreman of the jury, who reportedly asked to be removed from the case and had been replaced. The verdict came only eight hours of deliberations after the judge dismissed the first foreman. The jury deliberated all day Wednesday with the new foreman in place, took Thursday off for Veterans Day, and deliberated only a few hours on Friday before announcing they had a verdict. Total deliberations lasted almost 44 hours,  after a trial that had lasted five months and presented testimony from 184 witnesses.

Physics Of A Physics Experiment - 930 Words

Experiment is the way that be used by people to either practice or prove a physics theorem. It should be rigorous and carefully designed even if the experiment is dealing with a shallow thing. As simple as the experiment of detecting Friction Force between an object and surface, the experiment still has to follow several stages in order to make the conclusion accurate. First of all, every physical exam will begin with a hypothesis. We must figure out what we are going to test about during this experiment before we start everything else, so we roughly take a guess about the experiment topic and the guess will be the Hypothesis. Hypothesis is the provisional conjecture to guide the whole investigation. By putting forward the hypothesis, we can give our experiment a proposition and a general direction. At the age of most physics rule haven’t been discovered, scientists starts their experiment by just having a hypothesis. If the experiment is correct and the result supports their hypothesis, the hypothesis becomes a rule. If the result does not support the hypothesis, the scientists would gain a known wrong hypothesis and then he can set a new hypothesis and start a new experiment. It is the way our science could be moving forward little by little. In the experiment of detecting Frictional Force between an object and a surface, the hypothesis will be that : Friction Force is the force prevents the relative motion happens and exists at the place that an object attachesShow MoreRelatedThe Physics Of An Experiment1509 Words   |  7 Pagesin the EPR paper and later more eloquently describe by David Bohm. In the paper by Bohm, he shows how one could conceive of an experiment to mirror the conceptual situation put forth in the EPR paper, by examining the dissociation of a diatomic molecule whose total spin angular momentum is zero. For example, the hydrogen molecule into two hydrogen atoms. 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The Costs of Congestion Free Essays

Costs are divided into private costs and cost to third parities. The cost to the third party is called an externality. Private costs are costs that are personal to a person or company and so an example of that would be fuelling an airplane with petrol. We will write a custom essay sample on The Costs of Congestion or any similar topic only for you Order Now Externalities occur when a person is doing something, but the full cost of doing the thing is not paid. An example of this is pollution, because no one actually pays for the damage caused. The most efficient outcome to society would be when marginal social cost and marginal social benefit equal each other. The externalities that are caused have to be the main problem. The environment is greatly damaged because of this. The more vehicles driven, the more the pollution caused. 44% of nitrogen oxide emissions in the UK come from cars. Cars also contribute to 24% of carbon dioxide emissions. Both nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide are big contributions to global warming. Because of global warming, the Earth’s average temperature rises which causes sea levels to also rise. Nitrogen oxide also harms the bodies respiratory and immune systems. Carbon monoxide reduces the oxygen carrying capacity of the bloody and could prove to be fatal. The UK road traffic is responsible for 69% of Carbon monoxide emissions. Another externality that is less obvious is noise pollution. This occurs because of vehicles. It causes a lot of disturbance to people. There are very few places left in England where noise pollution doesn’t affect anyone in anyway. To reduce car congestion a number of ways have been developed to try and achieve the aim. ‘A new deal for transport’ was published which outlined policies to create a better public transport system. The increase use of public transport would mean that congestion would be cut enormously as cars won’t be in much usage. The congestion charge in London that was introduced last February was developed to try and cut the congestion problem in the centre of London. This would be effective as people could be put off with the à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½5 charge and would rather use the public transport as it is cheaper. As this scheme is seen to be a long term success, other cities may well introduce them too. A criticism of the congestion in London however is that rich people would be able to pay and the people on lower incomes wouldn’t. Although the money gained from the charges would then be used to improve public transport. To carry on using cars and not polluting the environment would be impossible, unless you switch to cars that run on hydrogen. This would be more environmentaly friendly as they emit less pollution than petrol. However the downside of this is that in current times, these cars are very expensive. In the future we may be able to see more of these cars being manufactured and slowly replacing the petrol-run cars. How to cite The Costs of Congestion, Papers