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Last week Scott Peterson — convicted in 2004 of killing his wife Laci Peterson and their unborn son — made headlines again when the Los Angeles Innocence Project (LAIP) announced it was taking on his case, claiming that “newly discovered” evidence could support his claims of innocence.
New court filings by the organization, which is not affiliated with the national Innocence Project, claim that previously unreleased evidence in the case, including several unnamed witnesses, could prove Scott’s innocence. HuffPost has reviewed a portion of the filings.
Even securing a new trial would be an uphill battle. And no new evidence is likely to change the fact that led to his conviction in the first place: When his wife disappeared on Dec. 24, 2002, Scott said he drove 90 miles from their home in Modesto, California, to go fishing in the San Francisco Bay — not far from where the badly decomposed remains of Laci and her fetus washed up four months later. Prosecutors argued that Scott dumped his wife’s body overboard on a fishing boat during that time.