Legal Group Joining Appeal: Peterson Gets Aid In Fighting Ruling

DURHAM, NC -- News & Observer, October 12, 2005

Legal group joining appeal: Peterson gets aid in fighting ruling
By Benjamin Niolet

Though in prison for murder, Mike Peterson has enlisted a big ally in his quest for a new trial. The N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers has joined Peterson's appeal, arguing that his case has wide-ranging implications for criminal defense.

The association's friend of the court brief, filed Monday on behalf of the writer and one-time Durham mayoral candidate, might be the first time the group has gotten involved in a murder case at the Court of Appeals level. The brief was signed by former state Supreme Court Chief Justice James Exum, along with Peterson attorney and friend Kerry Sutton. Sutton is on the board of governors of the academy. She said one of Peterson's friends from college knew Exum and got him involved. The academy's participation was approved by one of the group's screening committees.

Peterson's appeal was filed two years after he was convicted in the death of his wife, Nortel Networks executive Kathleen Peterson. He is now serving a life sentence in Nash County. Peterson claimed that his wife had fallen down a staircase in their Forest Hills mansion. But he was quickly under suspicion for murder because investigators thought there was too much blood for her death to have been accidental.

In the case against Peterson, Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson allowed prosecutors to tell the jury about the death of another woman, Elizabeth Ratliff, who was found at the bottom of a bloody staircase 20 years ago in Germany. Prosecutors argued that coincidence alone could not explain such similar accidental deaths. But no evidence directly linked Peterson to Ratliff's death. Peterson's defense attorneys immediately challenged the decision, arguing that Ratliff's death was irrelevant and unfairly turned jurors against Peterson.

That decision is now one of the key arguments in Peterson's effort to win a new trial. North Carolina allows prosecutors to put on evidence of so-called "prior bad acts" if they have direct bearing on a current case, said Holly Bryan, legal affairs counsel for the academy. Defense lawyers fear that if Hudson's ruling were to stand, then prosecutors could put on evidence that would be unfair to a defendant, Sutton said. "That's why we have to stand up and be heard," Sutton said.

Duke law professor James Coleman said the Ratliff decision was an obvious point of argument for appeal. "Of all the things that happened in that case, that is the one that may have created the most significant, at least appearance of unfairness, if not outright unfairness," Coleman said.

Friend of the court briefs can influence judges' decisions, Coleman said. Court opinions at even the U.S. Supreme Court have quoted them. The Academy of Trial Lawyers, a professional organization of criminal defense and plaintiffs' lawyers, files a dozen or so briefs each year on issues it determines are important matters of law. But the clerk of the Court of Appeals and one of the lawyers who wrote the brief said they think it is the first time the academy has weighed in on a murder case before it reached the state Supreme Court. It won't be the last, however, Bryan said. She said the organization intends to file a brief with the court of appeals next week in a murder case from Moore County. Increasingly, the state Supreme Court is only affirming decisions written by the appeals court, Bryan said, and when cases come up that have larger policy or legal implications, the academy gets involved. The Peterson case has those implications, she said.