Peterson backed in retrial bid
By John Stevenson
DURHAM -- The N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers and a former chief of the state's highest court have weighed in on the side of convicted murderer Michael Peterson, saying it was wrong to allow evidence during Peterson's 2003 trial in Durham about a similar death 18 years earlier in Europe.
The academy has submitted a brief to the state Court of Appeals in support of Peterson's request for a new trial -- an appeal he formally made Monday. The brief was signed by the academy's attorneys: Kerstin Walker Sutton of Durham and James G. Exum Jr., who became chief justice of the state Supreme Court in 1986 and retired from the bench in 1994.
They agree with one of many key elements in Peterson's appeal: that Judge Orlando F. Hudson erred by allowing jurors to hear evidence about Elizabeth Ratliff's 1985 death in Germany while Peterson was on trial on charges that he beat his wife, Nortel Networks executive Kathleen Peterson, to death in December 2001. Peterson contended that his wife died from an accidental fall down a steep, narrow, dimly lit staircase in the couple's Forest Hills mansion on Cedar Street. But prosecutors successfully argued that she was fatally beaten with a blunt object. Peterson now is serving a life term without parole.
Prosecutors also said Kathleen Peterson's death was strikingly similar to Ratliff's.
A teacher at an American military base in Germany, Ratliff was a friend of Peterson when he and his first wife lived in Europe. Evidence indicated that Peterson was with Ratliff the night before her body was discovered. Like Kathleen Peterson, Ratliff was found dead at the bottom of a stairway. At first, authorities ruled that she suffered a fatal stroke and toppled down the stairs. No criminal charges were filed against Peterson or anyone else.
But Durham prosecutors had the body exhumed from a Texas cemetery and autopsied in Chapel Hill not long before Peterson's Durham trial. Forensic physicians concluded Ratliff had been murdered. Defense lawyers contended all along that evidence about Ratliff's death should be excluded from Peterson's trial because it was too remote in time, irrelevant and would "prejudice" jurors against their client. But Hudson said there were "sufficient similar facts and circumstances" between the deaths of Ratliff and Kathleen Peterson for jurors to find that Peterson killed both women, even though he was officially accused of slaying only one. The judge also said evidence about Ratliff was relevant to show "intent, knowledge and absence of accident" in the death of Peterson's wife. So jurors heard the evidence.
As a result of that ruling, Peterson should get a new trial, the N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers contends in its new brief. "The circumstances of these two deaths create striking similarities," the brief concedes. "But striking similarities alone are not sufficient. ... In this case, the evidence that Mr. Peterson was involved in Ms. Ratliff's death is so thin that its admission ... was a clear abuse of discretion."
In addition, prosecutors unfairly indicated they would use the Ratliff evidence for one limited purpose, then used it for much more, according to the academy.
Specifically, prosecutors at first said they intended to show only that Peterson seized on Ratliff's death as a "model or blueprint" for disguising a murder as an accident, the academy said. But then, the academy complains, the prosecution insinuated to jurors that Peterson actually killed Ratliff. The academy brief quotes former Assistant District Attorney Freda Black as asking the jury in a closing argument, "Do you really believe that lightning strikes twice in the same place? Do you? Do you really believe this is a huge coincidence?" According to the academy, Black argued in essence that "Mr. Peterson had committed two murders -- despite the total absence of direct evidence that either death was homicidal or that Mr. Peterson had been the actor."
"Lawyers and judges intuitively understand that the Ratliff evidence necessarily had an overpowering impact on the jurors," the academy brief says. The brief cites a statement made by one juror after the trial: "It was just too much that one man would be the last person to see two women, and both of them end up dead at the bottom of a staircase. ... The chances of that happening are three times more than the MegaLottery."
But Black, now in private practice and a candidate for district attorney next year, defended the introduction of the Ratliff evidence Tuesday. "I was in charge of the exhumation [of Ratliff] as regards researching the law and making it happen," she told The Herald-Sun. "We wanted to be sure we were on firm footing before we did it. We researched it thoroughly. I agree with the judge that this evidence was properly admitted."
