Letter and Box delivered to the Judge

Pre-Trial Evidentiary Hearings

February 11, 2004

DELUCCHI: Counsel, during this short five minutes recess while Mr. Distaso was straightening out the particular exhibit, the clerk handed me a letter received 2-11-04 at 10:00 a.m.: "Urgent, possible evidence Re Laci Peterson murder case" addressed to the court. So before I open this envelope, I'm going to ask counsel and the defendant and the district attorney, the court reporter and the clerk, to adjourn to chambers so I can open this in the presence of the defendant and his lawyer and find out what's in this. This might be just some sort of ruse or just nothing, but I think I should open it in your presence so we know what it is. Okay? And I don't see any powder in there, so I think we'll be safe. Okay. So we'll adjourn into the, we'll go to the jury room because there's more room in there. Okay.

(Pause in proceedings.)

DELUCCHI: Okay. Let the record show now that these proceedings are taking place in what passes for the chambers. This is the jury deliberating room up on, the next to the court's chambers, because we don't have enough room in the chambers. We have the defendant and his counsel present and the district attorneys present, and we have this letter that was received here this morning marked: Attention, urgent possible evidence. This may be just something that's something sent by some crank, but I'm going to have it marked as Court Exhibit number I. And then I don't have an opener. Mike, you said you can open this. So let's open it and find out what it is in the presence of the defendant and his counsel. Well, reviewing this, I think this is just a letter from a citizen. It's a little unhinged. I'll let Mr. Geragos and the prosecutor take a look at it.

GERAGOS: Thank you, your Honor. "A little unhinged" might be charitable.

DELUCCHI: Okay. So it doesn't affect your defense in this case in any way, Mr. Geragos?

GERAGOS: No, not unless they're going to stipulate that I can call the dog as a witness.

DELUCCHI: Okay.

D. HARRIS: The type looks like some letters that we've seen before.

GERAGOS: It has a definite familiar ring to it.

DELUCCHI: Okay.

D. HARRIS: Give that back to the court.

DELUCCHI: So it really has no evidentiary value, even though the writer seems to think it does. And so it's written by an anonymous writer, dated February 6, 2004, and it is, the letter that speaks for itself. So what I'm going to do is just mark it as a Court Exhibit number I. I suspect there may be other ones, but we should keep track of all of this stuff. Okay. So this will be Court Exhibit number I. Okay.

GERAGOS: Thank you, your Honor.

DELUCCHI: Okay. So we'll go out and wrap up the morning session as best we can. Thank you.

D. HARRIS: Your Honor, before we break we probably should bring this up because this is something that did happen in Modesto where the Department 2, Judge Girolami's court, started receiving phone calls as well. There was one woman who called the defense, the prosecution, law enforcement and every government agency on a regular basis. So at one point in time, after I think about eight or nine phone calls to the court, having his bailiff document them, they just stopped taking the calls. And so that's something that has occurred.

DELUCCHI: Okay. Well, the phone call, the phone number I have has been recently installed within the last couple days, so I don't think they'll be able to contact me directly. Unless they want to use Judge Quentin Kopp's number. That's probably in the phone book.

GERAGOS: I think there's, there's a woman out in the hallway right now who is rather unhinged.

DELUCCHI: Really.

GERAGOS: Who is wearing a rather colorful outfit. She appears to be one of the followers of this case.

CLERK: I think we're going to be getting our own phone number. Judge Kopp is going to take his phone with him.

DELUCCHI: Okay. Well, how do you want me to deal with this box that's been addressed to me? I don't, I don't know what the outside says. They're going to scan it before we open it, and maybe we ought to come back this afternoon and open it together, see what's in it.

GERAGOS: That's fine.

DELUCCHI: Want to scan it, Mike, Mike's the bailiff, for the record, upstairs and see what's in there?

BAILIFF: Sure.

DELUCCHI: Okay. All right. Can you let me know what it appears to be during the noon recess, and maybe at 1:30 we can come in deal with that before we go back in and get that behind us. Okay.

GERAGOS: All right. Thank you.