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Peterson pens letter about life in jail
MODESTO, California (CNN) -- Scott Peterson's defense attorney sparred with an FBI expert again Thursday over the reliability of a DNA testing technique during the second day of a preliminary hearing in his murder trial. Also Thursday, Oakland television station KTVU-TV disclosed details from handwritten letters that it obtained, which KTVU said were written by Peterson to an unidentified friend. In one of the letters, Peterson wrote that he finds it "so difficult to grieve" for his dead wife and son in jail, according to the station. "At night, I have my head buried in a blanket, I don't want other inmates to see the tears," he said. Peterson is charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of Laci Peterson and their unborn son. The former fertilizer salesman, 31, has pleaded innocent to the charges. He could face the death penalty if convicted. Prosecutors allege Peterson dumped his wife's body in San Francisco Bay last December. Laci Peterson's body and that of her unborn son washed up on shore in April. Peterson was then arrested and charged with murder. The letters obtained by the station were written in pencil on a yellow legal pad. In one, Peterson also said he learned that the remains of his wife and son had been positively identified while he was bring driven from San Diego to Modesto, after being arrested for their alleged murders, according to KTVU. He said he was told of the discovery by detectives. "I didn't believe, I wouldn't believe them," he wrote. "I only knew it was true the next morning when I saw a paper." Peterson also complained about jail food and said that the highlight of his day is going to the shower, according to KTVU. "You get to move around a room that is 8x20 without chains on. I try to spend as much time there as possible," he wrote, according to KTVU. In court Thursday, Peterson's attorney, Mark Geragos, went through a painstaking and highly technical second day of questioning Constance Fisher, an FBI forensic expert who tested five packets of evidence for the prosecution in the case. At issue is the reliability of mitochondiral DNA, or MTDNA, which was used to identify a strand of hair on a pair of pliers found in the bottom of Peterson's boat. Prosecutors maintain that the hair was Laci's. Unlike conventional DNA, MTDNA, which is passed from mother to child, is not unique to an individual. Instead, close family members share the same type. Geragos is trying to get the MTDNA evidence excluded, saying it is not reliable enough to draw conclusions. The defense attorney questioned Fisher about computer databases used to match MTDNA samples, along with a software program used to analyze them, trying to raise questions about inaccuracies in both. Fisher conceded that the number of different MTDNA sequences that exist in the human population is unknown. She also conceded that samples in the database could have been misclassified because people were allowed to self-identify their ethnic backgrounds. Geragos also bore down on equipment failures in the FBI lab during the processing of the evidence. But Fisher said such failures are routine because the equipment is "persnickety," and that they had no bearing on the outcome of the analysis. MTDNA testing, which is used primarily on hair samples, has been allowed into evidence in previous California trials. The hearing resumes Friday at 9 a.m. (noon ET). It is expected to last into next week. At its conclusion, Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Al Girolami will decide if prosecutors have presented enough evidence to send the case to trial. CNN correspondent Rusty Dornin and producers Augie Martin and Huck Afflerbach contributed to this report.
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