Peterson detective admits omitting info
Laci's visit to warehouse not in report
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 Former juror Justin Falconer says the prosecution hasn't yet proved its case.
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REDWOOD CITY, California (CNN) -- A police detective Thursday admitted in Scott Peterson's double murder trial that he omitted information that showed Laci Peterson may have been in the warehouse where her husband's boat was stored.
Scott Peterson, 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he killed his 27-year-old pregnant wife and unborn child.
The detective's admission plays into the defense theory that police immediately suspected Scott, that they did not look for other suspects, and that they only followed leads that may implicate Scott, while ignoring others that could have exonerated him.
Under cross-examination by defense attorney Mark Geragos, Modesto police detective Al Brocchini admitted that he did not include in a transcript of a taped interview of a witness who said Laci had used the bathroom at her husband's warehouse December 23, 2002, where his boat was stored.
The prosecution contends Laci did not even know her husband had a boat.
Prosecutors believe Scott killed his wife some time between the evening of December 23 and the morning of December 24, 2002, and dumped her body from that boat into San Francisco Bay.
The prosecution contends that is the only way one of Laci's hairs could have gotten on a pair of pliers found in the boat.
But in a taped interview with Brocchini on June 23, 2003, a woman who rents part of the warehouse where Scott Peterson also has space told the detective that Laci had come in the warehouse December 23, 2002, and asked to use the bathroom in the woman's section of the building.
Brocchini admitted he did not include that information in his written report on the interview.
The defense implies that Laci's hair could have gotten into the boat during that visit.
Geragos also took Brocchini to task about an article in the Modesto Bee reporting that Scott had taken a second life insurance policy out on Laci just before she disappeared.
Brocchini denied he had leaked what turned out to be inaccurate information to the press.
But he admitted he used the newspaper account to try plant seeds of doubt with Scott's friends by phoning them and suggesting they read the article.
Prosecutors allege that Peterson's affair with a former massage therapist led him to kill his wife.
Peterson contends that he returned home from a fishing trip to find his wife missing, and that someone must have abducted her.
Laci's body and that of her fetus washed up separately on the shores of San Francisco Bay in April 2003, just miles from where her husband told police he had been fishing that day.
A juror who was kicked off the case Wednesday said prosecutors had not persuaded him that Peterson was guilty.
"You have to have a little bit of sympathy for the guy," Justin Falconer said, referring to Peterson. "He's lost his wife, he's lost his son, his family. His whole life is upside down."
Falconer, an airport screener, was replaced by the first alternate juror, a man who is both a lawyer and doctor.
San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Alfred A. Delucchi gave no reason for removing No. 5 juror, but according to Falconer, the judge told him he was a "distraction" in the case. (Full story)
