PETERSON: Sure. The uterus,
in the first place, from the lowest portion of the uterus where it connects to
the vagina, to the uppermost portion, the fundus, measured 23 centimeters. That
would be roughly ten inches. As I said, normally, a uterus in the non-pregnant
state may be the size of a golf ball. So an inch and a half or so. In greatest
dimension, this is substantially larger. In the non-pregnant state, the uterus
is almost solid muscle. There is obviously a cavity on the inside of it. But
just to feel it, to make a section across, it is a relatively solid muscle. This
uterus was markedly thin. The thickest, and I measured the wall of the uterus in
several locations. The thickest was two millimeters, very small, all the way to
nothing. Up near the top of the uterus it actually been, to my eye, abraded, and
was open. So up there there was no wall. So the thickness of the wall ranged
from nothing to two millimeters. So, in summary, what we have is a uterus that's
much larger than a normal, non-pregnant uterus. The wall is much thinner. And as
I put those two things together, I determined that that had been a pregnant
uterus.
And then later he said,
PETERSON: Well, in terms of
why it was the uterus there, perhaps, and other organs weren't, smooth muscle
organs like the uterus in a woman, and the prostate gland in a man, tend to be
relatively protected down in the pelvis, relatively resistant to degradation. So
oftentimes there could be a lot of other parts missing, we'll still have that to
help us determine the sex of the person. I guess that would be the main forensic
significance. As I said, my other conclusion, based on the uterus, because it
was enlarged and was thin, it had been pregnant. Now, at the point that I got
this body, there was nothing left in the uterus. So there was no baby in there.
There was no placenta in there. But the uterus remained enlarged from having
been pregnant.
What he does not say is how thick a pregnant uterus normally is, especially at 32-33 weeks, Laci's stage of pregnancy on December 23, 2002. The Defense team, and subsequently the jury, had no way to digest the information that the uterus wall was thin, 2mm at the thickest, because it had nothing to compare it to.
I found a 1998 study that provides the information the Jury needed to draw a correct conclusion about the thinness of the uterine wall. "Myometrial Thickness in Pregnancy: Longitidunal Sonographic Study", is a study using ultrasound to measure the thickness of the uterine wall in 28 patients at different times during the course of their pregnancies. These were normal pregnancies. No difference was noted between women in their first pregnancy or in multiple pregnancies. Laci was in her first pregnancy. Average age of the women was 28 years, with the range from 19 to 41 years. Laci was 27 years old.
Figure 3
Uterine wall thickness (in mm) during pregnancy. The continuous line represents the mean and the dashed lines represent the upper and lower 95% confidence intervals. A, Anterior lower segment; B, mid-anterior wall; C, fundal wall; D, posterior wall; E, right wall; F, left wall.
A: 7.4 mm with a standard deviation of 1.8 mm
B: 9.13 mm with a standard deviation of 1.6 mm
C: 9.48 mm with a standard deviation of 1.5 mm
D: 10.06 mm with a standard deviation of 1.9 mm
E: 8.95 mm with a standard deviation of 1.6 mm
F: 9.05 mm with a standard deviation of 1.5 mm
There's a substantial difference between the thickness of a normal uterine wall during pregnancy, and the 0-2 mm thickness of Laci's.
Dr. Peterson should have provided this information in his autopsy report, and Mark Geragos should have consulted an expert to see what it meant. If it makes a difference in Scott's favor, as I suspect it does, Scott was entitled to have that information presented to the jury.
If Dr. Peterson wasn't familiar with the subject, he should have done some research. He had time between when he did the autopsy and he completed his report.
