Conner Recovery Site Field Trip - October 6, 2010 PART THREE

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CORRECTION: #327, the Meeker Slough runs eastward into the Bay, not westward.

Conner Recovery Site Field Trip - October 6, 2010 PART TWO

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(To be continued)

Conner Recovery Site Field Trip - October 6, 2010 PART ONE

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The purpose of this field trip was to:

1. Observe whether People's 100 accurately represents the Conner Recovery site at high tide.
2. Observe what happens to debris as the tide recedes.

NOAA predicted the high tide on October 6 would reach 6.33 ft, just short of the 6.39 ft verified water level for People’s 100 – that’s less than ¾ of an inch difference. NOAA’s preliminary water levels give the actual water level as 6.35, less than ½ inch lower than 6.39. Verified water levels won’t be available until approximately December 6, 2010.

Wind data was also taken from the NOAA. The UC Berkeley station (BAAQMD) will not have wind data for this date till approximately January 6, 2011.

This report repeatedly calls attention to these critical water levels:

 5.45 ft. = MHW, average of all high tides
 5.77 ft. = High tide on morning of April 12, 2003 (the storm)
 5.88 ft. = High tide on morning of April 13, 2003
 6.05 ft. = MHHW, average of all higher high tides
 6.39 ft. = People’s 100

This report includes more than 150 pictures taken on October 6 to help the reader better understand what the Conner Recovery Site looks like at critical water levels and what happens to the debris as the tide recedes.











[to be continued]

Conner Recovery Site Field Trip - October 6, 2010

I made another field trip to the Conner Recovery Site (Richmond mudflat) this last October 6. I have 150 or so pictures that I've annotated and compiled into a single PDF. This PDF is very large, 90 megs, so you will want to right click on the link (it's on the homepage) and save it to your computer. Once you do that, it should open easily in your browser. Google Chrome can't seem to handle it, but IE works okay.

I'm also going to put the pictures in blog articles, for those who don't want to bother with such a large PDF. I'll only do a couple of pictures at a time, and you can click on each picture to enlarge it.

I keep returning to the Conner Recovery Site hoping to capture in pictures that anomaly that explains how Conner could have washed ashore at such a low water level -- 5.88 verified water level doesn't even match the 6.05 MHHW, which is the average of all higher high tides. The breakwater system at the mudflat (west breakwater, south breakwater, and north breakwater) is designed to protect this wildlife refuge from average higher high tides, and these pictures will show that it does a very good job.

Or the anomaly that explains why Conner was north of the debris line -- not "in" the debris line, not "with" the debris line, not "near" the debris line -- but north of it a sufficient distance to compel Distaso to explain it. The explanation he gave -- that heavier items are deposited first as the tide recedes -- was not provided by any expert and has no basis in science. These pictures prove, again, that heavier objects and lighter objects remain in the same debris line.

However, this field trip did capture in pictures the common-sense explanation of why Conner was north of the debris line -- you will see that the water coverage exceeds the debris line. NOAA explains the debris line as the furthermost reach of the waves, and that is true on beaches, but it's not true on sites like the mudflat where Conner was found. The tall grass and gradual slope of the terrain impede the northward movement of the debris line, but they don't prevent the grass north of the debris line from becoming saturated with water -- more than enough to fool someone into thinking that putting a baby there would be proof that the baby washed ashore.

So the PDF is already available at http://pwc-sii.com/Research/field/100610/100610.pdf, and I will start putting groups of pictures into blog articles later today.

If anyone questions the integrity of these pictures, I strongly recommend that you make your own field trip to the Conner Recovery Site and take your own pictures. I'd be happy to help you plan the best dates for the field trip, and will publish your pictures for you. I'm not afraid of someone showing me that Conner could have washed ashore -- if that could be proven, it certainly would simplify things. I just haven't been able to prove it's even possible, much less probable.

Cable TV `expert' Nancy Grace leading the lynch mob against Scott Peterson

This is a Knight Ridder/Tribune article by Mark Bowden, published in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Truer commentary has never been written. Good work, Mr. Bowden, for nailing Ms. Grace and all the other so-called experts who contributed to the wrongful conviction of Scott Peterson.

Cable TV `expert' Nancy Grace leading the lynch mob against Scott Peterson

Byline: Mark Bowden

I was half listening to the comfortable drone of CNN's "Larry King Live" show last week when something made me look up from my book.

Nancy Grace, a former Atlanta prosecutor who appears often on King's show as a legal expert, was coolly eviscerating Scott Peterson, who is suspected of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and dumping her body in the ocean. Peterson is awaiting trial, but Grace already seems indignant about his guilt. She's not alone. Prosecutorial leaks have been building a case against Peterson for months, and after the bodies of Laci and her unborn son washed up on a California beach last month, the case ratcheted up to the level of national obsession.

The cable TV talk show circus surrounding such high-profile murder cases is an unseemly show, a genuine high-tech lynching, with "experts" such as Grace leading the mob to the courthouse.

Then, during last week's show, out of the blue, Peterson's father, Lee, called to object.

"You've had your say here for months and you've crucified my son on national media," Peterson said. "And he's a wonderful man. You have no idea of his background and what a wonderful son and wonderful man he is. You have no knowledge of that and you sit there as a judge and jury . . . convicting him on national media. And you should absolutely be ashamed of that."

Grace replied: "I'm simply stating what has been leaked or what has been put in formal documents. If you find them disturbing, I suggest you ask your son about some of them, sir."

"There you go, Nancy; look at this look on Nancy's face," Peterson said. "You absolutely hate my son."

Peterson was right about that. The look on Grace's face was a scary thing to see. She was being challenged and upbraided in public, a direct assault on her image and considerable ambition, and if looks could shoot blue bolts through a television screen, anyone watching would have been barbecued.

She denied hating Scott Peterson, but there was no denying her feral expression. She visibly trembled with fury. Peterson had her dead to rights.

Journalists have been guilty of aggressively prejudging defendants in sensational murders throughout the profession's colorful and oft-inglorious history, but nothing from the craft's yellowest heritage outdoes the blood-lust marathons conducted nowadays on cable TV by these "experts." The way to distinguish yourself in this market is to have fangs _ and it helps, as with Grace, if you surround them with a head of puffy blond hair and a pretty face.

Grace is typical of a whole category of "expert" commentators who help fill cable TV's insatiable appetite for speculation and opinion. The idea isn't to weigh matters dispassionately and judiciously; it's more like a fox hunt. The "experts" are the hounds who run the suspect SOB to the ground and then bay for permission to dismember him, whether he's a public figure such as U.S. Rep. Gary Condit or the current guilty-seeming guy-next-door, Scott Peterson.

Lee Peterson picked the right person to call. Grace embodies an alarming new style of reporter, the prosecutorial journalist.

Before hosting her own show on Court TV, Grace was a highly successful prosecutor in the Fulton County District Attorney's Office. She is also something of a self-promoter, and is given to overstatement. Her bio on the Court TV Internet site notes that she "served as special prosecutor of major felony cases involving serial murder, serial rape, serial child molestation, and arson. Ms. Grace compiled a perfect record of nearly 100 felony convictions at trial and no losses."

Successfully prosecuting mere murder, rape and child molestation cases would be impressive enough, but Grace's defendants were super-bad; they weren't just offenders, they were "serial" offenders. One wonders how many serial murder, rape and child molestations crop up in Atlanta. At least one of her most celebrated cases - a mere single murder case - was unanimously overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court. Chief Justice Robert Benham wrote that Grace "engaged in an extensive pattern of inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal conduct in the course of this trial." One of her alleged improprieties was inviting a CNN camera crew (profiling her) to tape her at the crime scene. Lawyers who lost cases against Grace complain that in her eagerness to win cases, she showed little concern about making sure the defendant got a fair trial.

This is the kind of allegation often made by frustrated defense lawyers against successful prosecutors, but it does suggest a pattern. If you were accused of a crime, you wouldn't want Grace prosecuting you in the courtroom, and you certainly wouldn't want her prosecuting you in absentia by proxy on national TV.

Her bio says she's now studying constitutional criminal law at New York University. One hopes it still has a semester on the presumption of innocence.

Beyond Emotional Doubt - the new standard?

Beyond reasonable doubt, that's supposed to be the standard for conviction. But that's not what happened in the Scott Peterson trial. I found this startling observation about what kind of jurors the DA would want in jury selection:

According to Modesto attorney Richard Herman, the prosecutor “wants somebody who will think emotionally and not logically, and who will dutifully listen to evidence. It’s an emotionally charged case, and you’d give more weight to limited circumstantial evidence because of your emotional reservoir.”

(Source: "Do they want you? Peterson trial jury selection begins this morning," Oakland Tribune, March 4, 2004)

That about sums it up, Beyond Emotional Doubt definitely was the standard used to convict Scott Peterson.

There were only 2 pieces of evidence that linked Scott Peterson to the murders of Laci and Conner: 1) The recovery locations, reduced to zero value because the MPD publicized Scott's fishing location very early on, giving anyone plenty of time to know where to dispose of the bodies; and 2)the hair in the pliers, reduced to zero value because hair is so easily transferred and the lab technician testified unequivocally that the pliers hadn't been used recently enough to be a factor in the crimes.

All the rest of the evidence was directed at an emotional conviction.

A hair, an affair, and a fishing trip

I came across this article by Julia Prodis Sulek, San Jose Mercury News, for the date November 23, 2003. The headline was "Mystery persists in Peterson case," and Sulek followed with:

Is that all there is?

After 12 days of testimony ended last week and piles of police reports were submitted into evidence to try to prove that Scott Peterson killed his pregnant wife and unborn son, that's the lingering question.

A hair, an affair and a fishing trip seemed about all that were needed to persuade a Stanislaus County judge to make Peterson stand trial sometime next year. But do prosecutors have enough evidence to convince a jury that Peterson killed his wife and dumped her body into San Francisco Bay last Christmas Eve?

A hair, an affair, and a fishing trip -- that about sums it up for the case against Scott Peterson. Oh, to be sure, Sulek's article included some assurances from attorneys and legal scholars like Loyola University law Professor Stan Goldman and Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom, [then] an assistant district attorney in San Francisco, that much, much more would be presented at the trial -- this is only what was necessary to get Scott bound over for trial.

But what did the trial add to "a hair, an affair, and a fishing trip"? Nothing, except gossip -- and the friends and relatives really had to work hard to come up with something negative about Scott. I wish the worse thing that could be said about me is that I once lost my temper at a family barbecue when I burned some chicken.

A hair, an affair, and a fishing trip. Let's take the hair. That single hair collected into the evidence envelope by Det. Hendee that magically became 2 hairs that fell out of the evidence envelope when opened by Det. Brocchini. That hair that was found in pliers that the forensic tech said had not been used recently enough to have been used in a crime on December 24, 2002. That hair that could have been Laci's, but why would anyone be surprised to have some of her laying around? That hair that Hendee said just dropped into the evidence envelope when he opened the pliers, NOT wrapped around and around and around the pliers like Nancy Grace claimed over and over and over again. So a hair in pliers that have no connection to Laci's death -- that's real quality evidence, isn't it?!?

The affair. Ah, yes, the affair. ADA Rick Distaso admitted that no sensible person would conclude, after listening to hours and hours of those tapes that Amber was a motive for murder. The affair was simply for character assassination.

The fishing trip. Now we get into something that does have a nexus to the location where the bodies were found, and that would be good evidence, except every person on the planet knew that Scott Peterson was fishing along a route from the Berkeley Marina to Brooks Island by the 1st of January, plenty of time for someone who wanted to make sure that s/he continued to get away with the murder to see to it that the bodies, if ever found, would be found where the #1 suspect went fishing that day. It's not rocket science.

So the mystery continues: how in the world could that hair, that affair, and that fishing trip have the power to convict?

It's really no mystery at all. That's not what convicted Scott Peterson. It was all the other "evidence" that was leaked and talked about: the blood in the mop, the house reeking of bleach, the $250K life insurance policy, the admission to Amber Frey that he knew who did it -- and a host of other blatant lies that were circulated before the Preliminary Hearing proved them to be lies. But by then it was too late. Millions had already made up their minds. And they didn't want to be bothered with pesky facts.

Sulek is also the Mercury News reporter that proved another myth to be false - that Scott Peterson showed no emotion and made no plea for Laci's return. After her interviews in Modesto about the effect this case had on the town, Sulek wrote: "Many people heeded Peterson's tearful pleas and fruitlessly searched, hung fliers and prayed at candlelight vigils for his wife's safe return" ("For Modesto, Peterson slaying cements dark notoriety," 10/27/2003 Mercury News.)