While everyone understands how the lead defense attorney in the Drew Peterson case sealed his client’s murder conviction by calling an adverse witness to the stand, few know the bizarre tale of how the prosecutor nearly lost the case because the Illinois Legislature adopted the law he’d written to help him prevail in the matter. Here’s the story.
According to jurors interviewed shortly after the verdict, the verdict turned on the hearsay evidence that Peterson’s fourth wife, who is missing and presumed murdered, had told others she knew Peterson had murdered wife No. 3. The coroner had initially ruled the 2004 death of Peterson’s third wife an accidental drowning, concluding she slipped in the couple’s bathtub and fatally struck her head.
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