Lawyer Won’t Try to Move Peyer’s Trial

The attorney representing Craig Peyer, the former California Highway Patrol officer accused of killing a 20-year-old college student, said Thursday that he will not attempt to move his client’s second murder trial out of San Diego County.

After a closed-door meeting with the Superior Court judge who will preside over the trial, defense attorney Robert Grimes said he planned to withdraw an earlier request that the trial be moved because of excessive local publicity.

Both Grimes and Paul Pfingst, the deputy district attorney handling the case, said the retrial will begin as scheduled with jury selection on Monday in San Diego.

Peyer, a 13-year veteran of the California Highway Patrol, is charged with murder in the Dec. 27, 1986, slaying of San Diego State University student Cara Knott. Her body was found 65 feet below an old highway bridge near the Mercy Road off-ramp on Interstate 15. She had been strangled.

Darkened Exit

Prosecutors charge that Peyer pulled Knott over while on duty and led her down the darkened Mercy Road exit. During the former patrolman’s first trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph Van Orshoven presented as witnesses 22 women who testified that Peyer had pulled them over on the off-ramp earlier in 1986.

Peyer’s first trial ended Feb. 25, when jurors in the case deadlocked 7 to 5 in favor of conviction. In interviews, the jurors said they were unable to reach a verdict because they did not believe two key prosecution witnesses and were unimpressed by the testimony of a pathologist.

Last month, Huffman reduced Peyer’s bail from $1 million to $250,000, rejecting arguments by prosecutors that Peyer, who was fired from the highway patrol after being charged with murder, should be jailed because he is a danger to the community. Peyer had been free on the $1 million bail since March 4, 1987.

Before his client’s first trial, Grimes attempted to have the proceeding moved to another county on grounds that extensive media coverage had made it impossible to find an impartial jury. His request, however, was rejected by Huffman, who ruled that, although the publicity was significant, it had not made the seating of an unbiased jury impossible.

On Thursday, the two attorneys met privately for nearly an hour with Huffman. They later declined to comment, saying Huffman had ordered the proceedings sealed. No explanation was given as to why the meeting was private.

Peyer and his wife, Karen, were present briefly in court Thursday.