Lawyers in Peterson Trial Argue Over Single Strand of Dark Hair

Defense lawyers in Scott Peterson’s murder trial Thursday questioned the admissibility of the prosecution’s key piece of physical evidence -- a single strand of dark hair -- in a flurry of heated exchanges that led the judge to remove the jury from the courtroom.

Detectives have testified they collected a single strand of hair from a pair of pliers found on Peterson’s boat -- the vehicle prosecutors allege Peterson used to ferry his wife’s body out to San Francisco Bay.

Prosecutors contend Laci never knew about the boat her husband purchased weeks before she vanished.

But when prosecutors opened the evidence envelope several months later, two strands of hair were present. That led defense lawyer Mark Geragos to suggest that police botched the collection process, possibly even contaminating the evidence.

On Thursday, prosecution witness Rodney Oswalt, a criminalist with the California Department of Justice, testified that the hair in the envelope was likely two separate strands -- not, as the prosecution suggested during Peterson’s preliminary hearing, a single hair that had broken in two.

That testimony led Geragos to ask the judge to allow him to tell jurors that the prosecutors’ theory “changes as it blows in the wind,” given that their own witness had refuted their contention that the hair began as one single strand.

“If he’s going to testify that there were two hairs, then that raises the specter once again there was a break in the chain of custody,” Geragos argued. “I think the jury should be privy to the fact that it was the D.A.’s contention at the preliminary hearing that this hair broke in half.”

The judge would not allow it but said Geragos could question Oswalt about the hair.

“Did you ever tell the D.A. that it was one hair that broke in half?” Geragos asked Oswalt.

“Did I tell them, no,” Oswalt replied.

Earlier, Oswalt testified that the two hair fragments “could have” come from Laci Peterson.

Oswalt said he also tested eight hair samples collected from a piece of duct tape found on Laci Peterson’s body and four hairs gathered from her skin.

Ten of the hairs turned out to be animal, he said.

The remaining two “could have been donated by the victim, and the suspect, Scott Peterson, was excluded,” Oswalt said.

But under questioning from Geragos, Oswalt agreed that hair is often transferred from one spouse to another -- meaning that hair belonging to Laci Peterson could have fallen from her husband onto the boat.

Prosecutors allege Peterson killed his pregnant wife in their Modesto home on or around Dec. 24, 2002, then drove her body to the bay and dumped her overboard from his small boat.

The remains of Laci Peterson and the couple’s fetus washed ashore just two miles from where Peterson says he was fishing alone that Christmas Eve.