The case was so compelling that a dramatization of it was released in 2022 as an 8-episode mini-series starring Colin Firth as Michael Peterson. I will be referring to this dramatization as "the mini-series".
I first watched the 2022 mini-series, and I have since watched the earlier documentary. I have to commend the dramatization for presenting the characters so perfectly. After seeing the actual people in the documentary, it is obvious that great care was taken to capture the characters accurately in the mini-series. I can't help thinking of Robert DeNiro, who, during the filming of Goodfellas, would call the mob liaison guy 5-6 times a day to be sure he was getting his Jimmy Conway character just right. For example, he would ask questions like "How did Jimmy Conway hold his cigarettes?"
One might ask how such a miscarriage of justice could occur in the United States, which offers more protections to defendants than any other country in the world. The answer is really quite simple. The criminal justice system is a human institution, and as such is as imperfect as all human institutions are. There have been 202 exonerations of death row inmates in this country to date, an astonishing number given our many safeguards against such miscarriages of justice. We are the only country in the Western world that still uses the death penalty, to our eternal shame.
There is a philosophical rule called Occam's Razor, which holds that the simplest explanation is usually the best one. In line with this principle, I have a simple, clear-cut explanation for this miscarriage of justice. Michael Peterson was a successful novelist and was also a columnist for the Durham newspaper. In his columnist role, he regularly attacked the Durham city leaders for their racism, their corruption, and their general incompetence. In particular, he specifically criticized the DA, Jim Hardin, for going after bingo parlors instead of prosecuting violent crimes. This case was Hardin's revenge. (This tidbit about Hardin being criticized was mentioned in the documentary, but not in the mini-series.)
The revenge motive for a wrongful prosecution was also seen in the tragic Wisconsin case of Steven Avery. Avery was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault and attempted murder in 1985, and served 18 years in prison until being exonerated by DNA testing in 2003. He then filed a $36 million lawsuit against the sheriff and other county officials for wrongful conviction and imprisonment. In response, the sheriff's department framed him for murder on a new case, and Avery was convicted and is still serving time for that conviction. This whole sorry saga is the subject of the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, which I highly recommend. Nobody does documentaries better than Netflix!
While the parties were preparing for trial, it came to light that 18 years earlier, in 1985, there was a woman in Germany who died in a fall down a staircase. The defense team was obligated to investigate this situation in case the DA tried to introduce evidence of this at the trial. Consequently, the defense team made two trips to Germany to interview witnesses and examine records related to this death. The woman and her husband were neighbors and good friends with Peterson and his first wife, and after her death Peterson became the guardian of the woman's two daughters (her husband having predeceased her). There was no evidence of any affair or foul play between Peterson and the woman, but somehow the prosecution deemed her death to be relevant to the pending trial.
The prosecution was so obsessed with this German death that they had her corpse disinterred from the Texas grave where it had been resting, and transported it across the country to North Carolina so that the local Medical Examiner could do an autopsy. This other death was in no way relevant to the current case, and evidence of it would be extremely prejudicial to the defense. And yet, the DA sought to introduce it into evidence at trial. And, even more incredibly, the trial judge, a hack named Orlando Hudson, Jr., allowed it into evidence! The medical examiner, who has since been discredited, testified that in her opinion the German death was a homicide by blunt force trauma to the head.
Another extremely prejudicial decision was that the jury was allowed to hear evidence of Peterson's bisexuality. Numerous emails were exchanged between him and various male escorts, and these were introduced to support the DA's theory that Kathleen had just found out about his bisexuality, which led to a fight between the two of them, resulting in her death.
Usually judges will err on the side of caution and will not allow this sort of prejudicial evidence in, out of a desire to assure the defendant a fair trial, and to avoid being reversed on appeal. The trial judge and the DA here were both guilty of gross misconduct in introducing such prejudicial evidence which had no real probative value. And yet, neither the DA nor the judge suffered any adverse repercussions. To the contrary, this case made them both famous; DA Hardin was appointed to a judgeship in 2005, and both he and Judge Hudson continued serving as judges until their recent retirements.
Ultimately the case came down to, or at least should have come down to, a battle of the blood spatter experts, Deborah Radisch for the prosecution, and Henry Lee for the defense. One was a local medical examiner, and the other a world-renowned forensic scientist, who had worked on many famous cases such as the JonBenét Ramsey murder case, the O. J. Simpson and Laci Peterson cases, the 9/11 forensic investigation, the Washington, DC, sniper shootings, and the reinvestigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Radisch testified that the blood spatters were "not consistent" with a fall down the stairs, while Lee testified that they were not consistent with blunt force trauma to the head.
If an AI bot had been deciding this case, it would have been an easy win for the defense. However, 12 fallible humans were deciding it instead, and they were subject to all of the small-town prejudices that are so prevalent in the South. (I realize that Durham, pop. 300,000, is not literally a "small town", but it has the same provincial outlook on life as all small towns have.) Every effort was made to turn the defendant into a villain. For example, in closing argument the assistant DA, a shrewish woman named Freda Black, stressed to the jury that Peterson was a "writer of fiction", and he therefore had a special ability to make up stories and present them believably.
To me this case is eerily similar to the famous case of Dr. Sam Shepard, whose wife Marilyn was found bludgeoned to death in her bed in the early morning hours of July 4, 1954, in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. We were taking the Cleveland newspaper at the time, and I vividly remember the front-page editorial on July 30, 1954, with the garish headline "Why Isn't Sam Shepard in Jail" plastered across the top of the page in huge black letters. Even at the tender age of eight, I could sense that something wasn't quite right here. The Cleveland Police gave in to all the clamor and arrested Shepard that evening. He was convicted and spent a decade in prison before the justice system finally corrected its mistake.
In both the Shepard and the Peterson cases, the murder weapon was never found. The prosecution "expert" in the Shepard case testified that in his opinion the beating was caused by a "surgical instrument", Shepard being an osteopathic doctor. Much of the prejudice against Shepard was due to his being an osteopath, not a regular doctor. Similarly, Peterson was an outsider, not a Durham native, and the local prejudice against outsiders is strong in this provincial Southern town.
There is a popular myth among the populace that the rich person gets a better brand of justice than the poor person in our criminal justice system. In my experience this is not the case. In fact, the rich person often is treated more harshly. Prosecutors like to go after high-profile targets, for two reasons. One, it allows them to make an example of the high-profile person, to deter others from committing crimes. And two, it is a darn good way of gaining publicity for the prosecutor, thereby furthering his/her career. In most jurisdictions in the U.S., District Attorneys are elected by popular vote, so the publicity is important.
Michael Peterson had a top-notch defense, as the documentary makes clear. The original estimate from his attorney of the cost of defense was $500,000, later raised to $750,000-800,000, as more and more issues came up that had to be addressed. The defense team had a private investigator, a crusty old guy who reminded me of the Mike Ehrmantraut character from "Breaking Bad". Then there was a jury consultant, a witness coach, and other experts like Dr. Henry Lee, possibly the foremost forensic scientist in the world.
And yet, despite all of the hard work of this amazing team, Mike Peterson was convicted. Convicted despite the fact that his attorney surveyed autopsies of every single case of blunt force trauma to the head in North Carolina in the previous ten years, and they all showed either a skull fracture or a brain injury, neither of which was present in the Peterson case.
Mike Peterson's life was ruined, and he spent eight years of his life in prison. So much for this nonsense about the rich always getting preferential treatment!
