Glasgow seeks Peterson gag order

JOLIET — Prosecutors are pushing to shut Drew Peterson's lawyers up about potential evidence against the alleged wife-killer.

State's Attorney James Glasgow filed a motion on Wednesday to forbid attorneys from leaking anything from discovery documents, which will be turned over to Peterson's legal team for the first time next week.

Glasgow warned that witnesses are worried that they will be besieged by the media if their names are made public. He said a TV reporter contacted a witness last month after her name surfaced in documents stolen from a state police squad car.

Glasgow also argued that a witness' name was leaked while Peterson was facing felony weapons charges in 2008.

Peterson's attorney, Joel Brodsky, did release the name of Coal City resident Mike Kurdenok after he turned up in the state's evidence. Glasgow says the "witness was subject to media harassment."

Brodsky failed to return calls for comment.

'Pretrial publicity'

Besides protecting witnesses from the media, a gag order would "prevent undue pretrial publicity that might affect the jury selection in this case," Glasgow said in the motion.

Brodsky has repeatedly said he is considering an attempt to get the case taken out of Will County in hopes of finding a jury without bias against Peterson.

But if Brodsky is looking for an unmuddied jury pool, Peterson has done little to help keep it clean. Even after he was taken into custody on first-degree murder charges in connection with the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, Peterson has continued to thrust himself into the public eye, calling collect from the jail to the "Today" show for an interview and to Mancow Muller's radio show to tell jokes.