Missing wife could help convict Drew

BOLINGBROOK -- Some seven years ago, Stacy Peterson stole Kathleen Savio's husband away. Now, more than five years later, the missing mom may be the murdered mom's only chance at finding justice.

A new law -- passed six months ago that allows hearsay evidence from witnesses determined to have been murdered to keep them from testifying -- could open the door for an account Stacy Peterson gave to her preacher about how her husband, Drew Peterson, killed his previous wife, Savio.

"It's possible, yes, that such statements can come in," said Herb Tanner Jr., a Violence Against Women Project training attorney for the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan and the author of a detailed analysis of hearsay-based murder case Giles v. California.

While it will be possible to get the words supposedly spoken by Stacy, via her preacher, the Rev. Neil Schori, introduced at a murder trial, it will not be simple.

"The prosecution would have to put on sufficient evidence to the trial court that Drew Peterson killed (Stacy) to make her unavailable as a witness for criminal proceedings," Tanner explained.

This would take place during a pretrial hearing in which the prosecution would have to display that it was more likely than not that Peterson not only killed Stacy, but did so to keep her from testifying against him.

The time, content and circumstances of the statements must also stand up to scrutiny, in that they are believable, and that the hearsay witness relaying them has no motivation to lie.

The hearing would be conducted without a jury present, and it would be left up to a judge to determine if the statements should be allowed at trial.

"It's my guess the judge will have a lot of leeway in the reliability judgment," Tanner said.

And if the case is allowed to remain in "Will County, where the prejudice (against Peterson) is highest of all," and not moved to another venue, the prosecution will prevail and get the testimony in, said DePaul University professor Leonard Cavise.

"It's going to take a judge with the strength of a Goliath" to keep such statements out, Cavise said. And he doesn't see a judge that strong in any of the courtrooms of Joliet.

"If the case is tried in Will County, the statements are getting in," said Cavise, who teaches criminal law, criminal procedure and evidence. "If he's tried elsewhere, it might have a chance (to be disallowed)."

While the state House and Senate were grappling with the passage of the hearsay bill, it became known as "Drew's Law," as many speculated it was drafted as a measure to prosecute Peterson.

State Sen. A.J. Wilhelmi, D-Joliet, denied this and said the law was crafted without any particular defendant in mind, but Cavise believes otherwise.

"The reason they call it the Drew Peterson exception is because the Legislature passed it for just this specific case, and that's how ridiculous our Legislature is," he said. "They shouldn't pass laws for just one specific case."

Whether it was passed with him in mind or not, Drew did not even get to be the first person tried with evidence allowed through "Drew's Law." That honor went to 24-year-old Joshua Matthews, who faces first-degree murder charges for allegedly gunning down his girlfriend, Sade Glover, in Warrenville in 2004.

DuPage County Circuit Judge Perry Thompson ruled this week that Matthews killed Glover to keep her from testifying against him in a battery case in which she also was the victim, allowing a statement she made to police to be entered as evidence.

While the prosecution of Peterson may hinge on convincing a judge he killed Stacy, his fourth wife, he has yet to be charged with harming her at all. Tanner said this does not matter.

"I think this may well be the type of case that shows why," he said.

Peterson and Savio, his third wife, were in the midst of a contentious divorce when she was found drowned in a dry bathtub in March 2004.

State police investigated the matter but failed to find any sign of foul play. Savio's death was eventually ruled an accidental drowning.

Stacy, who married Peterson less than five months before Savio died, vanished in October 2007. State police believe she may have been slain and list Peterson as their sole suspect in her "potential homicide."

Stacy's disappearance prompted authorities to reclassify Savio's death as a homicide and to set the state police to investigating it once again. They arrested Peterson following his indictment on first-degree murder charges late last week.

Several weeks before Stacy went missing, she met with Schori to discuss her personal problems. During their conversation, Schori said, she confided in him that she knew her husband killed his previous wife. Schori said Stacy provided specific details that made him believe her, but will not publicly disclose what those details are.

Savio herself supposedly made statements to relatives that she feared Peterson would kill her and make it look as if she was the victim of an accident. She even wrote a November 2002 letter to an assistant Will County state's attorney in which she predicted, "He knows how to manipulate the system and his next step is to take my children away. Or kill me instead."

Neither the statements to relatives nor the letter should -- by virtue of the Constitution -- be allowed into the trial, according to Cavise.

"None of them should get in and the Supreme Court has been very clear about this," he said.

"The Supreme Court said forfeiture (of the right to cross-examine a witness) by wrongdoing only applies when the defendant kills a witness to keep them from testifying against him," Cavise said.

"There's no chance Drew Peterson killed Stacy Peterson to keep her from testifying against him in the case of Kathleen Savio," he said. "If he killed her, he killed her because he didn't want to be married to her anymore or some other reason."

Peterson's attorney, Joel Brodsky, refused to comment on the hearsay law but previously said anything offered by Schori would be "double hearsay" and inadmissible.

Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow declined to comment on how the new law will factor into his prosecution of Peterson, but DuPage County State's Attorney Joseph Birkett disputed Brodsky's claim of "double hearsay."

"He's obviously pandering to the media," Birkett said of Brodsky. "He's going to have to make his arguments in a courtroom."

And Birkett -- who said he sent a murderer to death row with a case bolstered by hearsay evidence in 2007, without the benefit of the 2008 law -- thinks those arguments will prove ineffective.

"The bantering about not being allowed to enter statements from a deceased witness," he said, "nothing could be further from the truth."