REDWOOD CITY, California (CNN) -- Rejecting a defense request for a new trial, a California judge on Wednesday sentenced Scott Peterson to death for the slaying of his pregnant wife and her fetus.
In imposing the death sentence, Superior Court Judge Alfred Delucchi followed the recommendation of a jury last December. (Jury recommendation)
Earlier Wednesday, Peterson was brought into a California courtroom shackled at the waist, according to The Associated Press.
The former fertilizer salesman was escorted into San Mateo County Superior Court under heavy security, wearing a dark suit and handcuffs chained to his waist, the AP reported. Additionally, 10 of the 12 jurors who sentenced him to death in December sat in the jury box Wednesday, the AP reported.
The jury that convicted Peterson in November recommended that he receive the death penalty. Delucchi had the option of reducing his sentence to life in prison.
Laci Peterson was eight months pregnant when she was reported missing on Christmas Eve 2002. Scott Peterson told police he had launched his boat at Berkeley Marina, about 80 miles from where the couple lives in Modesto, to fish in the bay that day.
Her body, and that of the fetus she carried, washed up separately on the shore in April, near where Peterson said he was fishing. A definitive cause of death was never determined.
Prosecutors said Peterson killed his wife in the couple's home on December 23 or 24, 2002, with an absence of blood in the house pointing to strangulation or smothering. They said Peterson -- who police learned was having an extramarital affair with massage therapist Amber Frey -- wanted to continue to live life as a freewheeling bachelor.
Peterson, 32, had the option of speaking on his own behalf during the sentencing. He has maintained his innocence in his wife's death. He is currently being held in the San Mateo County Jail in Redwood City, but will be moved to San Quentin State Prison if sentenced to death.
Last month, Peterson's defense attorneys filed a motion requesting a new trial on several grounds, including what they called newly discovered evidence.
That evidence stemmed from a telephone conversation involving an inmate at a California prison. The inmate's brother told him that Laci Peterson had walked up on a man who was burglarizing the house next door and that the man had verbally threatened her.
In their response, however, prosecutors claimed that evidence was not newly discovered, but that defense attorneys had known of it but failed to check it out properly.
"This is, once again, an all-too-familiar tactic on the part of the defense to twist the truth and make false claims," prosecutors said. "The defense conveniently fails to provide any admissible evidence on this point and instead relies on rumor and innuendo."
Prosecutors said the man who allegedly conducted the burglary was available to testify, but was not called to do so.
In his motion for a new trial, defense attorney Mark Geragos claimed that Delucchi committed an error by dismissing two jurors during the trial. Three jurors were dismissed in all. Prosecutors, in their response, said the issue had already been handled during Peterson's trial and the defense claim was "a rehashing of prior arguments."
Geragos said in his 135-page filing that jurors were allowed to conduct their own unauthorized experiment with Peterson's boat. Prosecutors said the so-called experiment, in which the defense claimed two jurors got in the boat and one "jumped up and down," does not amount to the taking of new evidence.
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