Drew Peterson Trial Wraps For The Week
UPDATED 08/24/12 3:45 p.m.
JOLIET, Ill. (CBS) --The Drew Peterson murder trial has wrapped for the week.
Prosecutors did not rest their case, as expected, on Friday. That will now probably happen on Monday, Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow told reporters.
As WBBM Newsradio's Mike Krauser reports, then the defense is expected to ask the judge for an acquittal in a directed verdict. If that bid fails, Peterson attorneys weren't saying if their client will testify in his own defense before jurors.
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The jury has so far heard from 31 witnesses in 15 days in the trial of Peterson, the former Bolingbrook police sergeant who is charged with the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.
On Friday, the prosecution failed in a bid to have a police officer testify about chokehold training, to suggest that Peterson could have subdued and drowned Savio without being injured himself.
Prosecutors did succeed in getting testimony in regarding Peterson's certification as a crime scene technician, two decades before Savio's death. The purpose of that testimony was to suggest he had the skills to stage a crime scene and fool investigators.
A police lieutenant testified he did not know what was taught in the crime scene classes, but said, "They must have taught something."
He said he didn't know whether they taught how to clean up and stage a crime scene.
Overall, even Will County Judge Edward Burmila acknowledges that the pace of the trial has been glacial.
The slow pace has been due in large part to arguments over testimony – much of it hearsay. Some of the testimony got in, some did not.
Through others' testimony, the jury heard Peterson telling Savio, and his missing fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, that he wanted Savio dead and could make it look like an accident.
But as defense attorney Steve Greenberg reminds repeatedly, "We have yet to hear a single witness who has a single fact that puts Drew at the scene, or puts his hand in doing anything wrong."
The weight the jury will give the hearsay evidence is anyone's guess, as this is all new legal ground.
It is expected that the defense will ask for a directed verdict when the prosecution rests, in which the judge would call off the rest of the trial due to a lack of evidence provided by prosecutors. The trial is expected to end next week.
Savio's body was found in a dry bathtub in 2004. Her death was originally ruled an accidental drowning, but was reclassified as a homicide following a new autopsy when Stacy Peterson disappeared in 2007.
