Peterson Jurors Pen New Book

It was Christmas Eve 2002 when a beautiful, young pregnant woman disappeared from her Modesto, Calif., home. The case riveted the nation as the search for Laci Peterson dragged on, with her husband at the center.

But Scott Peterson quickly came under suspicion and was arrested just days after Laci's body, and the body of her unborn son Connor, were pulled from the San Francisco Bay.

The high-priced lawyers went to work, offering up theories of devil worshippers to kidnappers. But jurors also heard damming testimony from Scott's mistress Amber Frey, who taped their phone conversations while Laci was still missing

After six months in court jurors, who sat through lengthy testimony and gruesome photos, finally offered their verdict, finding Peterson guilty.

Peterson was sent to death row.

While the trial was over, the experience has stayed with the jurors, seven of whom have penned a new book, titled "We, The Jury."

Jurors Richelle Nice and John Guinasso told their stories for the book, which was co-written by Frank Swertlow. The three visited The Early Show to talk about the experience with Hannah Storm.

Scott Peterson has maintained his innocence but Nice says she believes "without a doubt" that he was guilty and that the jury delivered the right verdict.

Asked what convinced her of his guilt during the trial, Nice says, "I think it was all the evidence. When we were in the deliberating room, it wasn't one thing, a major thing was the bodies washing up where he went fishing. But I think just all the evidence together is what showed us his guilt."

For John Guinasso, the evidence was also the overwhelming factor in making his decision. "The last piece of the puzzle was where the bodies washed up. But that had to be the final piece because if that didn't happen, maybe there would have been a different verdict," he says.

Talking about the experience of being a juror in such a high-profile case, Guinasso says, "When you are a juror, you are sort of in your own vacuum in the sense you have to ignore everything else. You are told certain instructions what to do. You just follow them, put your head down and go to the courtroom without, ignoring the media, even though you know it's there. It's more after the trial is over then you realize how big of a media event it was."

The evidence and trial have had a profound impact on the jurors. For Nice, the experience has been a nightmare. "It is just something that I couldn't have ever imagined that it would have had this big of an impact on me," she says. "I just think, you know, that was the all-American family, and, you know, he was the perfect husband and our society, things just don't happen like that in those type of families. That's how our society views it. And then it's just devastating."

"What is it about, in particular, a death penalty case, not only that this was a high-profile case and they had to decide the guilt of this man but also sentencing him to death that affected these jurors so profoundly," Storm asks co-author Frank Swertlow.

"When you sit there as I did during the deliberations in the courtroom, you begin to think about good and evil. How evil can someone become? Now these folks sat there and one of the things they did was scrutinize the autopsy photographs of what was left of Laci and Connor. If you saw those, you will never forget them. They are seared into your mind. I saw them on a big screen. They saw them up close and they studied them. And you saw in the case of Laci, the only thing left of Laci really was her body was like a carcass in the desert eaten by jackals. But her womb was intact and that womb kept her baby from being devoured by the bottom feeders that destroyed her mother. And you know something, Hannah? In life, a good mother protects her life until death. In death, Laci protected her baby," he explains.

Following the trial, Nice struck up a correspondence with Peterson in jail. She says she wanted to get answers and a confession but got neither.

Asked if she thinks he will ever confess, Nice says, "Yeah, one day … I think he will. Maybe not to me, but I think he will."

Click here to read an excerpt.