q FROM CHAOTIC TO CoPESETIC LESSONS IN MEDIA RELATIONS FOR COURTS FROM PEOPLE vs. Scorr PETERSON - ----··- - . ·-- --- - ----- - · ·· - · · ! _ _____ --- --- --·· - ···-----·· ..... -- - -- ·-·- - .. ··- ··-- - ·-- - - - ----- BY ALEXANDER 8. AIKMAN This is a success story. It's a story about creating new paradigms. It's Within minutes of the presiding judge arr!Ying at the co_urthouse, a story of a non-urban-center court and its sheriff's and police depart­ Tozzi obtained his orde~ to clear the courthouse of cameras. Late ments successfully getting on top of the media tornado that accom­ that morning, as Huston was waiting to talk to him, Tozzi turned to panied one of the country's_most'notorious cases in recent years. It's his secretary to ask her to contact the court's information technology a story of some luck, but, to a much greater degree, it's about sound · department about setting up a Web site. Huston was there to start judgment and good lead~rs not losing sight of their principles when coordination efforts between the court and the sheriff's department. dealing with masses of media. It'~ also a manual for courts on how (The sheriff provides court security in Stanislaus County.) Thus began to respond should they ever find themselves in the midst of a media what Tozzi later described as, "A marriage made in one minute that storm. Further, there are suggestions about what to do in advance lasted a lifetime." of being faced - normally, unexpectedly - with a notorious case. This is the story of how Stanislaus County and the superior court As a manual, this article complements the National Center for State dealt with i_ts first "notorious case" between April 22 and the day nine Courts' Managing Notorious Tria/s.1 months later that the case was transferred for trial to another county. Imagine that you arrive at the courthouse one morning to find After describing what Stanislaus County did, this article draws on the hallways literally packe·d with television camera operators and still Stanislaus' responses to identify lessons all courts can use when and photographers, to the point that the line at the security screening is if such a case ever is filed with them. out the front door and down the stairs. Citizens with court business ot get in or move ee.sily through the halls to get to the proper THE SCOTT PETERSON CASE AND troom or an office. You get inside and look at the criminal division HOW IT WAS HANDLED filing counter. The counter, about 12 feet wide, is packed solidly with people - poss!bly as many as 50 - two and three deep, clamoring The Case for a copy of a cc;,mplaint that has not yet been filed. Meanwhile, the On Christmas .Eve, 2002, a 29-yeat-old woman who was within street in front of the courthouse is filled with television satellite trucks weeks of delivering her first child, Laci Peterson, was reported missing and reporters, effectively blocking both vehicular a·nd pedestrian by her husband, Scott. Law enforcement in Modesto, California,_and traffic. This is the situation that greeted Mike Tozzi, court executive herfamily launched a search that evening that continued on Christmas officer of the Stanislaus County (Modesto, California) Superior Court Day and, eventually, for months thereafter. Law enforcement was on Monday, April 22, 2003, the first Monday after the arrest of Scott joined at first by dozens of Lad's friends and family members, then Peterson. Tozzi's reaction? "We can't let this happen." His a_nswer: · by hundreds and then thousands of volunteers who did not know "We have to get all the cameras out of the courthouse, and then Laci but were touched by the story. The national media, primarily the we've got to look at creating a Web site." The previous Thursday night, the night that Scott Pete_rson was arrested and brought to the jail in Modesto, Kelly Huston, media rela­ tions manager for the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department, faced a similar deluge. Within hours of the arrest, the 100 message slots in his cell phone were full, his pager message files were full, and he had so many calls and messages on his work and home teleph~es that he had to disconnect his home telephone. Huston was being deluged because the sheriff runs the jail, and the press wanted every scrap of infc;,rmation it could get about Peterson, the jail itself, and what Peterson was experiencing in that jail. Huston's reaction? "There must be another way to handle this." His answer: a Web site to handle th~ ;t frequently asked questions·so, hopefully, he could regain use of ,>hones and pager. · 6 www.naannet.org 24-hour news networks but eventually virtually all national te)evi~ion outlets and newspapers, many national radio talk show$, and national news and gossip magazines, picked up the story. Interest mushroomed across the country and remained high through the discovery of Lad's and her baby's remains in early_April 2003. From the outset, the story seemed to touch a collective public nerve; this story, in c~ntrast to so· many others, did not die down or go away.This case had the makings of a·;'notorious case" almost from the beginning. Two things were unknown and unknowable for the court, howev~r: 1) whether anyone would be arrested and _charged with the crime and 2) when such an ·arrest might occur. All the court could do for four months was wait for the answers to these questions. On Thursday afternoon, April 18, 2003, Lad's husband was ar­ rested 500 miles from Modesto, in his parents' hometown, San Diego. Journalists b~gan reporting he had changed his appearance, was carrying his brother's identification, and had $10,000 on his person as he.drove around in a new car about 20 minutes from the Mexican bo·rder. Modesto police went to San Diego and brought Scott back officers are spread among three locations in Modesto and two branch to the Stanislaus County jail just before midnight on Thursday night. courts in other communities in the county. The criminal division is in Demonstrators carrying signs already condemning him for the murder the main courthouse in downtown Modesto. The court receives more of his wife and son greeted the police caravan carrying Scott as it · than 93,000 filings a year, about 5,700 of which are felonies and an­ drove up to the jail. other 5,700 are misdemeanors. More than 200 employees serve the A complaint charging two counts of murder in the first degree was 24 judicial. officers. filed at 10:05 a.m. on Monday, April 22. The scene at the courthouse Administrative responsibility resides in a three-member manage­ that morning, starting when the doors opened at 8:00 a.m., is the one ment t~am, which was created following unification of the municipal · described above. (limited jurisdiction) and superior (general jurisdiction) courts in 1998. The committee's membership consists of the forn:ier municipal court STANISLAUS COUNTY, MODESTO, administrator, the former superior court executive officer, and tr AND THE SUPERIOR COURT deputy court executive officer. The fqrrner municipal court administr tor and the former superior court executive officer rotate the title of To help readers put Stanislaus County, Modesto, and the court court executive officer every two years. Mike Tozzi held the title for into their frame of reference, here are a few brief facts about each. 2003 and 2004. The County "Training" Events Stanislaus County is in the heart of California's San Joaquin Valley, Strangely, the Peterson case was not the city's first exposure to a the richest agricultural area in the country. tt is named for the Stanislaus high-publicity case, although it was the court's first. In 1999, a mother River, which, in tum, was named for an Indian leader. Its estimated and two teenaged girls, one her daughter and the other an exchange 2002 population was about 480,000, up about 8 percent since the student, disappeared while on a trip to Yosemite National Pclrk, which 2000 census. Almost one-third of its population is Hispanic. It is the is located in Mariposa County, California. Modesto, the larg~st city nation's largest producer of peaches and in the top 10 for tomatoes close to Yosemite, although located about 70 miles from the park, and poultry. became the family's and the media's headquarters for this case. The case became a national media event from the time the search started The City through the arrest and guilty pleas of their murderer. The legal case Modesto, where Scott and Laci Peterson lived, is the county seat stayed in Mariposa County, but this case was the "boot camp" event of Stanislaus County and the county's largest city. It is home to almost for the then-public information officer of the Modesto Police Depart­ 190,000 people, more than 40 percent of the county's population. Its Hispanic population is about 25 percent, less than the county but still ment, Kelly Huston. In 2000, Huston was promoted to manager of media relations above average for the state. Its unemployment and crime rates are for the sheriff's department; Doug Ridenour replaced Huston as the above the state average. It is about a 90-minute drive from Modesto police department's PIO. In 2001, a young intern (Chandra Levy) of to San Francisco; Modesto is about 300 miles. north and east -of Modesto's representative in the U.S. House of Representatives (Gary Los Angeles. Condit) disappeared in Washington, D.C.