Jury Mulls Verdict in Trial Transfixing America

A murder case that has transfixed the US was delicately poised last night as the jury deliberated its verdict, the judge declared exasperation and cable TV channels kept a vigil outside the California court where the trial is being held.

The trial of Scott Peterson has all the ingredients of a primetime cop show: infidelity, an unborn child, a hot-shot lawyer, a motive but little evidence, a change in the law and now, possibly, a hung jury.

Mr Peterson denies murdering Laci Peterson, his pregnant wife, on Christmas Eve 2002, at their home in Modesto, California. But beyond that simple allegation lies a string of uncertain events.

Mr Peterson, 31, was arrested as he was playing golf in San Diego, a few miles north of the Mexican border. The dark-haired fertiliser salesman had dyed his hair blond, grown a goatee beard and had $15,000, along with an array of outdoor survival gear, in his car.

The police picked him up after becoming suspicions following his wife's disappearance when she was seven months pregnant.

Her husband claimed he had been fishing at the time she went missing. But her body and that of the foetus of the couple's child was found in San Francisco bay three months later, not far from the spot where Mr Peterson admitted he had been fishing.

The two corpses were separated from each other and the bodies were so badly decomposed that it was impossible to determine a cause of death.

Mr Peterson's claim he knew nothing of his wife's disappearance was undermined when it emerged that, a few months before she went missing, he had begun an affair with a blond masseuse called Amber Frey, and told her that he was a widower.

Realising she had been dating the husband of a missing woman, Ms Frey went to police and started taping phone conversations with her lover.

The prosecution claim that Mr Peterson had felt trapped by the prospect of starting a family. They also point to a lucrative life insurance policy as a potential motive.

Yet despite hauling away some 50 sacks of evidence from Mr Peterson's house, as well as impounding his boat, the prosecution case is almost entirely circumstantial. The only piece of forensic evidence presented in court was a single hair belonging to Mrs Peterson, found on Peterson's boat.

The defence, led by Mark Geragos, who used to be Michael Jackson's lawyer, contends that the woman was kidnapped while out for a walk and murdered some time later, which explains how her body came to be separated from that of her child.

Mr Peterson faces a double murder charge. Under California law, a murder charge can be brought if a pregnancy is beyond the "embryonic stage". This became federal law this year when George Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, popularly known as "Laci's Law".

The jury has been deliberating for five days.