Peterson show left out facts

Documentary cut out of necessity

They spent almost two years at Michael Peterson's side. Finally, the French film crew that followed the prosecution of the Durham novelist brought forth its documentary this week, and the consensus Friday of some participants was: The movie left a lot of stuff out.

"If you hadn't been at the trial," juror David Heggins said Friday, "you wouldn't have known what was going on."

Indeed, the documentary, "The Stair Case," which aired on ABC's "PrimeTime Thursday," by necessity trimmed many important details from the complex Dec. 9, 2001, murder of Peterson's wife, Kathleen.

Maha Productions, which produced the Oscar-winning documentary "Murder on a Sunday Afternoon," took more than 650 hours of videotape in the Peterson case. Last year, just before the jury returned a conviction, producer Denis Poncet said he expected to sell ABC a 12-hour miniseries.

Instead, the raw footage was reduced to two hours. Still, the movie narrowly won its time period over "CSI" on CBS on Thursday night, according to the A.C. Nielsen ratings service.

"The Stair Case" delivered its story from Peterson's point of view. Peterson, 61, was convicted Oct. 10 of bludgeoning his wife to death in the back staircase of their mansion in the Forest Hills section of Durham.

Peterson, a former mayoral candidate and the author of three novels, refused to speak with police. His attorneys argued that an inebriated Kathleen Peterson fell backward at least twice on the staircase and coughed up all the blood. The defense also said Durham police contaminated the crime scene.

In the movie, Peterson at first was supremely confident that he would win. But as time passed, he grew agitated and fearful, saying at one point that the stress had become so intense, "I'd take a lethal injection at this point."

Peterson is serving a life sentence at Nash County Correctional Center. Department of Correction spokesman Keith Acree said Friday that Peterson did not see the documentary.

One of Peterson's lawyers, Thomas Maher, said the movie did a good job given its time constraints.

"A lot of the important forensic evidence got boiled down to the point where a viewer not familiar with the case might not have understood that. There was nothing, for example, in there about how the scene was processed."

District Attorney Jim Hardin, who prosecuted Peterson, said he found Peterson "cavalier" in discussing such issues as whether he would testify. The movie showed a brief scene where Peterson simply told his lawyers he would not do it.

"We were ready for him," Hardin said. "And that would have been a very interesting exchange."

Most of the 12 jurors and four alternates who spent 15 weeks hearing the case could not be reached for comment or did not return repeated telephone calls. But juror Tonya Rogers, a Department of Correction employee, said Friday that Peterson's behavior in the movie was "weird."

"He's a legend in his own mind," she said. "He was very cocky."

Rogers said the movie gave her insight into how much time, effort and money went into the defense version of events: "It was amazing. They took a million dollars, and they covered up what was obvious."

Rogers said trial experience "was the hardest thing I've ever done outside labor."

Shirley Ferrell, an obstetrics nurse at Duke University Hospital, said that the movie reminded her of Michael Peterson's courtroom demeanor throughout the trial.

"He didn't react the way you would think someone would react," Ferrell said. "Lots of times, he seemed lighthearted, he was laughing. He didn't seem as serious most of the time than most people would be."