Drew Peterson Case Hits Appellate Court -- Lawyer Says 'Boneheaded' Move Should Trigger New Trial

Nearly three years after a jury found him guilty of drowning his estranged third wife, an attorney for disgraced Bolingbrook cop Drew Peterson made his case to get a new trial.

Steve Greenberg, who was among the half-dozen attorneys defending Peterson at his 2012 murder trial, argued in front of three appellate judges Thursday morning. Greenberg appeared with yet another addition to Peterson’s legal stable — Harold Krent, a dean and professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Greenberg argued that Peterson’s former lead attorney, Joel Brodsky, was ineffective. Krent claimed 10 hearsay statements introduced at trial should never have been allowed as evidence.

Brodsky and Peterson, along with a Florida-based publicist, entered into a media contract soon after the disappearance of Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, in October 2007, Greenberg said. He argued that the ill-conceived idea to make money and gain fame was improper and against Peterson’s self-interest.

Greenberg also criticized Brodsky’s decision to call Savio’s divorce attorney, Harry Smith, to the witness stand. Brodsky had apparently hoped Smith’s testimony would sully Stacy’s character. Instead, Smith repeatedly hammered home to the jury that Stacy told him Peterson killed Savio. Jurors later said Smith’s testimony clinched the guilty verdict.

“It was so frankly boneheaded to do,” Greenberg said of Brodsky’s trial strategy.

Assistant State’s Attorney Marie Czech countered that it was actually Peterson’s idea to call Smith as a witness. After the hearing, Greenberg said that was not the case.

“I don’t know where they get that from,” he said.

“A client doesn’t decide who to call as a witness,” Greenberg said. “The lawyer decides who to call as a witness. Drew Peterson didn’t come into the courtroom and say, ‘I’m calling Mr. Smith as a witness.’ I don’t know where they get that from.”

Greenberg has long blamed Brodsky for losing the case, calling him, among other things, a “stumbling,” “dithering” liar.

The appellate judges have yet to decide whether Peterson, 61, will get a new trial.

Peterson was sentenced to 38 years in prison and has been locked up at downstate Menard Correctional Center since February 2013.

Peterson’s slain third wife, Kathleen Savio, turned up drowned in a dry bathtub in March 2004. Savio, 40, and Peterson, a Bolingbrook police sergeant, were in the midst of a contentious divorce when she mysteriously happened to die, but investigators from the Illinois State Police found nothing suspicious about the matter and quickly decided she was merely the unlucky victim of a freak bathtub accident.

Savio’s death was quickly forgotten but leapt into the national consciousness when Stacy vanished. The state police named Drew Peterson a suspect in Stacy’s “potential homicide” but have never gotten around to charging him with harming her.

Even if he were to triumph in his appeal, Peterson faces new charges of solicitation of murder for hire and solicitation of murder. According to a criminal complaint, Peterson “procured” an unnamed person to “find another to kill” Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow, the prosecutor who secured the murder conviction in the Savio case. Peterson is scheduled to appear in Randolph County court Friday for his murder-for-hire case.

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