Maybe Drew Peterson’s defense team should go “buy” the book.

The weapons charges against Drew Peterson were dismissed in November, 2008. However the State has appealed that decision and would like to pursue the charges again. Last Monday, August 3rd, Drew Peterson’s defense filed a new response to the prosecution’s decision to appeal a court’s dismissal of gun charges.

While one could question why attorney, Andrew Abood is filing a 30-page brief about the appeal of a dismissed weapons charge when his client is already in jail indicted on two counts of murder, it’s a little more concerning that some of the information given in the response is blatantly un-factual.

In particular, this quote from pages 29-30:

No one can deny the Chicago Tribune and the Naperville Sun have reported on this case regularly. The Naperville Sun has even published a book about Mr. Peterson, featuring him on the cover connected to a lie detector machine.

For the record, there have been only two books published about the Peterson case. Neither of them was published by the Naperville Sun.

Joseph Hosey, who reports for the Herald-News in Joliet, authored “Fatal Vows: The tragic wives of Sergeant Drew Peterson“. It was published by Phoenix Books.

The other book written about the Peterson case is by Derek Armstrong. It’s called “Drew Peterson Exposed” and it was written after Peterson’s publicist, Glenn Selig, went looking for an author to tell “Drew’s side” of the story. It’s published by Kunati Books.

Please note that the book cover showing Drew attached to the “lie detector machine” is that of Armstrong’s book–the book  written after Drew voluntarily provided “hundreds of hours” of interviews and personal photos to the author. It should also be pointed out that the polygraph of Peterson took place at the offices of his lawyer, Joel Brodsky, and at Brodsky’s request. In fact the photo credit in the book reads, “Photo courtesy of Brodsky & Odeh”.

So, to be clear (since Abood is not), the photo in question was one that Drew Peterson actually posed for, taken by and provided to the author by Joel Brodsky…and yet the defense team is now using it as an example of how the jury pool has been tainted.

If Peterson’s defense team can’t get details like this straight, can we trust the accuracy of any of the information in those 37 pages?

UPDATE AUGUST 14: Two days ago, Abood filed a correction which reads:

The Naperville Sun even published a story about Mr. Peterson about a book featuring him on the cover connected to a lie detector machine.

Now, the information has gone from false to nonsensical.

The original brief:

View this document on Scribd

The letter of correction submitted August 12

Drew Peterson’s next hearing is on August 10.
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Joel Brodsky: This Witness Isn’t Credible Because He’s Lying–I Mean Confused!

"Nothing against people with mental illness..."

Tuesday afternoon, in response to Thomas Morphey coming forward and giving a detailed account of his knowledge of the events surrounding the disappearance of Stacy Peterson, Joel Brodsky held a news conference.

In front of a handful of bored-looking reporters, he recited the same tired defense we’ve heard for the last seventeen months: Thomas Morphey is delusional and suffers from mental illness. He never came to Drew’s house. There was no blue barrel. Not in the past, the present or the future (pretty neat trick that–seeing into the future).

But earlier in the day Joel strayed from the script a little and told Steve Miller of WBBM that maybe Tom was just confused, “There’s probably things in the past that Morphey might have done – helping Drew unload a truck on some job project or something, that Morphey, in his mind, may have twisted around.”

Joel Brodsky did the same thing when the Engagement Stunt fiasco was in the news. Joel at first completely denied that there was any sort of stunt. But, when it got a little hot for him (since the Idiot Woman-child, Christina Raines, claimed that it was in fact, Joel who had plotted it) he hedged a bit saying, “I don’t blame her. She made a mistake. She basically confused a couple of things she overheard and just didn’t know what she was really saying…”

Drew Peterson and Joel Brodsky Explain it all. Christina Raines says Nothing.

Last night, Joel and Drew sat down together and phoned in to Dana’s Scared Monkeys radio show to try to explain the latest confusion about Drew’s private life–namely the engagement stunt that they say was no stunt. Apparently, Christina Raines was content to let these two speak for her. She declined to be interviewed.

They also briefly gave their views on the status of the weapons charges, the likelihood of Drew ever being charged, and the pernicious evil of morning television producers.

Below are a few excerpts:

Drew explains how Christina Raines came to leave his home.

What happened was she was at work and she went ahead and heard me make some comments, off-the-cuff comments, joking around with the television show, the CBS people and that I was really dismissive with women. If I didn’t like them I would move on and trade them in or whatever and basically they didn’t play the whole thing. As usual, when you tape something it gets cut up and turned around and twisted and that’s what happened here.

And then all of a sudden there was like …everybody in her family, there was TV producers, there was lawyers, there was other family members from Kathleen were there, friends and family and it was like an intervention. Everybody was there trying to get her off of me, actually and she was very upset. Her father was there and he doesn’t like the relationship and he was doing what he could. He threatened her with, if she didn’t go home with him that night he would disown her, that type of thing.

Next thing you know she’s freaking out. Next thing you know she’s in New York going on television saying that it was a publicity stunt—the engagement, when actually it was very real. The only thing that was not real about the whole engagement was the ring I gave her and the ring I gave her was only a temporary one. So, I gave her a ring that really wasn’t that good but she did ask me to marry her five or six times and I agreed and we were in fact, for real, engaged.