Talk:Murder of Laci Peterson

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Murder of Laci Peterson article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: Index, 1: 12 months

While the biographies of living persons policy does not apply directly to the subject of this article, it may contain material that relates to living persons, such as friends and family of persons no longer living, or living persons involved in the subject matter. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately. If such material is re-inserted repeatedly, or if there are other concerns related to this policy, please see this noticeboard.

California: San Francisco Bay Area Low‑importance

	California portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject California, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of California on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CaliforniaWikipedia:WikiProject CaliforniaTemplate:WikiProject CaliforniaCalifornia
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	San Francisco Bay Area portal This article is supported by San Francisco Bay Area task force (assessed as Mid-importance).

Biography

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography

Crime and Criminal Biography Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Crime and Criminal Biography on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Crime and Criminal BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyCrime-related
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Death Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Death, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Death on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DeathWikipedia:WikiProject DeathTemplate:WikiProject DeathDeath
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the Top 25 Report 2 times. The weeks in which this happened:

Multiple-issues tag

Just wanted to explain the tags within the multiple-issues template. For now, I figure a single example will do, but I'm happy to elaborate:

As to the WP:NPOV tag:
- I'm concerned with how the article treats Scott Peterson's statements relative to others. To take just one example: After Scott was arrested on a golf course, the article says, "He claimed to be meeting his father and brother for a game of golf." Why is "claimed" used there? Is it even disputed? It'd be one thing if every quotation was given similar treatment, but it's not. For example, "Sharon Rocha went to the park to search for her daughter."—that sentence is supported by Rocha's testimony during the trial, yet we don't say "Sharon Rocha claimed she went to the park to search for her daughter."
- The article occasionally takes testimony from the trial and treats it as fact in the pre-trial sections. That's not always a problem, but sometimes it is. For example, we mention the testimony of a prosecution witness, Robert O'Neill, as to the concrete in the driveway, but we don't mention the conflicting view of Steven Gabler, the defense's witness. That's a pretty clear NPOV issue. (In that case, I'd say we should move O'Neill's testimony to the "Trial/Evidence" section and then add Gabler's.) (Update: I fixed this issue, but there are still concerns)
There seems to be well-covered info missing from the Evidence section.
There are a few overly detailed issues I noticed. Take a look at the "Laci's disappearance" section: Does it matter that Laci drove a "1996 Land Rover Discovery SE"? Or that Scott ate, specifically, "pizza and milk"? If so, why?

Separately, I'm concerned the article is missing some notable information, but we can address that later. Still actively working on this article, but I just figured those things should be flagged in the interim.--Jerome Frank Disciple (talk) 18:42, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I usually remove words like "claim" per WP:CLAIM, but it's possible that I missed that one.

I guess the car can simply be changed to "car", and the food to "food", since the detail doesn't really figure into any particular point of contention raised in the case (unlike the Martha Stewart mergenuge dish), and isn't required for a reader's understanding of it.

Thanks for all your (legit) edits. :-) Nightscream (talk) 20:30, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah of course! By the way—I figure this is worth flagging. I just massively rearranged the appeal section. I'll be honest, I'm somewhat familiar with how habeas relief works at the federal level, but I do not understand California's system ... where you can apparently file a habeas petition at the same time that you can have a direct appeal going?? I'm sure it makes sense, but wow does it make following the filings hard.

Given the difficulty I was having in keeping everything straight—and, while certainly not on par with someone who followed this case closely or a criminal lawyer, I'd like to think I'd do better than average at keeping up—I thought it would be best to split up the direct appeal and the habeas petition into different sections. There's, of course, a downside: it means that the sections aren't consecutive. And I'm happy to reconsider if you think that's too unpalatable, but I think splitting them up makes things much, much, much easier to follow. --Jerome Frank Disciple (talk) 00:42, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is every citation for each portion of it placed at the end of those passages? Nightscream (talk) 00:52, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Great question! I didn't actually mess with the citations too much—I added a few to support some new information in the habeas section, but I didn't check the existing cites. I can do that!--Jerome Frank Disciple (talk) 12:02, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note of IAR application

Hello! This is really more of a note to bring attention to an issue rather than an explanation of an edit.

Per MOS:SURNAME, we should generally refer to persons on first reference by their full name and by their surname only on subsequent references. Per MOS:SAMESURNAME, when multiple persons have the same surname, the subject of the article should be referred to by their surname on subsequent references, while other persons should be referred to by their given name.

Here, we refer to both Laci Peterson and Scott Peterson by their first name. I think the choice as to Laci predated my time on this article, but I also think it's justifiable. There isn't really a single person who is the "subject" of this article; rather, the subject of the article is an act against one person for which another person has been convicted. As such, to the extent that MOS:SAMESURNAME applies, I think it's a reasonable application of WP:IAR to disregard it, but I wanted to flag the issue just in case anyone disagrees.--Jerome Frank Disciple 13:31, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]