Illinois Supreme Court upholds Drew Peterson conviction

The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed disgraced former Bolingbrook police Sgt. Drew Peterson’s 2012 murder conviction.

The court handed down its 40-page decision Thursday morning, and the Will County state’s attorney, the prosecutor who put Peterson away, called it the “ultimate vindication” of his decision to use hearsay evidence against the convicted killer.

“This is the ultimate vindication of what we did in our 10-year struggle to convince the public against all odds that we had the evidence necessary to convict him of killing Kathleen Savio, and the court makes that very clear that we did that,” State’s Attorney James Glasgow said.

Peterson, 63, sent Shaw Media an email about the Supreme Court decision Thursday afternoon.

“As I figured I’ll have to go to the federal court for a just decision,” Peterson said. “The court ignored our best case law and issues. Can’t fight back door politics.”

Peterson was sentenced to 38 years in prison for drowning his third wife, Savio, in 2004. After Savio was found drowned in a dry bathtub, Illinois State Police briefly investigated her death and quickly determined it was the result of a freak accident.

State police reached this conclusion despite Savio, 40, claiming before her death that she feared Peterson would kill her.

She and Peterson were in the midst of a tumultuous divorce at the time of her death.

State police reopened their investigation of Savio’s death after Peterson’s much younger fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, mysteriously vanished in October 2007. After Stacy Peterson’s disappearance, Savio’s grave was exhumed, and her badly decomposed remains were subjected to additional forensic testing.

Drew Peterson was charged with Savio’s murder less than two years later.

Stacy Peterson remains missing. No one was ever charged with harming her. She would be 33 if she still is alive.

Stacy Peterson’s hearsay statements were used against her husband at his murder trial, as were Savio’s. Peterson’s appeal claimed that the statements were inadmissible.

Peterson’s failed appeal also asserted that he received ineffective legal counsel, that privileged communications were improperly admitted as evidence, that previous bad acts should not have been introduced at his trial, and that his former lead attorney, Joel Brodsky, was operating under a conflict of interest.

On Thursday, Glasgow focused on the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the hearsay evidence under the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing.

“When Drew Peterson was telling these women, ‘I can kill you and make it look like an accident,’ he never imagined that those statements could survive once he killed them,” Glasgow said, “and most policemen and most law enforcement people would have said that, because forfeiture by wrongdoing, when I went to law school, we never studied it, even though it’s a 400-year-old concept.”

Glasgow went on to tell how the public and media failed to understand his legal strategy. "I remember talking to a columnist in Chicago," Glasgow said. "I was on my patio. It was a warm day. I'm pacing back and forth. I talk to this columnist for 45 minutes, and I explained forfeiture by wrongdoing from start to finish. I read the column the next day, and it's as if he never talked to me. This person's not a lawyer, and they gave their legal opinion for all to read, that I was on the wrong path. Completely wrong. And that's what we faced at every step of this case."

And in addition to the public and the media, Glasgow said he had doubters among the high-level personnel in his own office.

“When we went to go to indictment, eight of my top 10 supervisors said, ‘No, we can’t do it, we can’t do it,’ ” Glasgow said. “Now 20 years before, I might not have had the courage to do it. But with the life experiences I had at that point, I knew we had the case. I knew we could prove it.”

Peterson’s attorney, Steve Greenberg, said he had been informed of the ruling Thursday morning.

"I understand they made the wrong decision," Greenberg said. In 2016, Peterson was sentenced to another 40 years in prison for attempting to orchestrate Glasgow's killing from behind the walls of Menard Correctional Center. A fellow inmate wore a wire and recorded conversations with Peterson, leading to the conviction. Glasgow claimed the tapes prove Peterson first considered killing him in 2007.

“He’s been thinking about killing me for 10 years,” Glasgow said. “So, this has been a no-holds-barred 10 years. And I can’t find another case where an elected state’s attorney prosecuted a case against a former law enforcement officer with 30 years experience, having killed his wife, and then he turns around and tries to kill the prosecutor. I challenge anybody here to find a case with those facts. There isn’t one.”

Peterson was subsequently transferred to a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. In an email to The Herald-News earlier this week, Peterson said he likes the federal prison better than Menard. He said he washes pots there six days a week and is "living the dream." Peterson also said he believes his "appeals look good," apparently in regard to his conviction for trying to have Glasgow killed.

Despite the adversity he says he faced after Stacy Peterson disappeared, Glasgow said the Drew Peterson prosecution was “tailor made” for him.

“I thrive on stress,” Glasgow said. “It drives my wife crazy. I hate complacency. It creates a malaise. I like stress. I’m at my best under stress.”

lasgow also said he mulled over a run for Illinois attorney general.

“I haven’t made any decisions relative to the attorney general’s office, but it’s certainly something I’ve thought about over my career and I’m eminently qualified to do it,” he said.