No ruling on Drew Peterson’s bid for a new trial after conviction for killing 3rd wife

Former Bolingbrook police Sgt. Drew Peterson’s post-conviction petition for a new trial after he was convicted in 2012 of killing his third wife, Kathleen Savio, has been rescheduled for a status hearing next spring.

There’s been no ruling yet on Peterson’s post-conviction petition for a new trial, that he wrote out by hand and filed more than a year ago, and Peterson himself has yet to make an appearance at the Will County Courthouse.

Neither retired Will County Judge Ed Burmila nor Dave Carlson, the new judge on the case, have ordered prison authorities to bring Peterson to court either since he filed his petition on Oct. 19, 2021.

On Wednesday, Jason Strzelecki, one of Peterson’s new attorneys, asked Carlson to schedule a status hearing for April 4, which Carlson granted.

Peterson, who will turn 69 in January, is serving 38 years for Savio’s murder and another 40 years for conspiring to have Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow killed several years after his 2012 murder trial.

The most recent major development in the Peterson’s post-conviction case has been the Dec. 2 ruling from the 3rd District Appellate Court that upheld Burmila’s gag order on Peterson’s previous attorney, Joel Brodsky.

Burmila’s gag order was in response to Brodsky telling WGN-TV on May 17, that he was thinking of revealing of what happened to Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, who vanished at the age of 23 on Oct. 28, 2007.

This prompted Peterson’s attorneys with the Will County Public Defender’s Office to request the gag order so Brodsky would not jeopardize Peterson’s bid for a new trial. The appellate court sided with Peterson’s attorneys.

“Few people in the history of Illinois jurisprudence have achieved Drew Peterson’s level of notoriety. We find it nearly inconceivable that any revelation about Stacy would not taint the jury pool should Peterson receive a new trial,” according to the appellate court ruling.

Another development in the Peterson case was Carlson ordering the Illinois Department of Corrections on Oct. 20 to “take all all reasonable steps to ensure that a convenient, private and reliable means of telephonic communication” is provided for Peterson to speak with his attorneys by telephone from any correctional facility where he might be housed.

In 2021, The Herald-News obtained a letter sent by Peterson to NBC Dateline that showed he was incarcerated at that time at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana. Despite Peterson’s incarceration in Indiana, he is still under the jurisdiction of the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Yet another development this year was an Aug. 11 ruling from the 3rd District Appellate Court to uphold a Will County court decision to rule in favor a pension board’s decision to terminate Peterson’s pension benefits.

The appellate court said the pension board’s determination that Peterson’s murder of Savio was related to or connected to his service as a police officer, was not erroneous and supported by the manifest weight of the evidence.

There’s been no ruling regarding the allowance of extended media coverage from The Herald-News, the Chicago Tribune, the Associated Press, WGN-TV, WJOL-AM and Patch. Those media organizations requested the use of video, audio and photography for the open court proceedings in the Peterson case.

Burmila did deny an objection from Strzelecki on Jan. 25 to those requests but did not rule on the requests themselves. Strzelecki objected on the grounds that the case has been subject to “intense media coverage” and further coverage “would not further the interests of justice but would only serve as a distraction.”