CHANCES FOR APPEAL

Supreme Court could be Drew’s best hope

Of course, Drew Peterson will appeal his murder conviction, legal experts said Thursday. He lost. Big time. But he should appeal because his trial had questionable legal issues nearly every day, several said.

And the most damning evidence against him was hearsay.

“Hell, it’s all they had,” DePaul Law Professor Len Cavise said. “They couldn’t even get the experts to agree.”

So Peterson’s chances of winning an appeal?

“I think they’re pretty minimal in the state of Illinois. I think they’re pretty good in the United States Supreme Court,” Cavise said.

The nation’s top court has been very clear that it does not approve of admitting hearsay lightly, Cavise said.

Defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Patrick Cotter recalled the slew of mistakes prosecutors made in asking witnesses questions the judge already banned.

“It was the rare day that something didn’t happen in the courtroom that wasn’t bizarre,” Cotter said. “In this case, there’s at least one highly unusual move on the part of the defense to keep out a witness because they said the witness was going to offer damaging hearsay.

“Then they called that person anyway,” Cotter said, referring to Kathleen Savio’s divorce attorney later contacted by Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, with details of how Peterson killed Savio.