Drew Peterson | Video Transcript

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ANCHOR: It is another day in court for Drew Peterson. Today charged in the murder of his third wife Kathleen Savio. Today, his lawyer will try to reduce Peterson's bond, have it lowered in hopes of getting him out of jail. And joining us this morning to talk more about what will be happening in court is our legal expert attorney Thomas Glasgow. Nice to have you here, Thomas.

THOMAS GLASGOW: Good morning.

ANCHOR: So this is an arraignment today and typically it doesn't last very long, right?

THOMAS GLASGOW: That's correct. Generally it lasts about three to five minutes in most cases. However, in this case we've got several motions that are going to be filed.

ANCHOR: And the motions include reducing the bond. What will happen there?

THOMAS GLASGOW: Well, in this case, because the motion to reduce bond has been filed, what they're asking is to reduce from the $2 million, it's $20 million with 10% to apply--

ANCHOR: If he posts, he posts 10% in order to get out, right?

THOMAS GLASGOW: He needs to post 10% which is $2 million. They want to reduce it to somewhere between $100,000 and $500,000.

ANCHOR: Okay, and how likely will you see that happening?

THOMAS GLASGOW: In this case, if I were the prosecutor what I'm going to do is make arguments that this man is a flight risk. He's now not just a suspect that he's been in murder, he's the suspect in another murder.

Relay the facts of the case and what I believe the case is going to prove, the fact that he probably will spend the rest of his life in jail if he's convicted. Those are things that make you, as a judge, want to keep a high bond to deter flight risk.

The defense is going to want to go ahead and say look, he's not a flight risk. Where is he going to go? Everybody in the world knows who he is. Not only that--

ANCHOR: And he has ties in the community, right.

THOMAS GLASGOW: Absolutely. And in this case he doesn't really have the liquid assets to go anywhere.

ANCHOR: So we'll have to wait and see what happens in court today. Do you think that we'll hear a decision by the judge today on that?

THOMAS GLASGOW: As for the bond, yes, I think the judge probably has enough advanced notice as to the fact that there is going to be some kind of bond and/or bond reduction and they've already given an idea as to what they're going to do in their mind.

Now have anything--has anything significant changed since the last bond was set is one of the questions that the judge is going to have. And nothing really significant has changed other than the fact that he's been charged and he's been sitting in jail.

ANCHOR: Now let's talk about the legal strategy for the trial itself. Under the state's hearsay law, which is new, prosecutors want to use statements made by Savio, the victim in this case.

THOMAS GLASGOW: Right.

ANCHOR: A letter that she wrote prior to her death. How do you see that playing out?

THOMAS GLASGOW: Well to weigh the entire case on those statements I think would be a foolish tact by the prosecution. When it goes up on appeal, and it will be appealed if he's found guilty--

[GRAPHIC: Kathleen Savio]

THOMAS GLASGOW: --you're going to have the appellate court look at this and see whether or not there's overwhelming evidence to determine whether or not the person was proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That's one of the things that they will look at to determine weighing this hearsay evidence that has been added in.

[GRAPHIC: Drew Peterson]

THOMAS GLASGOW: If it's a close case, then you risk having that overturned basing it on that hearsay evidence. We don't know what else they're going to be producing. We know that, you know, Drew Peterson had financial issues, he had a financial motive based on the proximity of the death next to the distribution of the assets from the divorce.

So there is going to be that evidence that's going to be presented, as well as the evidence that we don't know of yet that was introduced at the grand jury.

ANCHOR: What about a timetable for the trial, any idea?

THOMAS GLASGOW: The timetable itself, first we've got to get discovery which is all of the grand jury transcripts and the investigation of the transcripts, the police reports, et cetera. There is going to be motions filed. There's going to have to be hearings. There's going to have to be a hearing on the hearsay admissibility. And somewhere down the road we'll get to trial. It could be a year, it could be 18 months, it could be two years before we see a trial.

ANCHOR: All right, Thomas Glasgow thank you so much for coming in this morning.

THOMAS GLASGOW: Thank you.

ANCHOR: So many twists and turns in this case. We'll wait and see what happens. Again, Drew Peterson, in court today this morning for his arraignment. We'll be back with weather and traffic after this.