Fifth Time's The Charm? Drew Peterson's Lawyers Look Again To Get Him Out of Jail

Undaunted by a four-peat of failure, the mob of lawyers defending disgraced Bolingbrook cop Drew Peterson against murder charges is trying for a fifth time to get him sprung from jail.

This latest bid to get Peterson, who is charged with killing one wife and suspected of having a hand in the mysterious disappearance of another, comes within a week of prosecutors petitioning the Illinois Supreme Court to get involved in the case.

State's Attorney James Glasgow petitioned the state supreme court to review an unsuccessful appeal of Judge Stephen White's ruling on what hearsay evidence can be used at Peterson's murder trial.

Motions attempting to reduce Peterson's astronomical bond or to get him released from custody have been filed four times since the accused wife-killer was arrested in May 2009. Each has been refused, which has puzzled at least one of his attorneys.

"All the cases in Illinois say, if the state files an appeal, the case is basically over and the defendant should be released" while the appeal is sorted out, said defense attorney Joseph "Shark" Lopez.

"The point is, we should have no bond because the case is basically dead," said Lopez, who added that the defense team is also filing a motion to dismiss Glasgow's petition for leave to appeal to the state supreme court.

Lopez said that the defendant has been released during a prosecution appeal in "every murder case I've ever had. Unless the defendant is a flight risk and a danger to the community."

"They've never shown that" with Peterson, he said.

But during a May 2009 hearing on whether to reduce Peterson's bond, Glasgow claimed Peterson wanted to pay $25,000 to have his third wife, Kathleen Savio, murdered.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge White declined to reduce Peterson's bond.

Peterson has been charged with murdering Savio, who was found drowned in a dry bathtub in March 2004.

The state police investigated Savio's death but determined she somehow accidentally perished while bathing.

The state police abruptly reversed course on this theory after Peterson's next wife, Stacy Peterson, vanished in October 2007.

Stacy Peterson remains missing. The state police believe Drew Peterson was involved in Stacy Peterson's "potential homicide" but have yet to charge him with harming her.

Glasgow's spokesman, Charles B. Pelkie, said prosecutors will continue to fight any attempt to get Drew Peterson out of jail on a bond lower than $20 million.

Lopez contends that the only reason prosecutors are taking such a hard line — and why the defense has not been favored in their attempts to get Peterson's bond reduced — is that the case has been the subject of intense scrutiny.

"I think there's been so much media attention and political pressure that everybody's afraid to make a move," Lopez said. "If it was anybody else but Drew Peterson, he'd be out on the street. He'd be going to work, he'd be taking care of his family.

"I've done plenty of murder cases," he said, "but I've never seen anything like this before."