San Mateo County No Stranger to High-Profile Trials Like Bonds Trial

Though known for its collection of family-filled towns nestled between San Francisco and San Jose, San Mateo County has been home to high-profile trials over the years that, in some cases, rival the notoriety of Barry Bonds' case.

Think Scott Peterson, Susan Nason, the theft of the iPhone 4 prototype. San Mateo County held the prosecution of Barry Bonds’ son Nikolai Bonds last year for throwing a doorknob at his mother during a fight, among other things (Nikolai Bonds eventually pleaded no contest to several misdemeanor charges).

Barry Bonds himself is on trial for perjury in San Francisco Federal Court. But Bonds has deep ties to the Peninsula, where high-profile cases seem to be magnetically drawn.

Media swarmed the San Mateo County Superior Courthouse in Redwood City to cover one of the nation’s most high-profile trials to date – the case against Scott Peterson, who stood accused of murdering his pregnant wife Laci Peterson.

When Peterson was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in late 2004, reporters covering the trial packed the Janet Parker Beck press room. An estimated 500 spectators stood outside the courthouse to hear live audio feed of a jury recommend the death penalty for Peterson on Dec 13, 2004.

Although it didn’t garner the same media attention as the Peterson case, the trial of Alberto Alvarez was San Mateo County’s first and only since Peterson’s to end with a death penalty sentence.

A little more than a year ago, on Feb. 8, 2010, Judge Craig Parsons upheld a jury’s recommendation to condemn Alvarez to death for what Parsons called the “savage and brutal” fatal shooting of East Palo Alto police Officer Richard May in 2006.

The next day, Alvarez joined Peterson at San Quentin State Prison.

But before the Peterson and Alvarez trials, there was the case of Susan Nason, which – tried in 1990 in San Mateo County Superior Court – was the first recovered memory case in the nation.

The case had everything to make it a nationally stimulating trial. Family testifying against each other, an overturned conviction, and at the center of the whole situation – the death of a very young child.

George Franklin, a retired San Mateo firefighter, was accused of murdering 8-year-old Nason more than 20 years earlier, in 1969. The person who initially accused him? Franklin’s own daughter and Nason’s childhood friend, Eileen Franklin-Lipsker, who said she regained her memory years after the slaying of Nason.

Franklin was convicted for Nason’s death, but in 1995 his conviction was overturned on the ground of unconstitutional errors in the trial. He then went on to sue several county prosecutors and detectives, two trial witnesses and his daughter in federal court in San Francisco in 1997 for allegedly violating his civil rights. His lawsuits, however, were dismissed in 2000 and 2002.

In addition to murder trials, San Mateo County has been home to a recent high-profile technology scandal as well.

Just last March, a next-generation iPhone prototype was found at Gourmet Haus Staudt in Redwood City. Brian Hogan, 21, was at the bar when another customer handed him the phone after finding it on a bar stool, according to Hogan's attorney Jeffrey Bornstein. Hogan later sold the phone to the technology blog Gizmodo for $5,000, thinking the blog was only going to review the phone, Bornstein said. But the gadget-focused blog chronicled the path of the iPhone, disassembled it and listed “All the details about the next iPhone” on its website.

Bay City News Service contributed to this story.