Lawyer Showdown Looming in Drew Peterson Case

As many as a half-dozen lawyers might walk into a Joliet courtroom Friday, and it's anybody's guess which ones—if any—convicted wife-killer Drew Peterson will keep on his case.

Of the six attorneys who lost Drew Peterson's murder trial last month, one has quit and another was fired. Or maybe he wasn't.

Either way, that particular lawyer, Steve Greenberg, said he's not going to bother attending what is shaping up to be an explosive court hearing to determine who will be on Peterson's defense team going forward.

"I have paying work on Friday," Greenberg said.

Drew Peterson's newest lawyer, John Paul Carroll, is going to be there, and he and Greenberg share the opinion that Peterson's longest-serving attorney, Joel Brodsky, single-handedly blew Peterson's murder trial.

Brodsky's performance was so bad, according to Carroll, that he filed a motion Tuesday asking that Peterson get a new trial. Carroll, a former Chicago detective practicing in Naperville, had last acted on Peterson's behalf in 2007, when he tried to get his guns and vehicles back from the Illinois State Police.

Carroll told how he was called back into the case by Peterson's son Stephen Peterson. Carroll then made two jailhouse visits to see Peterson before penning the explosive motion, which paints Brodsky as a lying, self-obsessed incompetent attorney. And even if he wasn't, Brodsky is in no position to argue for a new trial on the basis of ineffective counsel, Carroll said.

"It's kind of a conflict," he explained, "like saying, 'I'm an idiot.'"

Brodsky failed to return calls for comment on Carroll's allegations.

Asked if Peterson was willing to bounce Brodsky from the case, Carroll said the former Bolingbrook cop is loyal to his longest-serving lawyer but at the same time "doesn't want to go to prison."

"Sometimes you have to shake your head and say, 'I don't know,'" Carroll said. "I don't know why (Peterson) keeps (Brodsky) around. Maybe they're lovers."

Another of Peterson's attorneys, Joseph "Shark" Lopez said both he and his wife—and co-counsel—Lisa Lopez will attend Friday's hearing.

"It's too important to miss—we may walk away from that and say, 'That's entertainment,'" Lopez said.

"We don't know what to expect" on Friday, Lopez said of the impending showdown between Carroll and Brodsky. "Knowing these two individuals, I expect it to be like nothing we've ever seen in a courtroom."