Top Prosecutor Wants to Stay Off Witness Stand in Drew Peterson Case

The man who won the Drew Peterson case wants no part of taking the witness stand at a hearing next week to decide whether the convicted wife-killer should get a new murder trial.

Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow filed court papers asking Judge Edward Burmila to bar Peterson's lawyers from calling him as a witness.

The motion says Peterson's lawyers revealed their plans to call Glasgow as a witness nearly two weeks ago, but that the state's attorney should not have to testify.

"A prosecutor, judge or news reporter is a 'special witness,'" the motion says. And if Peterson's lawyers want to get any of those kind of people on the stand, they must disclose what the witness is expected to say, why the testimony would be relevant, and what efforts they made to get the information from another source.

"In the case at hand, the defense has not satisfied a single one of those requirements," the motion says.

The hearing to determine whether Peterson, a disgraced former Bolingbrook cop, gets a new trial is slated to start Tuesday and may last days. Peterson's attorneys claim that former Peterson attorney Joel Brodsky's poor performance during the trial, as well as a publicity contract he entered into with Peterson long before the trial began, justify starting over with the case.

Peterson was found guilty of murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio, in September after a five-week trial. The police also suspect Peterson had a hand in the October 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, but have yet to charge him with harming her.

Besides filing a motion in hopes of staying off the witness stand, Glasgow also submitted an objection to the arguments for a new trial. That filing claims Peterson and his attorneys are now directly contradicting statements they made prior to the guilty verdict.

On the same day as Peterson's hearing for a new trial, a judge will address the wrongful death case filed against him in 2009.

The lawsuit was brought by Savio's father and sister. Brodsky had been representing Peterson in the civil matter but bailed after the murder trial was lost.

When he quit the case in December, Brodsky filed a . Brodsky devoted much of the motion to attacking attorney Steve Greenberg, whom he claims "suffers from a severe mental illness."

Greenberg also represented Peterson during the murder trial and remains on the case. He was not involved in the wrongful death lawsuit.

During a hearing for the wrongful death case Wednesday morning, Judge Michael Powers scheduled the matter to coincide with Tuesday's proceedings and ordered both Peterson and Brodsky to be present. Brodsky likely would have been there anyway, as he is expected to testify at the hearing for a new trial.