Joseph Richard Distaso was the Stanislaus County, California

Stanislaus County, California

Stanislaus County is a county located in the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California. As the price of housing has increased in the San Francisco Bay Area, many people who work in the southern reaches of the Bay Area have opted for the longer commute and moved to Stanislaus County for the...

 senior deputy district attorney who served as the lead prosecutor

Prosecutor

The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...

 in the case against Scott Peterson, charged with and later convicted of murdering his wife Laci Peterson

Laci Peterson

Laci Denise Peterson was an American woman who was the subject of a highly discussed murder case after she went missing while seven and a half months pregnant with her first child. Peterson was reportedly last seen alive on December 24, 2002...

 and their unborn child Conner Peterson in 2002. Laci was eight months pregnant with Conner at the time of the murder.

Distaso attended University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

 as an undergraduate, and attended Loyola Law School

Loyola Law School

Loyola Law School is the law school of Loyola Marymount University, a private Catholic university in the Jesuit and Marymount traditions, in Los Angeles, California. Loyola was established in 1920. Like Loyola University Chicago School of Law and Loyola University New Orleans College of Law , it...

 for his law education. He was admitted to the California State Bar in 1992. After graduation from law school, he was a lawyer for the Judge Advocate General's Corps, United States Army through 1996, with the rank of captain, and then joined the Stanislaus County district attorney's office.

In 2005, Distaso was appointed a Stanislaus County Superior Court

Superior court

In common law systems, a superior court is a court of general competence which typically has unlimited jurisdiction with regard to civil and criminal legal cases...

 judge by California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....

.

In 2008, Distaso was deployed to Afghanistan for a tour in the Army Reserves. He currently serves as a Major in the US Army Reserves JAG Corps.