Redwood City, Calif. ? It may have been intended to proclaim Scott Peterson’s innocence: a replica of the boat prosecutors say he used to dump his wife’s body, containing weight-filled coveralls tied at the arms and legs with concrete anchors.

But the crude representation of Laci Peterson and the boat, parked a few blocks from the courtroom from Monday until Wednesday night, prompted a dramatically different reaction.

Julia San Bartolone and her daughter, Sarah, 11 months, leave a candle at a boat near the Redwood City, Calif., courthouse. The boat is a replica of one prosecutors allege Scott Peterson used to dump the body of his pregnant wife, Laci Peterson, into San Francisco Bay. The jury is expected to resume deliberations today after breaking for Veterans Day.

People quickly made the boat a shrine, with candles, flowers and hand-lettered signs reading “Rot in Prison” and “Justice for Laci and Conner,” the name the Petersons had chosen for the fetus she was carrying.

The boat was later towed off the parking lot of an office building owned by Scott Peterson’s attorney Mark Geragos.

Judge Alfred A. Delucchi had rejected a defense request to use the small boat to persuade jurors that Peterson couldn’t have dumped his wife’s body into San Francisco Bay without capsizing.

By displaying the boat, the message “was supposed to be that Scott didn’t do it and to reach the community by showing this evidence that wasn’t allowed at trial and trying to get community sympathy for Scott,” said Robert Talbot, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who has observed the trial.

“What it brought up was how strongly people feel about Laci’s death and how, generally, the community feels like Scott did it,” Talbot said. “It sure did backfire.”

It was yet another bizarre twist to the case, which has seen two jurors dismissed this week during deliberations.