Drew Peterson's wisecracking, limelight-hogging, sunglasses-wearing lawyers faced the media horde every day of the former suburban Chicago police officer's 2012 trial — one that ended with a murder conviction and a falling out among the erstwhile colleagues.

But the lawyerly war of words in public between lead trial counsel Joel Brodsky and former partner-turned-nemesis Steve Greenberg that began within hours of the trial's end will come to a head Tuesday at a hearing where the defense will argue Peterson deserves a new trial because Brodsky did a shoddy job.

It's just the latest of many peculiar chapters in the saga of the former Bolingbrook police sergeant, who gained notoriety after his much younger fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, vanished in 2007. There was speculation Peterson sought to parlay his law enforcement expertise to get away with murder.

If Will County Judge Edward Burmila rejects the motion for a retrial, he has said he will proceed quickly to sentencing. Peterson, 59, faces a maximum 60-year prison term for murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio, who was found dead in her bathtub with a gash on her head.

Disagreements among legal teams during trials aren't uncommon, but those spats spilling into public are, said Gal Pissetzky, a Chicago-area defense attorney who isn't connected to the Peterson case.