Strange that at times with our Criminal Justice system, we wonder on what side the real unrepentant criminal is.
On December 10, 2012, the circus/trial of Jodi Arias started in Maricopa County Superior Court.
I refer to Arias as Candy Crush because throughout her trial, a string of Mormon/PPL (Prepaid Legal now Legal Shield) men referred to her in the media as ‘having a stripper vibe’. And a stripper needs a good stage name before the show/trial can go on.
Jodi Arias –
It was easy to come up with a name; she had become an addiction for the nation, not unlike the Candy Crush game, and candies like Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks were an inherent part of the cheap mystique floating around her sex games.
As an attractive lady who was considered eye candy most of her life and used as such by Travis Alexander, the name could not have suited her any better. And let’s face it, not many people cared enough to find out who she truly was anyway. So Candy Crush was born and the game began!
Having worked in courtrooms for years as an Interpreter, I had to listen carefully to what was said in these sacred rooms and learn to be an instrument of communication without taking sides. I had to interpret the words of a defendant without trying to make him/her look better or worse. This is how I approached Arias’ trial.
Even if I now watch some trials on television or catch up on You Tube, I would gladly give up this privilege to defend the rights of defendants to have a fair trial.
In Canada, we don’t televise trials. It does not keep the media from talking and writing about them but it has less impact on the process. Witnesses and jurors are not intimidated and the trial can proceed without a soap opera atmosphere.
In England, for a long time, the publication of the names of defendants was banned and trials were never televised, but ten years ago, they started to experiment with cameras in some courtrooms in the UK on a very small scale.
Even without cameras in the courtroom, in most countries, the perp walk still exists; you handcuff the suspect and walk him/her to the courthouse after taking them out of the transport vehicle, which usually is where the media is posted to take photos and start shouting the usual asinine questions like “Did you do it? Why did you do it? How do you feel?” As if any defendant would ever answer anything other than “No” or “Get lost”.
Some would say that televising a trial makes the process more accountable because the public can monitor its integrity. But on the other hand, we could say that it is tainting the process because when the defendant is unpopular, there’s always the chance that the prosecutor and the jury could be coaxed into giving the viewers what they want.
At some point after she was charged with the murder of Travis Alexander, Arias tried to negotiate a deal with the DA’s office. She was willing to go to prison for a long time and everyone could have gone home. Plus, the County would have saved a lot of money.
Bill Montgomery
In my opinion, it would have been the smartest decision for all parties involved. But the DA’s office of Maricopa County is well known for its aggressive prosecution of defendants, especially when they are hated in the media and represent the golden goose.
Debbie Milke and Jodi Arias are their star inmates and they are not about to let them out of their net. When people feel that their representatives are putting the bad guys behind bars, they are going to vote for them and be distracted from the real problems going on in their neck of the woods.
Bill Montgomery is the Maricopa County District Attorney and Noel Levy was the prosecutor in the Debra Milke case. He was highly criticized for his failure to disclose evidence in her case. The lead detective who testified at her trial had a sordid history of misconduct and basically invented a confession.
The 9th Circuit threw out her death sentence this year after she spent 20 years on death row. But Montgomery is not giving up and Milke’s attorney is asking for the Maricopa County Attorney’s office to be recused from the case altogether. He states that Montgomery has a significant interest in obtaining another capital conviction against her to shield his office from potential penalties, civil liability and investigations by the federal government.
So it is no surprise that the Maricopa County DA’s office did not accept the deal offered by Arias’s lawyers and instead proceeded to prosecute her to the max. At the request of Travis Alexander’s family, they delayed the trial so that their pit bull prosecutor Juan Martinez would be freed up to go after Arias.
Judge Stephens
From the very beginning of the trial, with Judge Sherry K. Stephens at the helm, prosecutor Martinez showed he was going to play hard ball.
During jury selection, he was trying to ‘’systematically exclude’’ women and African-Americans. Knowing how some Arizona residents despise Mexicans, the fact that Arias was of Mexican descent probably convinced him to also eschew Mexican jurors.
Being indigent at the time, Arias had no money to hire a jury consultant so the process did not go in her favor and she ended up with a death penalty qualified jury practically eating out of the prosecutor’s hand. Martinez had managed to charge her with the death penalty, even though it is supposed to be reserved for hard-core criminals and not for a first-time offender involved in a crime of passion.
So he had to make sure she was portrayed as a monster.
Arias’ public defenders were Kirk Nurmi and Jennifer Willmott and they were no Dream Team.
Kirk Nurmi
After the jury was sworn in and the trial started, her attorneys presented the wrong type of defense by putting too much emphasis on sex. The trial became sexually charged and bordered on the ridiculous at times.
It did not help any that Nurmi looked like Glutton and that his slow speech and demeanor cloyed like molasses.
And then entered Juan Martinez; the prosecutor who was accused of prosecutorial misconduct countless times and who was known to play fast and loose with the truth.
When he walked into the courtroom, it felt like Apocalypse Now and Juan ‘loved the smell of death penalty in the morning.’ He came across as a sadist who did not give a damn about the truth.
I had never witnessed such a legal fiasco and the trials I had watched on TV, always had order in the court with a judge running a tight ship.
Judge Sherry lost control from day one and the fact that she did not sequester the jury in this high profile case shows her total bias and lack of judgement.
By allowing the cameras in her courtroom, she was basically feeding Arias to the wolves and they were everywhere.
The public, the media, the prosecutor and the Alexander family were a lynch mob asking for Arias’s blood. The victim’s family is the only group of people I absolve. They lost their brother and are entitled to their feelings. But the fact that the judge allowed them to constantly roll their eyes and make faces at the cameras, proved how far her mind was in the gutter. It was totally illegal, unethical and definitely influenced the jury.
I also question the brother’s motive when he declared that he did not want to ever see this defendant again, but chose to push for the death penalty knowing full well it would drag out the process and would mean dealing with Arias and mostly the media for a very long time.
The Alexanders made the decision to expose their brother when they chose Martinez and were aware that their brother’s abusive messages, double life and genitals would become public domain.
If Jodi’s plea deal would have been accepted, the memory of their brother would have remained intact. So blaming Arias for dragging his name through the mud when she offered to walk away with a stiff sentence is not entirely fair.
Travis siblings
The jury went home every night and had access to electronic devices. They had to have been contaminated by the contagious hate going around. It was totally unfair to the defendant.
This is when I broke my rule of neutrality and started to have sympathy for Arias. The media was buzzing with any warm body willing to say something negative about her. And the stripper vibe and the vacant weird eyes bit picked up steam quickly and spread to social media. It was an overload of hate and unsubstantiated allegations. People claiming to be outraged by her crime started acting and talking in outrageous fashion.
She was called a stalker without any proof whatsoever. That rumor was probably spread by Alexander himself and no one ever witnessed even one incident of stalking. They had exchanged more than 8,000 e-mails, phone calls and electronic messages. So the relationship was real.
David Hall celebrating verdict
One of Alexander’s numerous ‘friends’ even yelled on the air while interviewed, that Jodi had killed Travis with the same knife she used to slash his tires.
There was once again no witness to the slashing of the tires. And keep in mind, Travis’ girlfriend Lisa had a former boyfriend who had troubles with the law and was a known hothead. It could easily have been him. The point is that we do not know for sure.
We are talking here about the Boy Scout leader who gleefully toppled and destroyed a 17-million-year old rock formation in a Utah state park and posted it on You Tube.
He was fired from the association and subject to charges for the desecration of the park. So you will excuse me if I do not put any credence in his judgement.
A couple who was very close to Alexander campaigned incessantly to get the death penalty for Arias. The husband declared that he ‘had a score to settle’ with Jodi. It makes you wonder how a Mormon couple preaching forgiveness could be so vindictive.
Chris Hughes & wife Sky
After their supposedly good friend’s death, they obtained his computer password and read every message that was on it before the police could seize them. How do we know they did not tamper in the case of unflattering content?
And of course they are the ones accusing Jodi Arias of snooping in Travis’s e-mails and texts.
She was doing it to find out if he was cheating on her. What is their excuse? Their double standard was blatant.
They are the ones who forced Travis to go underground with his relationship with Jodi.
They realized she was not good for his bottom line. They said on the radio that Travis was not making as much money since he was dating Jodi and that he was neglecting his business. If they depended on him for making money for their PPL business, they had to get rid of her.
This is what the Hughes used to say about Jodi Arias before they realized that this case could affect their social and financial status: “Chris and I have talked about, “What/who is Travis going to marry? I couldn’t come up with the person/personality, until Jodi. I have often thought that she has got to be a little crazy just because she seems way too perfect. She is sooooo soft, and sooooo kind, and so mellow … You two balance each other more than any couple I have ever seen. She is hippy, and you are pooring (sic) paint in the gutter.”
Strangely, they also said that Travis was ready to commit to Jodi when they decided to ban her from their house. So they call her a stalker but he was going to commit to her?
They also wrote horrible e-mails to Travis about mistreating Jodi but tried to minimize their actions at trial. They basically saved their hide instead of being truthful about the entire saga.
They never could come up with a single incident that could remotely present Arias as a dangerous person. They went with the ‘vibe’ again.
I get the feeling that many of the wives did not like to have that siren in their midst.
It did not get any better in the courtroom, where Martinez battled with every defense witness. Like a One Trick Pony, he even attacked his own witnesses if they did not say what he wanted.
This prosecutor has never learned the fine art of moderation.
It is one thing to get dramatic at the right time but it quickly got old and extremely annoying. Any witness in the box must have fantasized about using a taser on him as he was like a relentless Chihuahua rubbing on their leg.
Alyce Laviolette
He called Arias a compulsive liar and attacked Alyce Laviolette who is a well-respected domestic violence expert.
He basically demonstrated for the world, how an abuser behaves.
In fact, Travis’s sister Tanisha was banned from any meetings in the Judge’s Chambers for starting a hate campaign online against this expert.
As a good practicing Mormon girl, she also said on TV that she would like to watch Arias die.
What Laviolette said made a lot of sense and it came from written communications. She made a judgement call like any expert in her position is expected and allowed to do. It is up to the jury to take it or leave it.
When Dr. Richard Samuels said that Arias had PTSD, he received the same treatment.
Martinez basically accused him of having the hots for Arias and of lacking ethics because he gave her one self-help book.
When he testified that she could not remember the crime because of amnesia, Martinez went ballistic. His reaction was very telling because it went against his theory of the cruel, cold-blooded monster Arias was supposed to be.
Martinez could not attack the expert’s testimony but was trying to destroy, confuse and provoke.
A good prosecutor does not need to resort to such tactics if he has the truth on his side. When Arias took the stand in her own defense, Candy Crush was already in the mind of the nation. She was a skank, a harlot, a liar and a heartless murderer.
Martinez grilling Arias
Arias answered every question in an articulate manner and he tried to trip her up every step of the way.
He asked her incessantly, as he did for every witness he ever interrogated in his career, if she had memory problems and when she tried to answer, he cut her off.
It was all about trickery. No search for the truth here.
And shockingly, she was forced to testify wearing a stun belt, a device designed to control troublesome defendants, which she was not.
There was no reason to make her wear a belt that shocks the wearer causing intense writhing and shaking and may result in serious medical injury.
As the belt can activate accidentally, a defendant’s testimony can be greatly affected by this threat. A death sentence was upheld in California in 2014 because a defendant had to wear one. It was sheer cruelty to make Arias wear one.
It is obvious that if she remembered the murder, there is no way on earth she could have admitted to it. He would have sadistically made her describe every unbearable detail of it.
In Arizona, you do not have to wait till the end of the trial to find out what the jury is thinking. They are allowed to ask questions and in this case, they clearly revealed their bias against Arias. They were not searching for the truth. In their eyes, she was already guilty and some of them admitted later to have tested and teased her with questions about haircuts and the meaning of skank.
Even when witnesses who knew Arias well testified that she was not a liar at all before these tragic events, it did not sink in. They kept on with the compulsive liar routine. But bigger lies rolled in during this trial and not from the defense side.
Detective Flores
As a juror, I would have been flabbergasted by some of the whoppers I heard.
Detective Flores, who had conducted the original interview with Arias and sat at the table like a dummy throughout the trial, had said countless times that Travis had been shot first and stabbed afterwards.
But, as it did not fit Martinez’s strategy to introduce the cruelty factor in order to qualify for the death penalty, he did a switcheroo.
Now Travis had been shot last by Jodi in a final sadistic ‘Sayonara’.
The problem is that medical examiner Dr. Kevin Horn had told Flores that Travis was shot first and it was written in his report that Travis’s brain’s Dura mater had not been perforated, meaning that the bullet had stayed in the sinus cavity. Which meant he was conscious and wrestling with Jodi.
Conveniently, the Judge, the prosecutor and the medical examiner changed the order of the crime so it would fit their scenario. When asked by the defense attorney about his report, Dr. Horn said it was a typo. I could not believe my ears.
Dr. Geffner
In my opinion, the best defense witness was psychologist Dr. Robert Geffner. His experience and testimony were unsurpassed and he explained the defense argument with brilliance.
The weakest prosecution witness was psychologist Dr. Janeen DeMarte who had no experience whatsoever in domestic violence and was too green for the type of assessment asked of her.
But by all accounts, the jury went with her version and totally resisted anything the experienced experts had to say. It showed the prejudice that prevailed in this case.
When the time came to start closing arguments, I had a sinking feeling about the whole case. The defense attorneys had done a very mediocre job. No gun and crime scene experts were called. They did not refute the gas cans theory or much else for that matter.
It would have been important to know that a .25-caliber gun can jam easily, which can only aggravate a situation, and is known to shoot accidentally at times.
It became poetic justice when Jane Velez Mitchell, in her unique screaming fashion, did a demonstration on the air with a gun expert, but the man’s conclusions happened to concur with Jodi’s testimony.
The crime scene was a mess and it raised doubts about the premeditation aspect. And you would think that a medical examiner would have been called to refute Dr. Horn’s notion that the victim had been shot after he was stabbed.
Common sense indicates that a man with the strength and size of Travis would have defended himself more vigorously unless he was shot first.
Dr. Horne
The stab wounds were not all deep and the ones on his back were more superficial and slanted, indicating that she did not stab him in the back from behind.
Instead, we heard the sex tape, which was good to establish that the relationship existed but did nothing else to help her.
The fact that Flores and Martinez had withheld the electronic correspondence from Travis and Jodi, claiming it was irrelevant to the case, was another big lie that should not have gone unnoticed.
They wanted the death penalty so badly and they were going to do anything to get it.
That is why Martinez threw in the kitchen sink and charged Arias with felony murder with the predicate felony being burglary based on the incoherent theory that she was not invited into the house when the crime began. Total lunacy.
Martinez’s closing was very predictable. Arias was a compulsive liar and a stalker. Later on, he came up with the outrageous statement that even though Arias did not have a criminal record, it did not mean that she had not committed other crimes.
I saw it, I was there
She used her own identity cards to rent a car and there were photos of her as brunette with one blond streak way before the crime, but he still used the fact that she became a brunette and rented a white car instead of a red one as part of her covert mission to kill her ex-lover.
He gave his ‘psychic’ rendition of the crime; the last time I checked, no one witnessed what happened in that bathroom.
He basically offered the scenario that served his purpose.
Food for thought: Martinez changed his hair color to black during the trial and was covertly trying to get Arias killed by lying.
The gas cans received a lot of dramatic interpretation. For a minute, I thought they were the same gas cans Jose Baez was relentless about in the Casey Anthony trial. And why oh why did he not ask Jodi when and where she used that gas? I suspect because she had an answer that did not fit his scenario.
By the way, my sister who lives in AZ probably is a murderer because she has them in her car at all times.
Martinez preached to the choir. You could feel it in the courtroom with the smell of the gas cans Juan was obsessing about. The same gas cans that she refilled even after leaving Arizona. It was so vaudeville that I expected him to end his routine by lighting one of his farts with his lighter and using the gas cans to do a fire show.
When Nurmi delivered his closing, he made solid points to undermine the prosecution, but the game was already over.
And when he said that he did not like his client nine days out of ten, I was shocked. He was actually trying to save his own behind. He had also been the object of a hate campaign and did not want to give the impression that he gave a damn about Candy Crush.
Some defense attorneys have used that line before to make a valid point, but never to that extent. He also played an edited version of the sex tape AGAIN. Unbelievable!
By the way, the judge had offered to let the defense play the phone sex tape to the jury in a sealed session, and exclude the public and the press, but the great Nurmi had refused even at the insistence of his co-chair, Jennifer Willmott, so he could proceed to humiliate his client at every turn by playing it several times and probably to get his rocks off.
Arias was definitely surrounded by several malefactors.
Juan upset about hung jury
So Jodi was found guilty of 1st degree murder and the jury accepted the cruelty factor. A few of them even bought the felony murder charge.
During his closing, Martinez basically said that Jodi committed another felony by stealing Travis’s gun to shoot him even though he claimed during the trial that there was no gun in the house and that she stole her grandfather’s gun.
It was nonsensical but he had to throw as many charges as possible to make sure one of them would stick. The bottom line is that felony murder and consequently the sentencing guidelines, give all the power to the prosecutors.
Martinez was a happy camper but was shocked when he realized that his jury did not bring back the death penalty. Four brave souls realized that Candy Crush used to be a decent human being leading a decent existence before the crime. They dug in their heels and saved her from the death penalty.
Arias jurors- Dr. Drew bad behavior bureau
Juan was fuming! Even the judge could not hide her disappointment. One of the jurors mouthed ‘I am sorry’ to the Alexander family. As if 1st degree murder was not enough.
It was extremely inappropriate but it did not surprise me as she also partied with the family later on and had a permanent chair as a guest on HLN.
The jury foreman gave an interview on another TV station and as tough as he was, he made a lot of sense and admitted Arias had been emotionally and psychologically abused and was being crucified by the media.
Even the jury did not know that Maricopa was not going to accept their decision. Instead of having the judge sentence her, they decided to retry the sentencing part of the trial. Talk about sore losers!
So the trial about tootsie rolls, Pop Rocks, a sex tape, naked photos and Red Riding hood sex games in the woods, came to a temporary halt.
As if she was not totally humiliated and battered enough, they were going to pursue their quest for the death penalty with everything they had. And the haters were going to follow in lockstep.
But the world was watching and Maricopa County did not realize that their bad legal manners would not be appreciated by everyone. Prosecutorial and judicial misconduct is unacceptable even if a defendant is guilty or unpopular.
To this day, I do not understand the degree of hatred directed at that woman. She is a human being who was afflicted by depression and more than likely, a personality disorder.
Her life was in a state of despair when this dreadful event happened and Travis Alexander was not an innocent bystander in this tragedy.
She will spend the rest of her existence in prison unless she gets another trial, which will undoubtedly happen eventually. And people keep kicking her while she is down.
Arias crying in spite of being depicted as remorseless
Her naked body and sexual habits should have been kept private and shown only to the jury.
She was abused by her boyfriend and now by the system, the media and perfect strangers jumping on the bandwagon and trying to deny the abuse ever happened even though written proof was shown and read at trial. Instead, they defend Alexander’s abuse as being ‘reactive’.
Christmas is approaching and no doubt, Sheriff Arpaio will organize another singing contest at Estrella hoping to film Jodi singing Holy Night again so that her detractors can have a good laugh. This year, I hope that the ones who like addictive games will ask Santa for Candy Crush and leave Jodi Ann Arias alone for a change. All we need is love! (Of course, we know she was transferred to Estrella prison. It is a parody)
‘’The Death penalty is a victory of emotion over reason’’ Anthony Lewis 1927-2013
Pope Francis met with 200 prison chaplains and prayed for all the inmates. He said ‘’When we have the same weakness, why did they fall and I didn’t? This is a mystery that makes me pray and draws me to prisoners.’’ He also washed the feet of young inmates for Easter.
‘’An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.’’ Ghandi
Glenn Close expressed regrets at feeding the mental illness stigma in Fatal Attraction. ‘’I would have a different outlook on the character today. I would read the script totally differently.’’
https://www.facebook.com/alan.mills.908/posts/492230337559793
How to help inmates by a man I highly respect, Alan Mills, lawyer and activist.
The Resurrection of Candy Crush
http://www.thetroublewithjustice.com/the-resurrection-of-candy-crush/
You took the words out of my mouth, all of them!
You made an interesting point about the gas cans, a question I have posted many times during the trial and never got a single answer. This is particularly baffling since this trial was not a “who done it” but simply an issue of premeditation.
Why did Arias stop and take so much (documented) gas in Salt Lake City? Why fill up the gas tanks in SLC, why not just simply fill up the car there if this whole event was premeditated?
That’s aside from the fact that it makes little sense she would go and borrow two cans from a former boyfriend and create a witness the police would have little trouble tracing. Why would she choose to kill Alexander in broad daylight, in a house full of roommates, rather than luring him into that park to that tree he liked so much, or the desert where they would never find any DNA or even his body? Why would she spend the night with him first, leaving her DNA all over the place and then leave a camera documenting her presence? All this in view of the fact that she’s in the top 5th percentile of the curve in terms of IQ makes little sense. If she’s smarter than 95% of the population this was one dumbass plan.
I also absolved the family but started rapidly losing any sympathy as they orchestrated a vicious campaign against an expert witness they didn’t like. In fact I would say that LaViolette’s testimony was extraordinarily compassionate in regard to their brother. She was an expert for the defense, what did they expect her to say? My empathy got further eroded when I realized the family was setting up a nice “memorial fund” business for themselves during the trial, for which HLN and the death penalty were indispensable. The death penalty ensured an ongoing process, stretching out for years possibly, and the tabloid media was vital for churning up the hate publicity. Evidently this family was estranged, it is very odd that there were many photos and videos of Travis Alexander published yet barely a couple with his sisters. During victim impact statement Alexander’s brother told the jury that Arias was responsible for his divorce, that was the cherry on top of this fiasco cake.
The media campaign against Arias made people forget that you need to prove premeditation. Martinez ran with the reasonable inference precept during the whole trial, but his deductive reasoning was hey someone stole a gun at her grandparents’ house and it had to be her. She had to have planned this because I say so.
It is not how the legal system works. When I hear people say, but the gun jammed and it is why it became such a mess, I ask them when at trial did they hear this? Martinez never mentioned this possibility and he lied about the shot being last. That’s how twisted this case became. All about stipulations and I hate her so she did this and more.
This is my first post on the case so my opinion of the Alexanders evolved in my other blogs. Let’s say they are no role models and we should look up to the Charleston families who forgave their loved ones’ attacker instead of twisting the knife for years. Especially that poor Travis was not white as snow. You are right to say that Laviolette was very kind towards the memory of their brother. So was Arias. They both said he had great qualities, and his behavior was probably caused by his upbringing.
I was not too keen on their fund raising ways either. How much does it cost to spend some time in AZ to attend a trial? They received way more than they needed. It makes you wonder if people will commit crimes to raise money and look pitiful in the media. Not that I don’t get the pain of losing their family member even if the family was disjointed, but the brother lost me when he blamed Arias for every evil in his life.
Before Travis death, his brother was already suffering from PTSD because of the military and confided that he was afraid of dying. How could he be afraid of Arias when she was in jail? They made her sound like the boogey man. And poor Tanisha was ordered to take anger management by the court and it obviously did not yield any results. Her burn in hell statements and insistence on seeing Arias die did not fit the circumstances. Not once, did they open their eyes to their brother’s behavior.
I remember a case where the victim’s family stood up in court and thanked her killer for finally confessing. Their mother had led him on and he killed her in a fit of passion. They admitted that their mother should not have used him and understood that he got 2nd degree. That’s impressive.
And now the trolls are all over Arias’ behavior in prison and even have moles in the joint. This is ridiculous. They blame her for her last statement in court. What would you say in court when you have been treated this way all along and have been in solitary in one of the worst jails in the US? She admitted guilt. Get over it people.
Thanks for reading and for your interesting comment.
He DID prove premeditation. What trial did you watch????
And by he you mean Juan Martinez??? He proved no such thing. If you followed the trial as attentively as you read this blog, I get why you missed important points. If you stopped being so angry and calling the defendant names, you might get an objective grip on this case. Rage and insults are never conducive to a constructive argument.
Lise, I know you wrote this over 5 years ago and so are unlikely to respond to my comment but I just wanted to thank you for it and tell you I agree with you. The one thing that Nurmi tried to point out – though nowhere near strong enough – was the ridiculousness of the pre-meditation/stealing the gun/ gun shot last theory. If Jodi went to the trouble of staging a burglary at her grandparents house to steal their gun to use to kill Travis, then why would she decide to stab him 27 times and cut his throat first before shooting him – badly – once at the end? If her plan had been to obtain the gun to kill him, she would’ve gone in and shot him, case closed. And why Nurmi never went with the argument of “so she planned this robbery to obtain the gun to kill him, went to all the trouble of doing calculations of how much gas she’d need to get through Arizona without having to stop anywhere and borrowed gas cans to do so, rented a car 100 miles away, dyed her hair, turned off her cell phone so it wouldn’t be on record as pinging from Az…she went to all that trouble and was smart enough to deduce all of that, BUT she wasn’t smart enough to snap on some gloves when the killing began and a professional photographer didn’t think to take the camera or at least the card with her? Come on! She’s smart enough to figure out gas mileage and turning her phone off but isn’t smart enough to think about fingerprints and gloves? It doesn’t add up.” Jodi killed Travis and deserves to be in prison, but she should’ve gotten 2nd degree.
Yes, I wrote it years ago and proceeded to write 7 others about the case. They are posted on this website but none of them have Jodi Arias in the title. By doing this, I wanted to avoid attracting the groups that jump on your blogs and proceed to post irrelevant and nasty comments. It becomes a circus and it does not advance the case or the understanding of the process.
If you type Jodi Arias in the search, they will all come out. I had a lot to say about Nurmi in ”Raising the Bar but Certainly not in Arizona.
He basically hit some high notes in the second trial. His closing argument in the first one had some good points but the rest was totally inadequate, with his bloody sex tape and photos of everyone’s genitals. Jennifer Willmott saved her life in the first trial and the female juror saved her from DP in the second trial.
He got paid millions and could not find the budget to hire an investigator? He got mad at Jodi because she was asking him to investigate. She is the one who came out with the computer porn when she represented herself for a short time. They should have had a crime scene expert. That bloody scene screamed no organization. And a photographer putting a camera in the wash and leaving it there? The burglary at her grandparents’ home should have been excluded. There was a foot print on their door from the person who kicked it open. Did they check the size? It would have been easy to debunk Juan’s lunatic scenarios.
I agree that it would have been quite easy to retrace her steps and show point by point that the big covert mission did not really hold water. She did not want to be detected but did nothing not to be? She would get a gun but wait all that time to shoot him in the shower and then go after him in a frenzy all over the place? Not to mention that his roomies could have come home. There are several theories about what happened there, but Juan simply made up facts as he went along.
This is what happens when a defendant is indigent and her defense team is inadequate. They should have accepted her plea at the very beginning. People in power often use infamous defendants for reelection or to get promotions. I have to say that remaining silent was not her forte and it did not help matters, but she had no clue in what pit she had fallen.
You can’t cheat on someone when there is no commitment. Travis was NEVER exclusively dating the murderer. Maybe in her delusional mind they were, but there is absolutely no proof/corrabation they were in a committed relationship, except for the word of a pathological liar.
So a quote from the Hughes stating how perfect Jodi was for Travis did not give you a hint that they had a committed relationship at first? Or the fact that they said on a radio interview that Travis was ready to commit when they decided to banish her because he was not performing at work and they blamed her. Bottom line, they needed him to bring the cash.
This is what the Hughes used to say about Jodi Arias before they realized that this case could affect their social and financial status: “Chris and I have talked about, “What/who is Travis going to marry? I couldn’t come up with the person/personality, until Jodi. I have often thought that she has got to be a little crazy just because she seems way too perfect. She is sooooo soft, and sooooo kind, and so mellow … You two balance each other more than any couple I have ever seen. She is hippy, and you are pooring (sic) paint in the gutter.”
Arias always said that the relationship became one of friends with benefits after they broke up and it was confirmed in their exchanges.
So glad I happened upon your blog! Wonderfully written with info I knew nothing about and I’ve read and watched just about anything I can get my hands on about this case. For many years I’ve asserted much of what you say in this post; that Jodi got a crap hand dealt to her in so many ways, which really shouldn’t surprise any woman when it comes to the justice system but is still upsetting. I often feel had I been representing Jodi I could’ve gotten her 2nd degree murder at least! And how fascinating that the couple who literally couldn’t get enough screen time to talk about their Jodi-centric hatred (even though they seemed to love her at one time), Chris and Sky Hughes, are now divorced (also not very Mormon of them, is it?) I could gush more, but thank you for this wonderful, fair article and one of the few unbiased forays into the case and Arias as a person. I often wonder if she would’ve faired better had her case happened now in the aftermath of MeToo? Would love to hear your thoughts on that.
Hi Molly, thanks for the comment. I also wondered if this case would have fared better in the metoo climate, but I doubt it. The movement was good initially but often hijacked for political gain or otherwise. It became more about causes célèbres than regular folks with regular problems. Let’s say that some were more ‘believed’ than others. And it was used for other purposes than intended.
Jodi struck a chord with the mob and media. All they want is ratings and she was their star, so would they have been more impartial towards her in recent years? I doubt it. Groups of feminists never came to her defense for the obvious psychological abuse. There was written proof.
It seems that Alyce LaViolette’s reputation was rehabilitated to a certain extent since then.
The fact that it happened in Arizona did not help matters. The prosecutor and defense attorneys were disbarred and people are still saying she should have received DP.
It seems that haters do not relent because they go with the narrative fed by the media. HLN is dead but Nancy Disgrace and her clones were revived somewhere else. It would need a new push in courage like an objective documentary about facts of the case or a new trial. The gruesome photos Juan Martinez was brandishing during the entire trial did not help matters. There was no human decency in that courtroom.
She could get a sentence reduction with her Habeas Corpus. I agree, it was not a 1st degree case.
Scott Peterson’s appeal concluded that it was not a death penalty case, and what do they do? They want to retry the sentencing phase. In spite of the moratorium on the death penalty in California. The system does not let go of their high profile cases easily.
hello, I want to thank you for this article, you wrote what I felt while I was watching this so-called Trial, it’s unbelievable the much hatred that Jodi had to face, even her lawyer betrayed her to cash money from writing a book!
Just want to ask, in your mind what is the possibility for Jodi to get a New Trial? .. I’m quite Pessimist about that, like why they would care about her now?.. I read that Judge Sherry Stephens will be the one deciding whether to uphold Jodi’s conviction, why will she be fair for Jodi now?.. I was frustrated when I read Jodi’s 12 pages letter to her after the first Trial begging her to change Nurmi, she refused!
I think Jodi needs to write a book or something it may bring her case to light again, and she may get paid to hire a good private lawyer..
She would not be allowed to write a book. The Son of Sam law keeps inmates from dipping their pen in someone’s blood; so to speak.
I see an evolution in the way her case is perceived. The media is always a two way street. They can destroy you and they also can rehabilitate you.
A more objective documentary can also work wonders. Since they presented both sides of the Scott Peterson case, a lot of people have come to realize that it was not such a slam dunk of a case.
Her appeal did not go anywhere but was useful to put her story out there in a new light. The Habeas is often the solution because you can retry the case and change the narrative by adding important elements that were not brought up, instead of pointing out the trial’s mistakes.
I would imagine that they would be more inclined to reduce her sentence than to allow a new trial because the case is too high profile to be able to find impartial jurors and not create the same circus atmosphere. And sadly, if you do not have enough money to hire the right attorneys and experts, you can fail. There is no dream team knocking at her door so far.
I don’t understand, so the Media can make movies and documentaries about her and she isn’t allowed to tell her side because she would be “dipping her pen in Travis’s blood”?..
wow, I mean do they really care to know what really happen?, ONLY Jodi knows what happened this day (I don’t think she had this fog of what happen, it was likely fat-boy Nurmi’s strategy)..
as for the chance of the media rehabilitating Jodi unless a big BOMBSHELL comes about who Travis really was, and only Jodi can provide evidence of this kind of stories about him.. so if she’s not allowed to talk it won’t come out.. that’s why I think retrial is her only chance, I believe she has a lot to say about Travis and what happened on June 4th, 2008.. maybe she decides it’s time to tell what she really knows.
there is no way Media will humanize Jodi or present her side in fairness, from a profitable point of view, they will always feed the public the narrative that Jodi is a monster who killed Travis in cold blood, that is the story that the public want to hear because it makes them feel sympathize with Travis regardless of what the evidence is.. I think the photos of Travis’ dead body and slit nick will always play against Jodi.. even when these photos tell us that the crime was “killing while in a state of terror” kind, not a premeditated murder.
The Son of Sam’s laws raised 1st amendment problems and were often challenged. You can check this link about it. https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/topics/freedom-of-speech-2/arts-first-amendment-overview/son-of-sam-laws/
Inmates can write novels or memoirs but states differ on how they treat the proceeds. You used to have to give them to the victim’s family even if the book was not about the case. In Michigan, an inmate called Curtis Dawkins wrote a collection of novels and was offered $150,000 by a publishing house but the Michigan Department of Treasury was seeking 90% of his assets to pay his prison stay.
Remember how OJ wrote the ‘fictional’ book If I did it and was asked to give the proceeds that he had redirected?
I don’t think that it would be a good idea for Jodi to write a book before her appeals are over. How ironic that prosecutors and defense attorneys do write books before a case is closed.
I remember that the case prosecutor Elizabeth Parker wrote a book called Poison Candy about Dalia Dippolito. How is is not wrong when she had not finished appealing her case?
Serial killer John Wayne Gacy wrote a book claiming his innocence before laws would keep him from doing so.
I think that paintings and memorabilia are okay because they are not related directly to their case.
Yes, Martinez damaged Arias terribly by the unprofessional and gory way that he tried the case. But an impartial documentary could help rehabilitate the narrative.
The fact that Nurmi and Martinez are both disbarred speak louder than words.
I did not see the most recent documentary, but I was told that Geffner, De LaRosa and Jennifer Willmott did a great job. And that Alexander was not represented as a saint like before.
I am not aware of all the current rules in the US for inmates who want to write about their case. But it is probably safe to say that everything you say can be held against you, so it would be a safe bet to wait until the dust settles. I wonder if Debra Milke will ever write a book. Some author and journalist from Arizona Jana Bommersbach, has written A Stolen Life about her case. Of course, it would be better to hear the wrongfully accused talking about her own case but at times, they might work with an author and remain in the background.
Who knows what the future holds for Jodi. I hope that she is awarded another chance at a trial or a reduced sentence.
Okey nice explanation, I now understand what is about the “son of sam’s law”, .. just one more question, can Jodi’s sentence be reduced without her pleading guilty of 1st-degree Murder?.. and does Travis’s family has something to do with that since they refused in the past to settle it down with her and insisted for the plenty Trial because they want the death plenty.. Thanks
She is not entering a plea so she does not have to plead guilty or admit anything. If her sentence was reduced or she was allowed a new trial because of her Habeas, it is not up to the victim’s family to interfere. They often consult the families of victims in case of a plea. They have victim impact statements at the end of a trial and are heard during parole hearings, but it does not mean that their recommendations will automatically be taken into consideration because they are often based on emotions.
“The US has the Victims’ Rights and Protection Act, 1990. One of the central features of this body of legislation is the right of victims to be kept informed of the status and progress of their cases within the criminal court system. Significantly, in the majority of American jurisdictions, prosecutors are required to consult with – or obtain the views of – victims at the plea agreement stage of the process. In a few states, victims are accorded the right to participate in the plea hearing, during which the trial judge is charged with making the decision whether or not to accept a proposed plea agreement. The strongest victims’ rights legislation has been enacted by the State of Arizona, which entitles the victims of a crime to express their views personally at the plea hearing. However, the Arizona legislation explicitly states that the victim does not have the right to veto a proposed plea bargain.”
If she was awarded a new trial, the family would probably attend but that would be it. The plea she tried to enter at the very beginning of this case was rejected by the state and the family, but it could have happened anyway if only the state wanted it. The families do not have the last word.