Jodi Arias is Guilty and could get the Death Penalty

[It's...Baylariat!]

I have limited knowledge about the Jodi Arias trial other than the brief snippets I've watched on CNN or Headline News.

Here's a quote from the CBSNEWS.com website

Arias, 32, fought back tears as a court clerk read aloud the highly anticipated verdict after a four-month trial in which the jury heard 18 days of testimony from the defendant, saw a series of gruesome crime scene photos and heard a raunchy phone sex chat between Arias recorded with Alexander just weeks before he died.

The next portion of the trial is called the "aggravation phase," and it will focus on whether the jury believes the crime was committed in an especially cruel, heinous and depraved manner. If jurors find the aggravators exist, the next step will be the penalty phase during which the panel will recommend either life in prison or death. The process could take several more weeks to wrap up.

The trial quickly became an Internet sensation and transformed Arias from a little-known waitress to a morbid curiosity and a star of a real-life true-crime drama that the public followed incessantly. The presence of cameras in the courtroom, the advance of Internet streaming video and social media, the salacious details of the case, and the attention it got on cable networks like HLN gave the trial the feel of a celebrity proceeding.

The jury heard all about the stormy relationship between Alexander and Arias after they met at a conference in Las Vegas in 2006 and he persuaded her to convert to Mormonism. They began dating but broke up five months later, at which point prosecutors said she began stalking him and became increasingly obsessed with Alexander.

The 30-year-old victim was a rising star at a legal services company called Prepaid Legal, where he gave rousing motivational speeches to colleagues and was a beloved co-worker to people across the organization.

Arias sought to portray him as an abusive sexual deviant in her trial, hoping that the jury would buy her claims that she killed him in self-defense after being unable to take the abuse anymore. She claimed he attacked her and forced her to fight for her life. Prosecutors said she killed out of jealous rage after Alexander wanted to end their affair and planned to take a trip to Mexico with another woman.

The part that was left out of this quote is Arias is quoted as saying she'd want to be dead sooner than later and not spend the rest of her life in jail. So she seems content with being sentenced to death in this case.

What are your thoughts on this whole trial? Does she deserve death for what she did?

 

[Blue Chipper]

Jodie Arias comes off as fairly intelligent. In her diary and other sources, she shows an expertise in writing and words. The prosecutor's psychologist administered an IQ test to Jodi and she scored above average. With that said, Jodie clearly has psychological problems. One can note her behavior throughout the course of the court, and throughout her life and see how something was amiss. For example, Jodie did a handstand while in the process of being booked for the murder of Travis.

Was this premeditated? To anyone with an iota of common sense, they will see that Jodie Arias planned to kill Travis Alexander. When one looks at the facts leading up to the death of Travis, it becomes clear: (1) Jodie's grandparents' house was reported to be broken into and, along with a few items, a small gun was missing, (2) Jodie rented a car, and the license plate was upside down, (3) Jodie changed her hair color, and (4) Jodie avoided transactions and interactions with the local places in the area that Travis lived.

The verdict was first degree murder; I think the jurors made the right choice. Jodie Arias is clearly not normal, and the evidence strongly suggests that she planned to kill him. But, as the trail progresses, what will her sentence be? Should she get the death penatly?

Capitol punishment is a somewhat controversial topic, but if one believes in the death penalty, then he or she should want Jodie to get it. Facts, evidence, and the crime scene paint a very heinous, ugly picture. Travis' bathroom in his house was engulfed in blood. His sink was flooded with blood. Travis was mutilated; he was stabbed upwards of twenty times and shot in the head.

The indication and likelihood that the killing was premeditated and not justifiable to any reasonable degree linked with the barbarity of the killing leads me to easily say that the death penalty is deserved here; if one believes in the need for a death penalty, this is a prime case for it.

 

[Mighty NorCal]

Ive always felt the death penalty was far too good for people like this. Let her rot. People will complain about how it costs taxpayer dollars to keep her alive, but that is more an issue of how prisons work. 1. People being in prison for stupid shit, when those taxpayer dollars should be used for people like this 2. prisons are far too comfortable and touchey feely. Especially for first degree murders.

 

[HBsam31]

My wife followed this trial pretty religiously so I got to see a lot of it and yeah something is very wrong with this woman. The prosecutor was very good to. It was almost as if he had the jury eating out of his hands when he talked. From what I saw of the trial I don't think Jodi ever had a chance of getting out of this. The evidence is clear that she did it. I agree with the poster above that thinks the death penalty is too good for these people. A good life long rotting in jail is just the ticket. I also agree that there are too many people in jail for things they shouldn't be there for so the fact that txpayers have to pay for her to be in for life is a moot point for me. Take out the people that committed victimless crimes and that will leave more room and more money for people like Jodi that need to be there. This woman gave me the creeps by the way.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

I followed this fairly closely and I don't see how any jury with any shred of common sense could have possibly not found her guilty. What ultimately convinced me is the fact that she just seemed to keep changing her story time after time. I can at least understand if you get confused and misspeak from time to time. I've seen that happen lots of times in court. But she just kept changing her story over and over, which makes me simply not able to trust what the person is saying is genuinely true.

I also thought that the self defense/battered woman's defense schtick was bullshit. Unfortunately, it's become something of the defense of choice when it comes to women accused of murdering men. All they have to do is cry out "he beat me" and you'll have people automatically willing to take their side. However, it was just pure crap from the start. There seemed to be no facts to back up any of her allegations and it's hard to claim self defense when you kill someone while they're in the middle of taking a shower. She stabbed him somewhere in the neighborhood of I think 27 times. That in and of itself is highly suspect. Had she any sort of evidence that he was some sort of sexually abusive deviant, then the idea of stabbing him over two dozen times seems less pre-meditated. It could have been explained as her simply losing control due to the trauma she'd been through.

When it comes to the death penalty, I have to say that I'm very much on the fence. On one hand, as I have Christian beliefs, I'm not all that wild about the idea of taking anyone's life. At the same time, however, the murder was especially vicious, especially when you consider that there was nothing whatsoever, at least based on what I've heard about the case, to suggest that he did anything to remotely warrant such an end. So, that makes it very difficult to have any degree of sympathy for Arias.

As a corrections officer, I've seen many people incarcerated, sometimes for many years, for committing non-violent offenses. It's not to say that they don't deserve punishment for what they've done, but hefty prison sentences for non-violent offenders is probably the single biggest contributing factor to overcrowding in prisons. There's an inmate on my block that's been sentenced to 15 years for transporting heroin. He's not a bad person, he hasn't committed any violent crimes, he had nothing whatsoever to do with the manufacture of the drugs and didn't even have a record; he was simply hired to drive the stuff from one place to another. His biggest crime was extremely poor judgment, which probably all of us would have been arrested for at one time or another if it was a true crime. So, they simply decided to make an example out of him and threw the book at him. Prisons all across the country are flat out packed with people in similar situations. Again, I'm not saying he should escape any sort of punishment but the punishment he got was massively disproportionate to his crime.

Jody Arias, however, is someone that deserves all the time she can get. I can understand the complaints of some in regards to the use of money of tax payers to house convicted murders for decades long prison sentences. However, as I alluded to, the money spent for housing violent offenders is a pale shadow compared to those who are convicted of non-violent offenses. There are far more people in prison like that inmate I discussed earlier than people like Jody Arias. In my opinion, if people truly want to see their tax dollars spent in better ways as it pertains to the correctional system, then some of these laws, especially some of these drug laws that are practically draconian, need to be revised.

 

[Cena's Little Helper]

She should definitely get death. The thought of her fine ass never being tapped by anyone again besides a prison guard would be too much for me to handle.

 

[LSN80]

I'm anti-death penalty, so putting her to death goes against what I believe. Why take a life for...taking a life?

I know the belief is that some people don't deserve to live, but that shouldn't be in the hands of human beings. When her time comes, it comes. She doesn't want to 'suffer in jail'? Good. There's no way in heck that she did this self-defense, and the jury didn't buy it. Let her spend the rest of her life in prison suffering.

I know the jury has just 'made her eligible' for the death penalty, but again, why do they get to make those decisions? Their only function should be to judge between guilt and innocence, not determine if someone should possibly get the death penalty, which goes a long way towards determining her actual sentence by the judge.

What she did was heinous, but taking one life for another is wrong as well. I know it's legal, but it's a contradiction in terms, and morally, I find it wrong. Will she get death? Probably. Should she? I don't believe so. Let her spend the rest of her life in prison and suffer for what she did.

The victim's family isn't going to get closure if she's put to death. It's a cliché and simplistic thinking to believe so.