The Trial of Jodi Arias

Did someone with no criminal history commit the heinous murder of someone she claimed to love?

"No jury is going to convict me... and you can mark my words on that. No jury is going to convict me." The most intriguing thing about the trial of Jodi Ann Arias was how she portrayed herself as a soft-spoken,  religious woman in hopes that she could avoid the consequences of her actions. She continually maintained this fake personality and even sang "O Holy Night" while in police custody to portray herself as a woman of god. While unbeknownst to her, the prosecution's evidence against her was building up monumentally. This portrayal of herself and oblivion to the evidence against her built up a false sense of overconfidence that a "not guilty" verdict would be read.

The Murder of Travis Alexander

Travis Alexander was a motivational speaker and a salesman for a company called "Pre-Paid Legal Services." In early 2007, he met Jodi Arias, a fellow salesperson at the Arizona branch of the company. By February, Jodi and Travis had become close and started a romantic relationship. Jodi and Travis had an intermittent long-distance relationship for one and a half years. Both of them took turns visiting each other. After the relationship ended, Jodi's stalker-like actions caused Travis' friends to dub her "the crazy stalker ex-girlfriend." Even though Travis agreed with his friends about Jodi's odd behavior, he continued to have a sexual relationship with her out of convenience. In early 2008, Travis planned a work-related trip to Cancún, Mexico, and brought Jodi with him. However, as the trip date got closer, Travis decided to take another companion on vacation rather than Jodi. But Travis would never have the opportunity to go on this trip. On June 4th, 2008, just two weeks before his trip to Cancún, Travis Alexander's throat was slit; he was stabbed 27-29 times and shot in the head. About an hour after the death of Travis, Jodi made multiple phone calls to him and left voice messages while on her way to Salt Lake City, Utah, to meet another sexual partner. In these messages, she explicitly stated, "my phone died, so I wasn't getting back to anybody...and I drove a hundred miles in the wrong direction." Detectives would later conclude that this voice message was Jodi's attempt to create an alibi and distance herself from the scene of Travis' murder. After Travis' body was discovered, the investigating officers found a recently purchased digital camera in the washing machine. The police also uncovered a plethora of DNA evidence that linked Jodi Arias to the crime scene, including a bloody handprint with Travis and Jodi's DNA. Over the next month, the investigators recovered dozens of pictures from the digital camera found at the crime scene, in which they discovered naked photos of Travis and Jodi on the night of his murder. Furthermore, the last two pictures seen by the police were accidental photos taken by the murderer after Travis' brutal murder. In these photos, police found the bleeding body of Travis as well as a picture of the foot of Jodi Arias (See Below). 

The Arrest and Trial of Jodi Arias

On July 14th, 2008, Arias was arrested and charged with one count of first-degree murder. At the time of arrest, she was not given any information about the reasoning or charges that were filed against her. Moreover, during the six-minute car ride from her house to the police station, Arias never asked why she had been arrested. After being extradited from Siskiyou County, California, back to the place of the crime in Maricopa County, Arizona. Arias pleaded not guilty on September 11th, 2008. During her interrogations, Jodi provided several stories about her involvement in Alexander's death. She first claimed that she had not been in town on the day of the murder and hadn't met Travis since March of 2008. Arias later told police that two intruders had broken into Travis' home, attacked her, and murdered him. Then, two years after her arrest, Arias told police that she killed Alexander in self-defense, claiming that she had been a long-time victim of domestic violence by Travis. In December of 2012, the trial began in Maricopa County, Arizona. It was presided by judge Sherry K. Stephens who oversaw the voir dire (jury selection) proceedings and trial. During the jury selection, the defense argued that the prosecution was "systemically excluding" women and people of color from the jury. This claim by the defense was dismissed when Judge Stephens ruled that there was no bias during the jury selection.

During the trial, The prosecution focused their attention on Jodi's actions in a fit of rage after finding out that Travis decided to take a different companion on his trip to Cancún instead of taking her like he originally planned. They used the DNA evidence and photos found to solidify Jodi's presence at the time and location of Travis' death in Mesa, Arizona. Furthermore, the prosecution brought up a burglary at Arias' grandparents' house a week before the murder, where a .25 caliber gun was stolen by the perpetrator. They linked this stolen gun to the .25 caliber round found near Travis' dead body at the crime scene. They used these facts to claim that Jodi had staged a burglary at her grandparents' residence and used the gun stolen to kill Alexander. The defense team focused their case on self-defense. They claimed that Travis was a sex addict who was increasingly physically and mentally abusive towards Jodi. Arias also testified that Alexander secretly had an addiction to pedophilic material and desires for both male and female children and that she tried to help him with these urges. The prosecution refuted this information when forensic experts testified that an examination of Alexander's computer found no evidence of pornographic material.

Additionally, the prosecution called up rebuttal witnesses who were former girlfriends of Alexander. These witnesses insisted that Alexander had never exhibited any problems with anger or violence during their relationships. On May 8th, 2013, Jodi Ann Arias was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. After intense deliberation, the jury decided not to sentence Jodi to the death penalty and instead give her life in prison. This was not the sentence that Arias wanted at the time, as she stated in an interview, "I'd rather get death than life." Jodi Arias is currently serving her life sentence at an Arizona State Prison. After years of denial, Arias has finally admitted a slight sense of guilt in the murder of Travis Alexander: "To this day, I can't believe that I was capable of doing something that terrible... I'm truly disgusted and repulsed with myself. I'm horrified because of what I did, and I wish there was some way I could take it back."