“Would you decide to tell the truth if you never got arrested?” another juror asked.
Jodi paused briefly, thinking to herself.
“I honestly don’t know the answer to that question.”
Chapter 22
The Jury Has Reached a Verdit
“This is a manipulative individual who will stop at nothing, and who will continue to be manipulative and will lie at every turn.”
It was May 2 as Martinez delivered his dramatic closing arguments. He spent an entire day savaging Jodi as a manipulative liar who will do whatever it takes to save herself and demonize Travis.
He alternated between his trademark boisterous rants and a soft-spoken, cordial approach that hadn’t been seen from the hard-nosed prosecutor throughout the trial. He slammed his hand down on the table for effect then switched to a whisper-like tone. He sounded like a preacher giving a Sunday sermon — powerful pauses interspersed with dramatic inflections and evocative imagery to connect with the jury.
“It’s like a field of lies that has sprouted up around her as she sat on the witness stand,” Martinez said of Arias’ 18 days of testimony. “Every time she spat something out, another lie.”
Jodi maintained a steely demeanor for the first half of the day, constantly scribbling notes with her pencil and occasionally gently shaking her head. Then she folded under the heavy emotions brought on by photos from the scene of the killing that Martinez displayed for the jury late in the afternoon. She broke down in tears and constantly looked down or away to avoid seeing the images of Travis’ bloody and mutilated corpse.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the front row of the gallery reserved for Travis’ family. They sobbed, reached for tissues and looked on in horror as they relived that terrible June day one more time.
The next day, the defense sought to turn the tables by casting Jodi again as the victim and Travis the aggressor. They had plenty of evidence from emails, phone calls and text messages.
Nurmi began his argument with the words: “fear, love, sex, lies and dirty little secrets.” That’s what this case is all about, he said. He repeated the phrase several times, underlining for the jury that Travis was nowhere near a saint in his treatment of women, including Jodi.
Nurmi then employed a bold tactic by saying: “It’s not about whether or not you like Jodi Arias. Nine days out of 10, I don’t like Jodi Arias.”
The prosecution objected, prompting Nurmi to move to another element of the case.
He went on to attack the prosecution’s contention that Jodi committed first-degree murder, asking a series of questions aloud to the jury: Why would she rent a car and create such a paper trail if she was indeed engaged in a covert, murderous act? Why would she bother staging a burglary at her grandparents’ house if she could have just taken the .25-caliber gun herself? Why would she put a license plate on her car upside down knowing that such an act would be a sure-fire way to get pulled over by police and caught? Why wouldn’t she just kill Travis the minute she walked in the door of his house if she indeed was a calculated, cold-blooded killer?
The arguments were crafted with one primary thought in mind: Save her life, avoid a first-degree murder conviction.
Nurmi also sought to draw attention away from Jodi’s lies: “Nowhere, nowhere in your jury instructions are you asked to convict Jodi Arias of lying.”
In the end, nothing about the case against Jodi was completely clear-cut. Jurors heard so many confusing and conflicting stories. The prosecution claimed Jodi fumed with jealousy, yet she told no one anything that would have indicated she felt that way.
Jodi, in turn, claimed Travis was a violent man, had sexual desires for young boys and owned the very gun she used to kill him. However, just as with the jealousy factor in the prosecution’s case, there was no evidence to prove any of Jodi’s accusations.
The only account that remained clear throughout — the only point of clarity in the case — is that Jodi killed Travis.
The crux of a conviction came down simply to intent. Was this indeed self-defense as Jodi describes? Or a clear case of cold, premeditated murder that deserved no less punishment than what she delivered on Travis? Death.
If the jury believed it was premeditated, then Jodi would be guilty of first-degree murder and face either the death penalty or life in prison. If they believed she didn’t plan it, but just snapped in the heat of the moment, a crime of passion, she would be guilty of second-degree murder and could face a sentence of anywhere from 10 to 25 years in prison.
If the panel believed it was manslaughter carried out with mere recklessness but without intent on killing, Jodi faced from seven to 21 years in prison.
And in the extraordinarily rare case that the jury believed everything she said right down to her claim of self-defense, Jodi would be acquitted and walk away a free woman.
On May 3, a hush overtook the courtroom as the judge read the jury the instructions on deliberations. Jodi closed her eyes, clinched her hand in a fist and covered her face. Travis’ family was overwhelmed with emotion, clearly drained after sitting through so much gut-wrenching testimony.
Then, eight men and four women retreated to the jury room one by one as they would struggle to come to grips with the dearth of evidence and Jodi’s ever-changing version of events.
After all the tears, after all the lies, after all the steamy sexual escapades, it was time to begin deliberating the fate of Jodi Arias.
Her life was in the jury’s hands.
What do you think about the Jodi Arias trial?
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About the Authors
Brian Skoloff is an award-winning veteran Associated Press reporter with extensive experience covering some of the nation’s most newsworthy stories over the past decade, including the 9/11 terror attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the Scott Peterson murder trial, the Fort Hood shootings and the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Skoloff has covered the Jodi Arias murder trial’s nearly every twist and turn, and brings his wealth of experience covering the criminal justice system to this gripping tale of love, lust and death. Skoloff began his journalism career at a small Tennessee newspaper in the Smoky Mountains before spending six months traveling the country. He later worked at The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif., before heading overseas for six months to write weekly travel columns for the newspaper, while also satisfying his wanderlust. Skoloff joined the AP in 2000 in Little Rock, Ark., then moved on to become AP correspondent in Fresno, Calif., later covering the Peterson murder trial and pretrial hearings for nearly a year. He then became a supervisor in the AP’s San Francisco bureau before becoming solo correspondent in West Palm Beach, Fla. Skoloff then took on a special yearlong assignment covering the Gulf oil spill, and was later promoted to administrative correspondent in charge of AP’s Utah operations based in Salt Lake City. He currently is a writer, photographer and videojournalist based in Phoenix. Skoloff grew up in Virginia and graduated from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1996.
Josh Hoffner has been a journalist for The Associated Press for 15 years, serving as the lead editor on dozens of major stories all around the country. He worked on the national editing desk at AP headquarters in New York for five years and later served as the city editor for the New York bureau. In New York, he oversaw a team of journalists that won an Associated Press Managing Editors award for breaking news for its coverage of the “Miracle on the Hudson” when a US Airways plane safely landed in the Hudson River. He later moved to Phoenix and became the Deputy West Editor and Southwest News Editor, his current position. Hoffner has also traveled all around the country to the scenes of major news stories, including the Gulf oil spill, the Virginia Tech massacre, the Rod Blagojevich scandal in Chicago and wildfires in California. Hoffner grew up in the Dakotas and graduated from South Dakota State with a journalism degree in 1998.
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Killer Girlfriend: The Jodi Arias Story Page 11