The Trial of Jodi Arias (Part I)

Travis Victor Alexander (July 28, 1977 – June 4, 2008) was an American salesman who was murdered by his ex-girlfriend, Jodi Ann Arias (born July 9, 1980), in his house in Mesa, Arizona. Arias was convicted of first-degree murder on May 8, 2013, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on April 13, 2015.

At the time of the murder, Alexander sustained multiple knife wounds and a gunshot to the head. Arias testified that she killed him in self-defense, but she did not convince a jury.  The murder and trial received widespread media attention in the United States.

Background

Travis Victor Alexander was born on July 28, 1977, in Riverside, California to Gary David Alexander (1948–1997) and Pamela Elizabeth Morgan Alexander (1953–2005). At the age of 11, Travis moved in with his paternal grandparents. After his father's death in July 1997, his seven siblings were also taken in by their paternal grandmother. Alexander was a salesman and motivational speaker for Pre-Paid Legal Services (PPL).

Jodi Ann Arias was born on July 9, 1980, in Salinas, California to William and Sandra (née Allen) Arias.  Her father is of Mexican ancestry and her mother is of German and English ancestry. She and Alexander met in September 2006 at a PPL conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Arias converted to Alexander’s Mormon faith and, on November 26, 2006, were baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in a ceremony in southern California.  Alexander and Arias began dating in February 2007.  Arias moved to Mesa to live closer to Alexander.  In March 2007, she moved to Yreka, California, and lived there with her grandparents.

Alexander and Arias dated intermittently for a year and a half, often in a long-distance relationship, taking turns traveling between their respective Arizona and California homes.  Alexander's friends who knew Arias and observed them together tended to have a negative opinion of her, stating that the relationship was unusually tumultuous and that Arias' behavior was worrying.

Murder

Alexander was murdered on Wednesday, June 4, 2008.  He sustained 27 to 29 stab wounds, a slit throat, and a gunshot wound to the head.  Medical examiner Kevin Horn testified that Alexander's jugular vein, common carotid artery, and trachea had been slashed and that Alexander had defensive wounds on his hands. Horn further testified that Alexander "may have" been dead at the time the gunshot was inflicted and that the back wounds were shallow.  Alexander's death was ruled a homicide. He was buried at Riverside's Olivewood Cemetery.

Discovery and investigation

In early 2008, Alexander told people that Arias would join him for a work-related trip to Cancún, Mexico, scheduled for June 15.  In April, Alexander asked to change his travel companion to another female friend.  On May 28, a burglary occurred at the residence of Arias' grandparents, with whom Arias was living. Among the missing objects was a .25-caliber automatic Colt pistol which was never recovered.  This later became significant as a shell case from a spent .25 caliber round was found near Alexander's body at the murder scene.

On June 2, between 1:00 am and 3:00 am, Arias called Alexander four times but did not appear to get through to him, since the longest of the calls was seventeen seconds. After 3:00 am, Alexander called Arias twice, the first time for eighteen minutes, and the second time for 41 minutes. At 4:03 am, Arias called Alexander back, and the call lasted two minutes, 48 seconds.  Neither these calls nor their transcripts were presented in Arias' trial. At 5:39 am, Arias set out to drive south to rent a car for a long trip to Utah, as stated in evidence by a gasoline purchase at Shell Food Mart in Yreka. On June 2, at 8:04 am, Arias rented a car at Budget Rent a Car in Redding, California.  She indicated she would return the car to Budget in Redding. Arias visited friends in southern California on her way to Utah for a PPL work conference and to meet with Ryan Burns, a PPL co-worker. By late evening on June 3, Arias apparently set out for Salt Lake City.

Alexander missed an important conference call on the evening of June 4. The following day, Arias met up with Burns in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Jordan, Utah, and attended business meetings for the conference. Burns later said he noticed Arias' formerly blonde hair was now dark brown, and she had cuts on her hands.  On June 6, she left Salt Lake City and drove west towards California. She called Alexander several times and left several voicemail messages for him. She also accessed his cell phone voice mail system.  When Arias returned the car on June 7, it had been driven about 2,800 miles (4,500 km). The rental clerk testified that the car was missing its floor mats and had red stains on its front and rear seats.  It could not be verified that the car had floor mats when Arias picked it up and any stains could not be verified since the car was cleaned before the police could examine it.

On June 9, having been unable to reach Alexander, a concerned group of friends went to his home. His roommates had not seen him for several days, but they believed he was out of town and thus did not think anything was amiss. After finding a key to Alexander's master bedroom, his friends entered and found large pools of blood in the hallway to the master bathroom, where his body was discovered in the shower.  In the 9-1-1 call (not heard by the jury), the dispatcher asked if Alexander had been suicidal or if anyone was angry enough to hurt him. Alexander's friends specifically mentioned Arias as a possible suspect, stating that Alexander had said she was stalking him, accessing his Facebook account, and slashing his car's tires.

While searching Alexander's home, police found his recently purchased digital camera damaged in the washing machine. Police were able to recover deleted images showing Arias and Alexander in sexually suggestive poses, taken at approximately 1:40 pm on June 4. The final photograph of Alexander alive, showing him in the shower, was taken at 5:29 pm that day. Photos were taken moments later show an individual believed to be Alexander "profusely bleeding" on the bathroom floor.  A bloody palm print was discovered along the wall in the bathroom hallway; it contained DNA from both Arias and Alexander.

On July 9, 2008, Arias's 28th birthday, she was indicted by a grand jury in Maricopa County, Arizona, for the first-degree murder of Alexander.  She was arrested at her home later the same day and extradited to Arizona on September 5. Arias pleaded not guilty on September 11.  During this time, she gave several different accounts about her involvement in Alexander's death.  She originally told police that she had not been in Mesa on the day of the murder and had last seen Alexander in March 2008.  Arias later told police that two intruders had broken into Alexander's home, murdering him and attacking her. Two years after her arrest, Arias told police that she killed Alexander in self-defense, claiming that she had been a victim of domestic violence.

Pre-trial

On April 6, 2009, a motion to reconsider the defendant's motion to disqualify the Maricopa County District Attorney's Office was denied.  On May 18, the court ordered Arias to submit to IQ and competency testing. Later, in January 2011, a defense filing detailed the efforts to which Arias' attorneys went to obtain text messages and emails. The prosecution initially told the defense attorneys that there were no available text messages sent or received by Alexander, and then was ordered to turn over several hundred such messages. Mesa police detective Esteban Flores told defense attorneys that there was nothing "out of the ordinary" among Alexander's emails; about 8,000 were turned over to the defense in June 2009.

Jury selection

The trial commenced in Maricopa County's Superior Court before Judge Sherry K. Stephens on December 10, 2011. Initial jury selection began on December 10, 2012. During jury selection on December 20, Arias' defense attorneys argued that the prosecution was "systematically excluding" women and African-Americans; prosecutor Juan Martinez said that race and sex were irrelevant to his decisions to strike certain jurors. Judge Stephens ruled that the prosecution had shown no bias in the jury selection.

Guilt phase

In opening arguments on January 2, 2013, Martinez sought the death penalty.  Arias was represented by appointed counsel L. Kirk Nurmi and Jennifer Willmott, who argued that Alexander's death was a justifiable homicide committed in self-defense.

Co-worker Burns testified that when Arias visited him in Utah, the two had spent several hours hugging and kissing on a large bean bag chair. She told him she had cut her hands on broken glass while working at a restaurant called Margaritaville. A detective testified no restaurant by that name had ever existed in the Yreka area; at the time, Arias was working at a restaurant called Casa Ramos.  Arias later testified that after she cut her finger: "I had a bazillion margaritas to make."  Later, the prosecution argued that since a .25 caliber round was found near Alexander's body and that a gun of the same caliber was stolen from Arias' residence in Yreka the week before, she had staged the burglary and used the gun to kill Alexander.  Martinez claimed Arias had stalked Alexander and had slashed his tires twice. In addition, in the final days before his death, Alexander had called her a "sociopath" and "the worst thing that ever happened to me", and stated he was afraid of her.

Arias took the stand in her own defense on February 4, 2013, testifying for a total of eighteen days; the length of time Arias spent on the stand was described by criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos as "unprecedented".  On the first day of her testimony, Arias told of being violently abused by her parents beginning when she was approximately seven years old.  She testified that she rented a car in Redding because Budget's website gave her two options, one to the north and one to the south, and her brother lived in Redding.  On her second day on the stand, she said that her sex life with Alexander included oral and anal sex; she said the anal sex was painful for her the first time they experienced it together, and that while she considered these forms of sex to be real sex, Alexander did not as they were not against Mormon rules concerning vaginal intercourse. Arias said that they eventually had intercourse, but less often.  A phone sex tape was played in which Alexander said he wanted to zip tie Arias to a tree and have anal sex with her while she was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, which Arias seemed to respond to enthusiastically.  Arias had recorded this phone sex session without Alexander's knowledge or consent, apparently hoping to use it to embarrass Alexander to his Mormon peers.  Arias also testified that Alexander had secretly found young boys and girls sexually attractive and that she tried to help him with these urges.  Forensic experts testified that an examination of Alexander's computer found no evidence of pornographic material.

Arias testified that her relationship with Alexander became increasingly physically and emotionally abusive.  She said that Alexander shook her while saying, "I'm fucking sick of you", then began "screaming at me", after which he "body slammed me on the floor at the foot of his bed" and taunted her, saying "don't act like that hurts", before he called her a "bitch" and kicked her in the ribs. Afterward, Arias said, "he went to kick me again, and I put my hand out." Arias held up her left hand in the courtroom, showing that her ring finger was crooked.  According to Arias, the dysfunction of their relationship reached its climax when she killed him in self-defense after he became enraged when she dropped his camera, forcing her to fight for her life. This was the third differing account of Alexander's death was given by Arias, which both prosecutors, courtroom observers, and later jurors felt severely damaged her credibility. Rebuttal witnesses from the prosecution included several of Alexander's other girlfriends, who stated he never exhibited any problems with anger or violence.

Arias addressed comments she made in a September 2008 interview with the syndicated news program Inside Edition, which had been played earlier in the trial. In the interview, she had said: "No jury is going to convict me ... because I am innocent. You can mark my words on that." Discussing the statement during her testimony, Arias said, "At the time [of the interview], I had plans to commit suicide. So I was extremely confident that no jury would convict me because I didn't expect any of you to be here." At the close of his cross-examination of Arias, Martinez replayed the video and prompted Arias to affirm that she had said during the interview that she would not be convicted because she was innocent.  When being questioned by Martinez, Arias was initially combative and flippant, but after several days, Martinez was able to highlight the numerous lies and inconsistencies in her testimony and she admitted to stabbing and shooting Alexander despite her earlier claims of a lapse in her memory.  The jury's foreman, William Zervakos, later expressed an opinion common to both jurors and observers when he told ABC's Good Morning America that Arias' testimony did not do her any good: "I think eighteen days hurt her. I think she was not a good witness."

Starting March 14, psychologist Richard Samuels testified for the defense for nearly six days. He said Arias was likely suffering from acute stress at the time of the murder, sending her body into a "fight or flight" mode to defend herself, which caused her brain to stop retaining memory. In response to a juror's question asking whether this scenario could occur even if this was a premeditated murder, as the prosecution contended, he responded: "Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? No." Samuels also diagnosed Arias with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Martinez attacked Samuels' credibility, accusing him of forming a relationship with Arias and being biased; Samuels had previously testified he had compassion for Arias.  Beginning on March 26, Alyce LaViolette, a psychotherapist who specializes in domestic violence, testified that Arias was a victim of domestic abuse, and that most victims do not tell anyone about the abuse because they feel ashamed and humiliated.  LaViolette summarised emails from Alexander's close friends: "They have basically advised Ms. Arias to move on from the relationship ... that Mr. Alexander has been abusive to women."  The jury posed nearly 160 questions to LaViolette, many of them focusing on Arias' credibility.

Clinical psychologist Janeen DeMarte testified for the prosecution, stating that she found no evidence Alexander had abused Arias and no evidence of PTSD or amnesia in Arias. Furthermore, Arias' claimed total memory loss for long stretches of time was inconsistent with traumatic amnesia associated with PTSD which manifests as much shorter gaps in memory.  Instead, DeMarte said Arias suffered from borderline personality disorder, showing signs of immaturity and an "unstable sense of identity." People who suffer from such a disorder "have a terrifying feeling of being abandoned by others", DeMarte told jurors.  The final defense witness was psychologist Robert Geffner, who said that DeMarte's borderline diagnosis was "not appropriate" and that all tests taken by Arias since her arrest pointed toward an anxiety disorder stemming from trauma. He also said the tests indicated that she answered questions honestly, without lying.  Following Geffner's testimony, the state recalled Horn, who testified further on the gunshot wound, and called Jill Hayes, a forensic neuropsychologist, who disputed Geffner's testimony that the MMPI test was not geared toward diagnosing borderline personality disorder, concluding a long day in court at 8:29 pm.

On April 24, in response to previous testimony given by Arias about buying a five-gallon gas can from a Walmart store in Salinas on June 3, 2008, that she returned on the same day, the prosecution called Amanda Webb, an employee from the only Walmart in Salinas, to the stand. Webb said that according to Walmart's records, no one returned a five-gallon gas can on that date, and that Arias returned the gas can a week later rather than on June 3.  The gas can evidence was seen as important in establishing premeditation, as the prosecutor argued that Arias was trying to avoid being recorded on gas station security cameras as she drove to Mesa.

In closing arguments on May 4, Arias' defense argued that the premeditation theory did not make sense. "What happened at that moment in time? The relationship, the relationship of chaos, which ended in chaos as well. There is nothing about what happened on June 4th in that bathroom that looks planned ... Couldn't it also be that after everything they went through in that relationship, which she simply snapped? ... Ultimately, if Miss Arias is guilty of any crime at all, it is the crime of manslaughter and nothing more." In rebuttal, Martinez described the extent and variety of Alexander's wounds. "There is no evidence that he ever laid a hand on her, ever. Nothing indicates that this is anything less than a slaughter. There was no way to appease this woman who just wouldn't leave him alone," he said.

Arias' testimony added to a very long defense portion of the guilt phase of the trial, which led to problems with the retention of jury members. On April 3, a member of the jury was dismissed for "misconduct." The defense team asked for a mistrial, which the judge denied.  On April 12, another juror was excused for health reasons.  A third juror was dismissed on April 25 after being arrested for a DUI offense.  As of April 25, defense costs had reached almost $1.7 million, paid by taxpayers.

On May 7, 2013, after fifteen hours of deliberation, Arias was found guilty of first-degree murder. Out of twelve jurors, five jurors found her guilty of first-degree premeditated murder, and seven jurors found her guilty of both first-degree premeditated murder and felony murder.  As the guilty verdict was read, Alexander's family smiled and hugged each other. People outside the courtroom began cheering and chanting.