Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars (24 page)

W
hen jury selection in the trial of Jodi Arias for the murder of Travis Alexander began on December 10, 2012, it had been 1,646 days since his body was found and the investigation into his death had gotten under way. In that time, I had looked at this case from every angle and in every light. I’d spent nights and weekends at the office and nearly memorized every item related to the investigation. After four and a half years of preparation, I could say that I felt ready to prosecute the state’s case.

It is always hard to know how a trial will go at the start. A trial is a drama that unfolds around you, and even as a key player I recognize that I can only control my piece of it. All I can do is prepare as completely as possible and hope that my legal skills and mastery of the facts are enough so that justice will prevail. At the same time, I always try to recognize that things will happen around me that are unpredictable, and I need to be ready for whatever comes up. That’s one of the reasons I like working alone—it allows me to think on my feet and react accordingly, without consulting anyone, as the case develops.

In the weeks leading up to jury selection, I’d heard talk that the media intended to follow the Arias case closely, so I anticipated there would be a fair number of reporters in the courtroom for the start of jury selection. As it turned out, there weren’t. In spite of the media’s early interest in Arias and the requests for cameras to be in the courtroom to cover the
proceedings gavel to gavel, only Grace Wong, a field producer from TruTV, was present in the gallery to cover the proceedings on that first day of jury selection. I had seen this before with the media expressing an interest during the early stages of a case, only to turn their attention to more current news events when the trial date arrived. A lot of time had passed, and apparently the interest had gone with it.

Jury selection in capital cases is a burdensome process that requires people to show up in court and detail private aspects of their lives in a public forum, as a court reporter writes down their every word. So it is understandable that some are reluctant to share the intimate details of their life in front of a roomful of strangers and request to provide their answers in private, which calls for the other jurors to step out of the room while the judge, staff, and litigants remain behind to hear their responses. This is as private as the process gets.

During my first interaction with potential jurors, I am always mindful that they are regular people and that even the subtlest gesture or facial expression may be misinterpreted, resulting in hard feelings towards me even before my first word has been spoken about the facts. I am careful not to show emotion by laughing, smiling, or continually speaking to the detective sitting next to me at prosecution table. The courtroom is no place to be amiably chatting or chuckling.

After each group of jurors filed into the courtroom of the Honorable Sherry K. Stephens and at the judge’s request I would stand up and identify myself as the prosecutor in the case, taking that opportunity to also introduce Detective Flores, by telling the prospective panel that the detective would sit with me throughout the trial. My introduction was followed by that of defense counsel and their client. Laurence Nurmi was still lead counsel, but he was now assisted by Jennifer Willmott, who had been assigned to the case in January 2012, replacing Victoria Washington. As was the case with Nurmi, I had never
tried a case against Willmott, and our interactions in the Arias case had been limited to our status conferences.

In most cases, the selection process eliminates around fifty of the prospective jurors from each group of the approximately one hundred who make the trek from the first-floor office of the jury commissioner to Judge Stephens’ courtroom on the fifth floor. Those whom the court determines to have a hardship that precludes them from serving are dismissed, with those remaining instructed to return downstairs to the jury commissioner’s area on the first floor to complete a lengthy questionnaire. Before those individuals are allowed to leave the courtroom, they are ordered to return the following week to be questioned further based on the answers they provide on the questionnaire.

Copies of the completed questionnaires are provided to the prosecutor and defense counsel for review so that each side can be prepared to question the potential jurors based on their answers. Reading the questionnaires is a tedious and time-consuming undertaking, and while I can ask a paralegal or another prosecutor to assist me, by doing so I risk missing information that may affect my decision as to whether that person should serve on the panel. As a result of this approach I spend what seems like endless hours reviewing the thirty-page questionnaires to make sure I don’t miss anything important.

The juror questionnaires address many areas, including the person’s views on the death penalty and whether they would always vote for or against the death penalty without regard to the evidence presented at trial. In a capital case like Arias’, this is always an important point for both sides, as both the prosecution and the defense screen out people who are strongly biased in one direction or another.

There are also questions about the jurors’ exposure to media coverage of the case, and jurors may be excused if it seems that they might not be able to remain fair and impartial based on
what they may have read or heard about the case. Arias’ early television appearances on
Inside Edition
and
48 Hours
did not present a problem in picking a jury for the trial, as most jurors did not remember seeing her on television.

Jury selection in the Arias case was completed on December 20, 2012, after six days, with eighteen jurors empaneled—eleven men and seven women—who were given preliminary instructions by Judge Stephens that same day. With the date so close to Christmas, the court scheduled opening remarks for January 2, 2013.

For most people, New Year’s Day is a holiday celebrating a new beginning by making resolutions, but as the year 2013 got under way, for me it was a culmination of many years of work on this case. I don’t usually go out on New Year’s Eve, so I spent the next day at the office going over the case one last time to make last-minute preparations.

Immediately before I went to court on Wednesday morning, January 2, I did what I always do before every court appearance and trial. I checked my hair in the small mirror I keep on the back of my office door to make sure it is neatly combed. I had been given the mirror as a joke at a Christmas office party some years back, and I have used it ever since, even though initially it was a source of teasing from my coworkers.

For the first day of the trial, I wore a blue suit, white dress shirt, and peach-colored tie, not because the ensemble held any significance, but because it was the next suit and tie in line to be worn. I see it as a cliché to choose a power tie and suit for occasions such as delivering an opening statement.

Before I left my office, I repeated the first few lines of my opening statement so that I had them on my tongue ready to deliver to the jury. After that, it was all about getting to court.

I don’t remember stepping onto the elevator and hitting the button for the fifth floor, but when the doors opened, I noticed a large crowd of people mingling in the hallway outside of courtroom 5C. Immediately I knew that the quiet of jury se
lection had been an anomaly. The ID cards hanging from lanyards around their necks told me these people were members of the press corps, confirmed by the thick black wires running down the hallway to a satellite dish. The hallway looked as if it had been taken over, and the hum of voices bounced off the walls.
So, there is going to be gavel-to-gavel coverage
, I thought.

The scene outside the courtroom continued inside as well. I had no idea how many journalists were in the courtroom, but I could see as I entered that every seat in the five rows of the gallery was taken. Court officials had even added extra chairs, which still didn’t accommodate all the people wanting to see the opening remarks. The other prosecutors from my office who had come to watch the opening remarks were forced to view the proceedings on a television in the victim’s room. This was the biggest media event I’d ever seen at the Maricopa County Courthouse.

As I walked to the prosecution table, I paused to acknowledge Travis’ siblings Samantha, Tanisha, and Steven, who were seated in the front row of the gallery, behind the table where Detective Flores and I would be sitting for the trial. Also in the gallery, on the other side of the aisle, was Arias’ mother, Sandy, whom I recognized on sight from her July 2008 interview with Detective Flores. She had sobbed through most of their conversation, so I hoped she wouldn’t cry through these proceedings as she had back then. Catching a quick glimpse of Arias, I noticed that she appeared demure, quite different from the person jurors would soon see in the photographs of her lying naked and splayed out on Travis’ bed.

Arias is permitted to wear street clothes for trial, and her librarian look, which included a modest black top, a face free of makeup, and her straight brown hair cut with wispy bangs, was not lost on me. I believed her “look,” which would soon include glasses, was a deliberate attempt to inspire the jury’s sympathy. She sat impassively at the defense table, with Will
mott, who was dressed conservatively in a royal blue skirt suit, to her immediate left. Nurmi sat in the lead counsel chair next to Willmott, dressed in a tan suit, green shirt, and green patterned tie.

Not long after Judge Stephens entered the courtroom, the proceedings got under way. But when the judge asked if I was ready to proceed with my opening statement, Nurmi stood up and took the opportunity to make an oral motion for discovery, which was denied by the judge after I explained that I had already turned over what he was seeking. As I stood up for a second time and started to speak, the judge stopped me and asked the court clerk to read the indictment to the jury setting out the first-degree murder charge. The third time was the charm, and at last I strode to the front of the jury box to deliver my opening statement.

“Good morning again,” I began, referring to the other two unsuccessful tries at starting my presentation. “This is not a case of who done it. The person who done it, the person who committed this killing, sits in court today. It’s the defendant, Jodi Ann Arias,” I said, turning and pointing in her direction. “And the person that she done it to is an individual by the name of Travis Victor Alexander, a former boyfriend of hers, an individual that she was in love with, an individual that was a good man, an individual that was one of the greatest blessings in her life. And this love, well, she rewarded that love for Travis Victor Alexander by sticking a knife in his chest. And you know, he was a good man according to her, and with regard to being a good man, well, she slit his throat as a reward for being a good man. And in terms of these blessings, well, she knocked the blessings out of him by putting a bullet in his head during one event that occurred on June 4 of 2008,” I continued, pacing the floor and gesturing with my hands to emphasize the three mortal wounds.

I had chosen my words deliberately based on what Arias had written on a card at Travis’ memorial service: “Travis,
you’re beautiful on the inside
and
out. You always told me that. I never stopped believing in you, and I know that you always believed in me. Thank you for sharing so much. Thank you for all of your generosity. This world has been blessed because you have been here. I love you.
♥
”

Arias had written she loved Travis and called him a good man, a blessing in her life. So it was only fitting that I employ her words in my message to the jury.

My presentation lasted approximately one hour and twenty minutes and included a chronology of Arias’ and Travis’ relationship, from their meeting and courtship to Travis’ gift of the Book of Mormon, which the two read together, Arias’ conversion to Mormonism, and their sexual relationship.

To dramatize the brutality of the killing, I asked Detective Flores to hold up an enlarged diagram of the crime scene for jurors as I described the details of June 4, 2008. My back was to the gallery for much of my presentation, so I had no idea how people were reacting to my remarks, although I learned later that Travis’ sister Tanisha had cried quietly, as did her sister Samantha.

I was told that Arias cried, too, while I was describing how she had attacked Travis as he sat naked on the floor of the shower and how, after the killing, she had dragged his body back to the shower stall. My intention was to tell the story with words rather than through pictures, because my description could be more three-dimensional, and the jury would see the disturbing photos soon enough.

“As he sat there, she took the knife and began to stab him when he was in that defenseless sitting position . . . stuck the knife in his chest. He struggled. . . . The slitting ear to ear took place. . . . And by the time she was dragging him down, pulling him down towards this area right here,” I said, pointing to the blowup of the crime scene diagram, “he didn’t need that shot to the head. But she had a gun somewhere. . . . She put that bullet right in his temple.”

In recounting Arias’ many stories, I began with her initial statement that she was not in Arizona at the time of the killing, followed by her story about the two masked intruders who killed Travis but spared her life, and finally her latest version, that she had killed Travis, but only after he attacked her and she was fighting for her life.

“It was her,” I affirmed. “She is the person who actually did this. . . . She is the one who did the stabbing. She’s the one that slit his throat. And she is the one that shot him.”

To dramatize my concluding remarks, I showed a clip from Arias’ interview with
Inside Edition
. “No jury will ever convict me, and you can mark my words on that,” a much younger-looking Arias tells the interviewer with an air of confidence as she appears to suppress a smile. “No jury will convict me.”

With her face frozen on the three monitors around the courtroom, I delivered my closing comment, “I also ask that you mark her words, the words that no jury will convict her, even though she has admitted that she’s the person that did this after giving many different stories of what happened. And as you mark her words, I ask you while you are doing that in your final deliberations—that you remember that while you’re marking the guilty verdict for her premeditated killing of Travis Alexander. Thank you.”