Derek Bond, the P-I Jodi Arias hired on her own to work on the appeal, said there would be an appeal whether she gets death or life and that Jodi Arias plans to use ineffective counsel in her appeal because she tried to fire Kirk Nurmi many times and he tried to quit and the judge refused to allow it.
An appellate attorney always uses ineffective counsel as an appellate issue but it won't work in this case because the only way a defendant can prove ineffective counsel is if the attorney did nothing to defend the client or didn’t call witnesses or admit evidence that would have changed the verdict. In the murder trial, Nurmi filed many motions for mistrial to set up appellate issues and called defense witnesses and cross examined state witnesses.
Despite the fact that Arias refused to see Nurmi and didn't speak to him after the mistrial, tried to fire him and took over as her own attorney for two weeks, Kirk Nurmi continued to file motions and set up appellate issues by filing motion after motion for mistrial, charging prosecutorial misconduct, that Martinez withheld evidence, that Flores deleted porn from the computer, that witnesses were harassed by the prosecutor and social media and refused to testify. He has also aggressively and vigorously cross examined state witnesses and called two experts and a forensic computer expert to testify in the mitigation retrial. And he is presenting not only a mitigation case but a surrebutal case. That is not ineffective counsel.
I think Arias' allocution will be very similar to the last one where she gave a power presentation on why she should not be put to death. She cut her hair right before the retrial so she could donate it to the Locks of Love and auctioned off her glasses and artwork and gave the proceeds to St. Jude's and the Food Bank for the sole purpose of bragging about it at allocution. She also plans on showing off one of her drawings. Because she already testified in secret to her remorse, I doubt if that will be mentioned in allocution. She will talk only about the positives and what she can offer society if she is allowed to live.
The reason I think Arias would never admit to being mentally ill is because that would mean admitting there was something wrong with her. She has always maintained she is normal and always nice, sweet, polite, kind and caring and that she would never even harm a spider. It is her parents and Alexander who were mean and violent to her.
The only diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder came from the state's psychologist. All of the defense mental health experts, LaViolette, Samuels, Fonesca and Geffner all stated Arias was always passive, suffered in silence, never raised her voice and only suffered from PTSD. Geffner said when he tested her in 2914 he found no personality disorders. He said her friends thought she was BiPolar but she did not test as BiPolar. Although her friends urged her to seek help for her mood swings, she refused.
Here’s some excepts from an article in Psychology Today differentiating between BiPolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.
Bipolar disorder causes dramatic mood swings, from overly "high" and/or irritable to sad and hopeless, and then back again, often with periods of normal mood in between. Severe changes in energy and behavior go along with these changes in mood. The periods of highs and lows are called episodes of mania and depression.
A cycle is the period of time it takes for a person to go through one episode of mania and one of depression. The frequency and duration of these cycles vary from person to person, from once every five years to once every three months. People with a subtype of bipolar (rapid--cycling bipolar) may cycle more quickly, but much less quickly than people with BPD (shifts can even last minutes/seconds).
According to Dr. Friedel, director of the BPD program at Virginia Commonwealth University, there are two main differences between BPD and bipolar disorder:
1. People with BPD cycle much more quickly, often several times a day.
2. The moods in people with BPD are more dependent, either positively or negatively, on what's going on in their life at the moment. Anything that might smack of abandonment (however farfetched) is a major trigger.
3. In people with BPD, the mood swings are more distinct. Marsha M. Linehan, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, says that while people with bipolar disorder swing between all-encompassing periods of mania and major depression, the mood swings typical in BPD are more specific. She says, "You have fear going up and down, sadness going up and down, anger up and down, disgust up and down, and love up and down."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stop-walking-eggshells/201003/three-ways-differentiate-bipolar-and-borderline-disorders
An appellate attorney always uses ineffective counsel as an appellate issue but it won't work in this case because the only way a defendant can prove ineffective counsel is if the attorney did nothing to defend the client or didn’t call witnesses or admit evidence that would have changed the verdict. In the murder trial, Nurmi filed many motions for mistrial to set up appellate issues and called defense witnesses and cross examined state witnesses.
Despite the fact that Arias refused to see Nurmi and didn't speak to him after the mistrial, tried to fire him and took over as her own attorney for two weeks, Kirk Nurmi continued to file motions and set up appellate issues by filing motion after motion for mistrial, charging prosecutorial misconduct, that Martinez withheld evidence, that Flores deleted porn from the computer, that witnesses were harassed by the prosecutor and social media and refused to testify. He has also aggressively and vigorously cross examined state witnesses and called two experts and a forensic computer expert to testify in the mitigation retrial. And he is presenting not only a mitigation case but a surrebutal case. That is not ineffective counsel.
I think Arias' allocution will be very similar to the last one where she gave a power presentation on why she should not be put to death. She cut her hair right before the retrial so she could donate it to the Locks of Love and auctioned off her glasses and artwork and gave the proceeds to St. Jude's and the Food Bank for the sole purpose of bragging about it at allocution. She also plans on showing off one of her drawings. Because she already testified in secret to her remorse, I doubt if that will be mentioned in allocution. She will talk only about the positives and what she can offer society if she is allowed to live.
The reason I think Arias would never admit to being mentally ill is because that would mean admitting there was something wrong with her. She has always maintained she is normal and always nice, sweet, polite, kind and caring and that she would never even harm a spider. It is her parents and Alexander who were mean and violent to her.
The only diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder came from the state's psychologist. All of the defense mental health experts, LaViolette, Samuels, Fonesca and Geffner all stated Arias was always passive, suffered in silence, never raised her voice and only suffered from PTSD. Geffner said when he tested her in 2914 he found no personality disorders. He said her friends thought she was BiPolar but she did not test as BiPolar. Although her friends urged her to seek help for her mood swings, she refused.
Here’s some excepts from an article in Psychology Today differentiating between BiPolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.
Bipolar disorder causes dramatic mood swings, from overly "high" and/or irritable to sad and hopeless, and then back again, often with periods of normal mood in between. Severe changes in energy and behavior go along with these changes in mood. The periods of highs and lows are called episodes of mania and depression.
A cycle is the period of time it takes for a person to go through one episode of mania and one of depression. The frequency and duration of these cycles vary from person to person, from once every five years to once every three months. People with a subtype of bipolar (rapid--cycling bipolar) may cycle more quickly, but much less quickly than people with BPD (shifts can even last minutes/seconds).
According to Dr. Friedel, director of the BPD program at Virginia Commonwealth University, there are two main differences between BPD and bipolar disorder:
1. People with BPD cycle much more quickly, often several times a day.
2. The moods in people with BPD are more dependent, either positively or negatively, on what's going on in their life at the moment. Anything that might smack of abandonment (however farfetched) is a major trigger.
3. In people with BPD, the mood swings are more distinct. Marsha M. Linehan, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, says that while people with bipolar disorder swing between all-encompassing periods of mania and major depression, the mood swings typical in BPD are more specific. She says, "You have fear going up and down, sadness going up and down, anger up and down, disgust up and down, and love up and down."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stop-walking-eggshells/201003/three-ways-differentiate-bipolar-and-borderline-disorders