Duluth and Lunarscope, I appreciate that you want to discuss LaViolette and what Jodi Arias did with her ex boyfriends, but to me that is in the past and has been discussed adnauseum. I am interested in only discussing news about what is happening now and what will happen in the future for Jodi Arias.
Did you watch the video I posted on Verdict Watch? What did you think of what Karas, Wood and Seltzer had to say about the closing arguments, the jurors and the verdict? Because they all three were in the courtroom and saw what we didn't see, it is interesting to me to hear what they have to say.
Here's some excerpts from a very enlightening article about how the jury was able to unanimously vote for the death penalty for Wendy Andriano, another case Martinez prosecuted.
"In all, 15 jurors in Maricopa County Superior Court in Mesa spent four months hearing the case against Andriano, 34, who was charged with killing her terminally ill husband, Joe, 33. He was poisoned, bludgeoned and stabbed in their apartment Oct. 8, 2000, while their children, then 2 and 3, slept in a bedroom.
Six of the 12 jurors who voted last month to execute Andriano were interviewed, along with two of the three alternates.
"The first couple of weeks, it was kind of interesting," said juror Tanner Catalano, 27, of Gilbert.
"After it started to set in that you had to make a decision like this, it became overwhelmingly stressful."
The jury found Andriano guilty Nov. 18, about 15 minutes after they went into the jury room, said juror Jay Erke, 48, an airline mechanic foreman from Mesa.
Juror Linda Percy, 63, a Realtor from Mesa, said jurors didn't believe Andriano's testimony, given over nine days on the stand, that she poisoned her husband as part of a suicide pact, and that she hit him 23 times in the head with a bar stool in self-defense to stop him from reaching for a knife.
But the decision to execute Andriano was far more difficult, she and the five other jurors all said.
After they reached the guilty verdict, jurors heard a week of testimony on why Andriano should be executed, the aggravating factors that go into a death penalty decision.
They deliberated for four hours before finding the slaying was especially cruel, qualifying her for the death sentence.
They then heard six days of testimony on mitigating factors, reasons her life should be spared.
They gathered in the jury room Dec. 16 to consider whether there were reasons for sparing Andriano's life.
It took four days.
The sometimes-heated deliberations dramatically changed the case's outcome, with a split jury gradually shifting toward the death verdict.
When the deliberations began, the nine women and three men took a vote. Only three supported a death sentence, with four favoring a life sentence and the others undecided, said juror Mary Fobes, 74, of Mesa.
Catalano said he wasn't sure.
"I still hadn't made up my mind. I was giving her the benefit of the doubt," he said.
After one day, the jury went home for a three-day weekend that some called full of soul searching.
When they reconvened, Catalano gave a pivotal speech outlining his reasons for supporting a death sentence, and the vote swung to 11-1 in favor of execution, Fobes said.
"It was very passionate on why he thought she deserved the death penalty," Fobes said. "The more I thought about it, how could she be so brutal? She must have totally flipped her wig. I don't know how anyone could do that."
But the jury was on the verge of a deadlock, with one holdout, a senior citizen from Gilbert, saying he was adamantly against the death penalty.
On the third day of deliberations, jurors took turns discussing each of 23 reasons listed by the defense for sparing Andriano's life, the mitigating factors, weighing whether they were sufficient cause for leniency.
They included that Andriano was a good mother to her children and had signed up at age 19 for missionary work when in Mexicali, Mexico, for the 91st Psalm Church, now the Harvest Family Church in Casa Grande.
Catalano said he gave all the mitigating factors some weight, but in the end, they were not enough.
"Does a good mother brutally murder her husband?" he said.
Percy said she also considered the arguments against execution, but on balance, "we could not find mitigating factors that overwhelmed the cruelty. To me, to everybody there, the knife wound was the crowning blow. She had three chances to back off."
As the third day of deliberations ended, Fobes said she told the holdout juror, a Gilbert senior citizen, "Wendi has manipulated you. He said, 'Yes, I know.' "
The next day, the holdout gave a short speech saying he changed his mind.
http://www.nlada.org/DMS/Documents/1106668066.47/0124deathjurors24.html
Did you watch the video I posted on Verdict Watch? What did you think of what Karas, Wood and Seltzer had to say about the closing arguments, the jurors and the verdict? Because they all three were in the courtroom and saw what we didn't see, it is interesting to me to hear what they have to say.
Here's some excerpts from a very enlightening article about how the jury was able to unanimously vote for the death penalty for Wendy Andriano, another case Martinez prosecuted.
"In all, 15 jurors in Maricopa County Superior Court in Mesa spent four months hearing the case against Andriano, 34, who was charged with killing her terminally ill husband, Joe, 33. He was poisoned, bludgeoned and stabbed in their apartment Oct. 8, 2000, while their children, then 2 and 3, slept in a bedroom.
Six of the 12 jurors who voted last month to execute Andriano were interviewed, along with two of the three alternates.
"The first couple of weeks, it was kind of interesting," said juror Tanner Catalano, 27, of Gilbert.
"After it started to set in that you had to make a decision like this, it became overwhelmingly stressful."
The jury found Andriano guilty Nov. 18, about 15 minutes after they went into the jury room, said juror Jay Erke, 48, an airline mechanic foreman from Mesa.
Juror Linda Percy, 63, a Realtor from Mesa, said jurors didn't believe Andriano's testimony, given over nine days on the stand, that she poisoned her husband as part of a suicide pact, and that she hit him 23 times in the head with a bar stool in self-defense to stop him from reaching for a knife.
But the decision to execute Andriano was far more difficult, she and the five other jurors all said.
After they reached the guilty verdict, jurors heard a week of testimony on why Andriano should be executed, the aggravating factors that go into a death penalty decision.
They deliberated for four hours before finding the slaying was especially cruel, qualifying her for the death sentence.
They then heard six days of testimony on mitigating factors, reasons her life should be spared.
They gathered in the jury room Dec. 16 to consider whether there were reasons for sparing Andriano's life.
It took four days.
The sometimes-heated deliberations dramatically changed the case's outcome, with a split jury gradually shifting toward the death verdict.
When the deliberations began, the nine women and three men took a vote. Only three supported a death sentence, with four favoring a life sentence and the others undecided, said juror Mary Fobes, 74, of Mesa.
Catalano said he wasn't sure.
"I still hadn't made up my mind. I was giving her the benefit of the doubt," he said.
After one day, the jury went home for a three-day weekend that some called full of soul searching.
When they reconvened, Catalano gave a pivotal speech outlining his reasons for supporting a death sentence, and the vote swung to 11-1 in favor of execution, Fobes said.
"It was very passionate on why he thought she deserved the death penalty," Fobes said. "The more I thought about it, how could she be so brutal? She must have totally flipped her wig. I don't know how anyone could do that."
But the jury was on the verge of a deadlock, with one holdout, a senior citizen from Gilbert, saying he was adamantly against the death penalty.
On the third day of deliberations, jurors took turns discussing each of 23 reasons listed by the defense for sparing Andriano's life, the mitigating factors, weighing whether they were sufficient cause for leniency.
They included that Andriano was a good mother to her children and had signed up at age 19 for missionary work when in Mexicali, Mexico, for the 91st Psalm Church, now the Harvest Family Church in Casa Grande.
Catalano said he gave all the mitigating factors some weight, but in the end, they were not enough.
"Does a good mother brutally murder her husband?" he said.
Percy said she also considered the arguments against execution, but on balance, "we could not find mitigating factors that overwhelmed the cruelty. To me, to everybody there, the knife wound was the crowning blow. She had three chances to back off."
As the third day of deliberations ended, Fobes said she told the holdout juror, a Gilbert senior citizen, "Wendi has manipulated you. He said, 'Yes, I know.' "
The next day, the holdout gave a short speech saying he changed his mind.
http://www.nlada.org/DMS/Documents/1106668066.47/0124deathjurors24.html