Justice, thanks for the link to the timeline of defense motions from the time Jodi Arias was indicted for murder and extradited to Phoenix from Yreka.
Much of this information was new to me because I had probably heard about the murder on the news but I didn't follow the case until the trial started.
I was surprised to hear there was another judge presiding over the case but not surprised to hear about the Defense Motion to Strike State’s Notice of Intent to Seek DP BECAUSE lethal injection will result in cruel and unusual punishment (Yes, they actually went there!!) This was denied by Judge Duncan in the minutes of 1/12/10 and 1/7/10 Motion to allow jury to consider lethal injection as a mitigating factor, that Maricopa County Attorney’s office be disqualified from the case, as a matter of conflict of interest, that fingerprints and gun theft be excluded, that Travis Alexander not be referred to as a victim, etc. because those are standard motions.
According to Beth Karas, Maria Schaffer, one of Arias' first defense attorneys, is also one of Maricopa County's top capital attorneys which means she has the experience and the knowledge to file motions to get the death penalty off the table, try to preclude all the evidence against her and charge prosecutorial misconduct. Now it is interesting that in his motion to get the death penalty off the table Nurmi accused Shaffer of ineffective counsel because she turned on the computer in the evidence room and a virus protection program erased some files, which the judge said made no difference because the state had the original copy of the hard drive and no major files were erased and it didn't affect the verdict.
This was also new to me:
8/27/12 In response to the lack of remorse motion, the court determined that it is acceptable for the State to argue no lack of remorse, AND in fact the precedent includes the Defendant not being able to use HAVING REMORSE as a mitigator in the penalty phase, when defendant continues to avoid taking responsibility for the crime, which includes claiming SELF-DEFENSE to the end. This like the author says is "a big reason why they are concentrating on her being crazy, because if she continues to stress self defense, she can’t use remorse, and she doesn’t really have any mitigators that have any weight at all, so she can’t afford to lose any."
This was also news to me: "The biggest delay in this trial, from date set in August, 2011 to Feb. 2, 2012, was due to the Defense expert witness having some health issue, so whoever it was would not be able to testify, (apparently EVER), so the Defense had to get a different expert witness, and the trial was delayed 6 months to give them time for whatever had to be done to get this new expert involved and ready to testify."
Until I read, this information, I didn't know that Dr. Cheryl Karp was not able to testify because of illness and replaced by Samuels and LaViolette. Dr. Karp is the psychologist who first saw Jodi Arias and diagnosed her with PTSD. I thought Dr. Karp was not called to testify because Arias changed the number of times Alexander physically abused her to make it look believable after reading LaViolette's book on domestic violence that DV escalates from a push to a slap to a kick to a choke. Dr. DeMarte testified that Dr. Karp diagnosed Arias with PSTD because she had told her of numerous physical abuse cases (too many to count.) However, Arias only mentioned four incidents of physical abuse to Samuels, LaViolette and DeMarte and Geffner said she mentioned five incidents of abuse to him.
Much of this information was new to me because I had probably heard about the murder on the news but I didn't follow the case until the trial started.
I was surprised to hear there was another judge presiding over the case but not surprised to hear about the Defense Motion to Strike State’s Notice of Intent to Seek DP BECAUSE lethal injection will result in cruel and unusual punishment (Yes, they actually went there!!) This was denied by Judge Duncan in the minutes of 1/12/10 and 1/7/10 Motion to allow jury to consider lethal injection as a mitigating factor, that Maricopa County Attorney’s office be disqualified from the case, as a matter of conflict of interest, that fingerprints and gun theft be excluded, that Travis Alexander not be referred to as a victim, etc. because those are standard motions.
According to Beth Karas, Maria Schaffer, one of Arias' first defense attorneys, is also one of Maricopa County's top capital attorneys which means she has the experience and the knowledge to file motions to get the death penalty off the table, try to preclude all the evidence against her and charge prosecutorial misconduct. Now it is interesting that in his motion to get the death penalty off the table Nurmi accused Shaffer of ineffective counsel because she turned on the computer in the evidence room and a virus protection program erased some files, which the judge said made no difference because the state had the original copy of the hard drive and no major files were erased and it didn't affect the verdict.
This was also new to me:
8/27/12 In response to the lack of remorse motion, the court determined that it is acceptable for the State to argue no lack of remorse, AND in fact the precedent includes the Defendant not being able to use HAVING REMORSE as a mitigator in the penalty phase, when defendant continues to avoid taking responsibility for the crime, which includes claiming SELF-DEFENSE to the end. This like the author says is "a big reason why they are concentrating on her being crazy, because if she continues to stress self defense, she can’t use remorse, and she doesn’t really have any mitigators that have any weight at all, so she can’t afford to lose any."
This was also news to me: "The biggest delay in this trial, from date set in August, 2011 to Feb. 2, 2012, was due to the Defense expert witness having some health issue, so whoever it was would not be able to testify, (apparently EVER), so the Defense had to get a different expert witness, and the trial was delayed 6 months to give them time for whatever had to be done to get this new expert involved and ready to testify."
Until I read, this information, I didn't know that Dr. Cheryl Karp was not able to testify because of illness and replaced by Samuels and LaViolette. Dr. Karp is the psychologist who first saw Jodi Arias and diagnosed her with PTSD. I thought Dr. Karp was not called to testify because Arias changed the number of times Alexander physically abused her to make it look believable after reading LaViolette's book on domestic violence that DV escalates from a push to a slap to a kick to a choke. Dr. DeMarte testified that Dr. Karp diagnosed Arias with PSTD because she had told her of numerous physical abuse cases (too many to count.) However, Arias only mentioned four incidents of physical abuse to Samuels, LaViolette and DeMarte and Geffner said she mentioned five incidents of abuse to him.