Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars (25 page)

There was no time for me to reflect on my opening statement. Even before I sat down next to Flores at the prosecution table, I was already thinking about my first witness, Mimi Hall, who was outside the courtroom and ready to testify. I was also wondering what Arias’ counsel would say on her behalf. Through the years of wrangling at our status hearings, I certainly had my ideas about what direction they would take, but I was curious to see if my instincts were correct.

After a ten-minute break, it was Jennifer Willmott’s turn to make her opening remarks.

“Jodi Arias killed Travis Alexander,” she told the jurors.
“There is no question about it. The million-dollar question is what would have forced her to do it?”

This strident admission relieved me in a practical sense from having to prove that the petite woman sitting quietly at the defense table had done all of this, stabbing a man who was bigger than she was, dragging his body down a hallway, and stuffing it in the shower.

When I heard Willmott tell the jury of Arias’ decision to take a detour to Arizona on her way to Utah, I wanted to nudge Detective Flores to signal him to listen closely.

“Travis knew that Jodi was planning a trip to Utah, ’cause they had talked about it,” she informed the jurors. “He knew that she was going to stop along the way and see friends of hers. He kept asking her to stop and see him. And at the last minute, Jodi decided that she would veer off and take a short trip to Mesa to come and see Travis at his beckoning.”

When I heard Willmott say that Arias’ visit to Travis was a last minute decision, I thought that defense counsel must have assumed that I hadn’t taken note of what had been said in the interview summaries that Arias’ previous defense counsel had disclosed to me. But I had certainly given them my full attention, and I was going to wait for the opportune time to use what I knew during the trial.

Willmott continued her remarks, employing a strategy I had expected, painting Arias as a victim, a person to take pity on, someone to protect. “And through this trial you will hear that Jodi was indeed forced,” she explained, putting up several of the photographs that had been retrieved from Travis’ camera. “In just under two minutes we go from the last picture taken of Travis in the shower, in just under two minutes to the picture of Travis’ body. You can see the foot in the front, with his head and his shoulders and blood clearly on his shoulders. In just those two minutes, Jodi had to make a choice, she would either live or she would die.”

Willmott described a number of lurid sexual encounters that had allegedly occurred between the two, portraying Arias as a sexual servant, who was only doing her job by submitting to Travis’ desires—and none of this was her fault. Willmott was setting up a characterization of Travis as an abuser, someone who bullied Arias into having sex with him.

“As Travis would explain to Jodi, oral sex really isn’t as much of a sin for him as vaginal sex. And so he was able to convince her to give him oral sex. And later in their relationship, Travis would tell her that anal sex really isn’t much of a sin compared to vaginal sex. And so he was able to persuade her to allow him to have anal sex with her.”

It was a graphic start to the defense’s case, and as much as I’d known that this sexualized commentary would be a part of their argument, it was still striking to hear those words said aloud in open court for the judge, jury, and spectators to hear. Ever since she’d changed her plea to self-defense, I’d assumed that tainting Travis’ character would be central to her case; after all, Arias had been willing to accuse him of pedophilia, so nothing Willmott was saying was truly shocking. What I hadn’t known was how they would choose to deploy these sexual details for the jury, and with these words at the start of what was sure to be a long trial, they sent a strong signal that they were going to press this point at every turn.

After hearing the sexually explicit leadoff, I felt a bit reassured, mostly because I didn’t see it as the best strategy. Each of the extreme images that Willmott’s words conjured up held shock value for a jury, but I’d always found that for maximum effect, you had to be careful when using extremes. Just as with showing a crime scene photo too many times, a jury can get desensitized to graphic language. I’d seen it happen before—when strong words become a refrain, sometimes they can have the opposite effect, callousing the jurors instead of persuading them.

The other risk here, which was both more subtle and more
dangerous to the defense case, was that the use of overly sexualized language and images could potentially overshadow the other aspect of their case, which was that Arias was supposedly a victim. By going so quickly and so visually to the role that sex was going to play in this case, defense counsel didn’t give jurors a chance to know Arias as a person and as a woman. They allowed these supposed acts to define her, and it is always harder to be the victim when the jury can’t see who you really are.

But there was no denying that this opening sent a strong signal, a shot across the bow, not just to me, but to everyone in the courtroom. Nothing would be off limits. Looking around the room at the sea of journalists, I found myself no longer surprised that the subdued atmosphere from jury selection had been abandoned. The media had come for a juicy story, and it seemed like that was exactly what the defense was going to give them. They appeared to be producing a story tailor-made for the media, and while it might play well on TV, I wasn’t sure if it would do the same for the jury.

Listening to Willmott’s opening statement, it confirmed my belief that Arias was going to take the stand, because now she had to tell her story. It would be impossible for Willmott to make an argument about Arias’ sexual relationship with Travis in her opening remarks without Arias’ testimony to back it up. Defense counsel’s case would hinge on the success of Arias’ appearance on the stand. It appeared they wanted to portray her as the victim, and she’d even dressed for the part.

T
here was about a twenty-minute recess between Jennifer Willmott’s opening statement and when I would call my first witness, Mimi Hall. Mimi had been waiting in the prosecutor’s work office outside the courtroom since about lunchtime, so during the break I went to tell her that she would be testifying shortly.

When I found her, she indicated that she was nervous about taking the witness stand. I told her I understood her trepidation and suggested that we walk together to the courtroom, so she could acclimate to the setting before all of the parties returned from break. Providing testimony in court can make people anxious, and in this case the number of media in attendance and the fact that the proceedings were being broadcast to a national audience added another layer of apprehension.

Mimi reminded me of a young Sigourney Weaver. She was slight of build, with curly, shoulder-length brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Her anxiety seemed to ease a bit once she saw the layout of the courtroom and I explained how things would go once the proceedings resumed that afternoon.

It was just after 3:00
P.M
. when Judge Stephens returned to the bench, and I called Mimi to the witness stand. I had called Mimi as my first witness because I wanted her to set the tone for my case by describing her interactions with Travis and providing the circumstances under which she had discovered his body. Through Mimi, the jury would also hear that Travis
had invited her, not Arias, to accompany him on his trip to Cancún—the event that I considered the trigger for Arias’ rage and what led her to make the trip to Mesa to kill him.

To dispel Arias’ portrayal of Travis as sexually aggressive, I asked Mimi about his behavior on their three dates, which included hot chocolate at Barnes & Noble, a few hours of painting pottery at a local ceramics center, and an afternoon of rock climbing at an indoor facility. Mimi recounted that Travis was a “total gentleman,” explaining that the only physical contact the two had was an “awkward hug” at the end of each date.

I also wanted to demonstrate Arias’ pattern of confronting women she viewed as rivals. I thought back to Matthew McCartney’s story of how Arias had driven hours to challenge a woman who she viewed as a threat to her relationship with McCartney, and how similar it sounded to the way she had approached Mimi at Travis’ memorial service.

“Where was this service held?” I asked Mimi.

“This was at the church building where he went to church every Sunday in Mesa. It’s off Guadalupe and the 202 area.”

“. . . And were there a lot of people there, yes or no?”

“Yes, there were a lot of people.”

“And of all the people that were there, was there somebody by the name of Jodi Arias?”

“Yes.”

“And is the person that you knew as Jodi Arias, is she in court today?”

“Yes . . . she is seated over there at the end of the table, and I can’t see her clearly, but she’s wearing black and has dark hair.” Mimi pointed to Arias, who was seated at the far end of the defense table.

I asked the judge to have the record reflect that Mimi had identified the defendant as Jodi Arias. “So, you see the defendant there and do you go up to her, or does she go up to you?”

“She came up to me and she introduced herself to me.”

“What did she say?”

“She said are you Mimi Hall? . . . And I said yes, and she introduced herself as Jodi Arias.”

“And did she say anything else?”

“I asked her how she was doing, and she said she was upset. That was about it, though.”

“Did at any time she say, ‘I’m the person who killed him?’ Anything like that?”

“No.”

“Did she ever tell you why she was there [at the memorial service]?”

“No.”

“I don’t have anything else. Thank you.”

As I returned to my seat, Nurmi stood and walked to the podium in the center of the courtroom to begin his cross-examination. Based on his questions, it appeared his objective was to show that Mimi’s standing in the LDS Church—which included having been born into the faith and attending Brigham Young University, an institution supported by the church—commanded a certain level of respect and dictated the way that Travis viewed and treated her.

“Did he [Travis] tell you that he was having sexual relations with Jodi Arias?” he asked Mimi.

“No,” she replied, appearing to grow uncomfortable.

“I’m not going to ask exactly what he said, but it was during a camping trip, if I recall correctly, that he told you he had a stalker . . . ?” Nurmi inquired.

“Yeah, he didn’t say a name at all. But he was having breakfast with a couple of friends around and he told me at that point that he had a stalker. And that she had actually followed us on a date and that she knew who I was. And I told him that was really scary and that he should get a restraining order.”

This line of questioning caught my attention and I wondered how far Nurmi would go into this area, which was highly inflammatory and could hurt his client. During my initial examination, I did not ask Mimi about whether she knew Arias
to be a stalker or what she might have heard in that regard, because I didn’t want to create any issues leading to a mistrial or being raised on appeal. Had I broached the subject first, the argument almost certainly would be that the prosecution had been unfair because these were unproven acts of domestic violence that were unrelated to the murder. But now that Nurmi was discussing Arias’ stalking behavior with the witness, defense counsel was opening the door to the topic, allowing me to walk in and explore the details on my redirect examination.

“And you say that he didn’t tell you—he didn’t say that this was Jodi, right?” Nurmi continued.

“No, he didn’t say who it was,” Mimi responded. She looked frail and vulnerable, and I felt sorry that she had to be up there on the witness stand and be asked about her friend’s relationship with another woman.

Nurmi showed her a page from a transcript to refresh her recollection of what she had said in an earlier interview where both he and I had been present. “You said you gave him the advice that he seek a restraining order against this stalker, right?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, and you expressed to him that you were scared of this stalker, right?”

“Scared of any stalker. It’s not something you want to deal with.”

“And to your knowledge, did he ever seek out a restraining order?”

“Not that I knew of, no. He told me not to be afraid.”

“And your testimony is that he never said to you, Jodi Arias was his stalker, that’s your testimony?”

“That’s from what I can remember. I don’t remember him ever saying at the time. I remember hearing the name ‘Jodi.’ It could have been then, but I don’t actually recall,” Mimi replied, adding, “The name ‘Jodi’ was [mentioned] the night that we found him at his house.”

“Okay, thank you, Miss Hall,” Nurmi said as he concluded his cross-examination.

My first question to Mimi on redirect examination continued the line of questioning that defense counsel had started when he asked her whether Travis had identified Arias as his stalker.

“. . . You indicated that part of what he [Travis] told you was that this stalker was a female, right?”

“Yes.”

“And what had this female done that he was warning you about?”

Before Mimi could respond, Nurmi broke in with an objection. “Beyond the scope,” he told Judge Stephens.

Nurmi’s objection was overruled because he had questioned Mimi about Travis’ stalker.

“. . . He had dated someone earlier that year,” Mimi replied, referring to Travis’ ex-girlfriend Lisa Andrews. “She slashed her [Andrews’] tires. She had sent threatening e-mails to both Travis and his girlfriend at the time. She had followed us on one of the first dates that we went on, and she sounded dangerous. She had broken into his e-mail account, his bank accounts. She would break into his house through the doggy door, and sleep on his couch at night without him knowing that she was there.”

Having this portrait of Arias out there so early in the case enabled me to cast doubt on her portrayal as a victim. This testimony showed Arias to be a woman who not only was obsessed with Travis but would act on that obsession.

The following day, I called Detective Flores to the stand. The first area I intended to cover with him was his initial telephone conversation with Arias on June 10, 2008, the one he had with her after leaving the crime scene to return her call. The jury
would be hearing Arias’ voice for the first time, and I wanted them to hear how engaging she could be, playing the part of the grieving ex-girlfriend.

To ensure the jury understood that Arias had brought the gun with her to Mesa, a significant step in her premeditation of the murder, I played the portion of the telephone conversation with Flores during which Arias had admitted to the detective that Travis did not have a gun in his home and did not have any other weapons. Since Willmott had admitted in her opening statement that Arias had killed Travis, this meant that Arias must have brought a gun and a knife with her when she paid him the early-morning visit on June 4, 2008.

Jurors sat impassively as I cued up the recording and Detective Flores’ voice came over the sound system: “Um, do you know if he had any weapons in the house?”

To which jurors heard Arias reply, “Uh, his two fists.”

“That’s it? No handguns or rifles?”

“No, he wasn’t one to keep any of that. . . . No, only his two fists. . . . No, he was more into like wrestling and UFC and he had a, you know . . . he said he just bought a punching bag and he’s like . . . ‘I love beating the crap out of the punching bag,’ you know.”

For the most part, Nurmi’s cross-examination of Flores centered on Arias’ comment about Travis’ “two fists” as being his only weapon and Travis “beating the crap out of the punching bag” as a way to illustrate why Arias was scared of him. But the fact remained that Arias had admitted to Flores that there was no gun in Travis’ house, which could only mean one thing—that she had brought the gun with her with the intention of killing him.

Nurmi’s strategy of soiling Travis’ character was evident in his final set of questions to Detective Flores, when he asked about an agreement Arias had with Travis to clean his house. “Do you remember whether or not she had to do it in a French
maid outfit?” Nurmi asked, referring to the photograph of the French maid outfit that Arias discussed with Detective Flores during their July 15, 2008, interview in Yreka.

Pausing as if to search his memory, the detective responded, “That doesn’t sound familiar to me.”

Later in the questioning, immediately before ending his cross-examination, Nurmi asked about an instant messenger conversation between Travis and Arias. Although the conversation he was referencing had occurred via instant messenger, Nurmi referred to it as an e-mail communication when he asked, “Okay, do you remember seeing the e-mails in which Mr. Alexander referred to Miss Arias as a three-hole wonder?”

“Yes,” Flores replied matter-of-factly.

“As a slut?”

“Yes.”

“As a whore?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Detective.”

It was clear that Nurmi’s objective was to pick up where Willmott’s opening remarks had left off in painting Travis as a bad person, but introducing Travis’ derogatory statements to Arias so early in the proceedings seemed a poor strategic decision, because as the trial progressed, Nurmi would do it so often that it became something he appeared to like repeating for its own sake, which lessened its shock value as well as its impact.

When court reconvened that afternoon to continue with my redirect examination of Detective Flores, I was eager to give jurors some insight into what had motivated Travis’ offensive missives to Arias, by providing the context in which they were written. While I knew that there was nothing I could do to eliminate those words from playing a part in the trial, I hoped that offering a sense of what was driving Travis’ emotions would soften their harshness.

I showed Flores a copy of the transcript of the instant messages the two had exchanged, and I asked him, “Why was the comment made as indicated in that document?”

After an objection by Nurmi, I directed Flores’ attention to the bottom of page 8 of the instant messenger conversation I had marked as an exhibit and handed it to him for his review.

Flores spent a few seconds reading the passage before responding. “He [Travis] references being used by Arias,” he replied.

“What is he saying?” I asked, directing Flores to read aloud from the conversation.

“‘I think that I was little more than a dildo with a heartbeat to you,’” he recited from the instant message.

“And that is what he is saying to her?”

“Yes.”

“And the previous pages, pages one and two and three, is there—do they talk about whether or not to tell the truth?”

“Yes.”

Before I could make my point, Nurmi interjected with another objection, which the judge overruled.

“And in terms of the reference to the three-hole wonder . . . what is the context of that comment?” I asked Flores.

“Travis is complaining about her lying to him.”

And with that, I ended this first portion of Flores’ testimony.

Over the next several days, I called a number of witnesses to introduce the evidence that had been collected at the crime scene to show it had been Arias who had killed Travis, among them was the expert who discussed the blood-spatter patterns that helped explain Travis’ movements during the attack, the fingerprint technician who identified the palm print on the west wall as belonging to Arias, and a DNA expert who analyzed the hair and blood on the palm print and matched them to Arias.

My next witness was Mesa Police Detective Michael Melendez. I began my direct examination of Melendez by asking about the incriminating photographs he had retrieved from Travis’ Sanyo camera. I also asked Melendez to explain the five steps that Arias had taken to erase pictures from the camera, as well as the process he had used to retrieve those photos from the unallocated space on the camera’s memory card—no small feat in light of the fact that Arias had put the camera through the wash cycle with bleach. Another point I made through Melendez’s testimony was that Arias had not deleted all the photos on the camera’s memory card, only those that were taken on June 4, 2008, which implicated her in the murder.