Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars (30 page)

“Okay, now, as related to the gas cans, and where Jodi was going on different occasions, one of the occasions you said was Mesa. One occasion you said was a long trip, so I just want to clarify that with you,” Nurmi posed the question, which had the effect of discrediting his own witness.

“I believe that Jodi told me she was going on a long trip. She was going to see friends in Big Sur and Los Angeles and in Arizona and the Grand Canyon, I believe, is what she said,” Brewer said, attempting to clarify his earlier testimony and cast doubt on the interview summary attributed to him by the defense investigator, claiming he hadn’t approved the statement prior to it being submitted by defense counsel.

“Okay, and so when you heard Mesa or comments about Mesa when you were asked about it, that wasn’t accurate to your recollection of where she was going, right?” Nurmi led Brewer to the answer, trying to deal with the fact that the
witness had already admitted twice on cross-examination that Arias had told him that she needed the gas cans for her trip to Mesa.

“That’s correct, she said Arizona. I didn’t know of Mesa,” Brewer said, looking as if he had just gotten the answer right.

And as for the gas cans themselves and what Arias wanted them for, Nurmi left that area wholly untouched.

T
he assault on Travis Alexander’s reputation and character, which would be the lynchpin of Jodi Arias’ self-defense claim, began in earnest on the second day with testimony from the next three witnesses the defense called to the stand.

Lisa Andrews, who was now married and went by the name Lisa Diadone, had dated Travis on and off for about eight months beginning in July 2007, when she was nineteen years old. Diadone’s testimony centered on an angry e-mail she sent to Travis after one of their breakups. She complained to him in that e-mail that sex was on his mind from the very beginning and they made out “too long” and “too passionately,” which caused her to feel “used and dirty.” The e-mail also included a concern that he had grabbed her butt in public, which upset her further when he persisted on doing it even after she asked him to stop. Throughout the direct examination by Jennifer Willmott, Diadone made it clear that she felt the intent of her e-mail was being taken “out of context,” even as she was forced to admit she had authored it.

Although I had initially thought I might call Diadone as a witness, I had chosen not to, because I was concerned that she might unwittingly bring up details about her breakup with Travis, such as her belief that Arias had been the one to slash Travis’ tires, or recount the night she fell asleep at Travis’ house and Travis found Arias downstairs, at which time Arias admitted to having been upstairs watching the two sleep.

Any such statements touching on other misdeeds by Arias
could result in a mistrial, which would require us to start the trial all over again.

Despite the content of the letter, I didn’t consider Lisa Diadone’s questioning by Willmott particularly impactful, as it was based almost exclusively on a single e-mail Diadone had written to Travis early in their relationship explaining why she believed they should break up. On cross-examination, Diadone readily admitted that she and Travis had had a “high school”–type relationship, that she had expressed herself in an immature fashion in the e-mail, and that she now believed her comments were unfair. She said her complaint that he was “overly” interested in sex was in part because Travis became erect when they kissed, something she now acknowledged was a normal bodily reaction and not a result of any purposeful touching. She also mentioned that Travis only began kissing her after she made the overture by asking him to kiss her first.

During my cross-examination, Diadone expanded on her answer to Willmott that she broke up with Travis because of “strange things” that were happening by discussing two incidents that concerned her. On the first occasion, she and Travis were together at her house when someone suddenly opened the front door. She explained that the door had a security device that made a ringing noise every time it was opened, and when she and Travis heard it go off, they went to see who had come in and found that no one was there. Diadone said she became so worried that someone might have broken into the house that she asked Travis to spend the night, pointing out that during the overnight stay at her home, Travis did not make any sexual advances and they did not engage in any passionate kissing.

On a different occasion, she was at Travis’ house standing in the kitchen when Arias unexpectedly walked in through the front door and, upon seeing Diadone, turned around and ran out. Diadone’s testimony, far from showing that Travis was abusive in any way, instead painted a picture of an individual with values who respected his girlfriend’s sexual boundaries.

After Diadone’s testimony, the defense continued its attack on Travis’ character by calling two of Travis’ friends, Daniel Freeman and his sister, Desiree, to testify about behavior on Travis’ part toward Arias that they deemed inappropriate. The Freemans were both members of the LDS church, and Daniel was also affiliated with PPL.

Desiree, the first of the two siblings to take the stand, told the jury that her brother had first introduced her to Travis, who then introduced her to Arias. In response to questions from Willmott, she recounted what she described as a disturbing exchange between Travis and Arias during a trip to Havasupai, Arizona, that she and her brother took with the couple in September 2007. Desiree recalled that at one point Arias got out of the car to take some photographs, and Travis pretended to drive away as she tried to get back into the vehicle. She said that Arias became upset and told Travis it wasn’t funny, which angered Travis, whose “over-the-top” reaction shocked Desiree. While she could not recall exactly what Travis said to Arias that day, she made it clear that she found his tone inappropriate.

I initiated my cross-examination of Desiree Freeman by asking her questions about the LDS church’s prohibition against sexual activities by unmarried members. This was a way to remind the jury that Arias had violated the church’s doctrine by being with both Travis and Ryan Burns in a sexual way within a day of each other.

On the face of it, Desiree’s testimony about Travis’ accelerating the car didn’t seem particularly helpful to the defense’s case. His actions did not rise to being verbally abusive to Arias. Although Desiree described this incident as “over the top,” she couldn’t remember the words she found so offensive, and when pressed on the specifics, her memory totally failed. I didn’t belabor the point, because I saw no need to get drawn into a character debate with her about what was essentially a trivial exchange between Travis and Arias.

Desiree’s brother, Daniel, recounted on direct examination a fight between Travis and Arias that he said occurred the morning the foursome was scheduled to go to Havasupai, in the Grand Canyon, which Daniel admitted he had incited by complaining that Arias was packing too much makeup for the day’s hike. When he voiced his concerns, he said Travis also became upset after he realized how much she had packed, causing Travis to raise his voice at her, and sending Arias running upstairs in tears. Daniel’s testimony began to illustrate the lengths defense counsel would go to show Travis was abusive, by blaming Travis for a situation sparked by his friend Daniel Freeman.

The defense case took a salacious turn with the testimony of their next two witnesses, one being a digital media expert and the other professing an expertise in many areas, including voice comparison and identification and photography

Lonnie Dworkin, the digital media expert, had been retained by the defense to examine Travis’ Compaq Presario laptop, seized by police during their investigation on June 10, 2008, as well as two items belonging to Jodi Arias, an external hard drive and a Helio cell phone. The external hard drive had been found by police during the execution of the search warrant on Arias’ grandparents’ house in Yreka on July 15, 2008.

The Helio cell phone had a more complicated history. Arias had reported to the Yreka Police Department on May 18, 2008, that it had been stolen from the front seat of her car, and police had no record of a follow-up call from Arias notifying them that the phone had been recovered.

After confirming his educational background and experience, Willmott asked Dworkin about his examination of Travis’ laptop, specifically the Internet history and the different Web sites that Travis had visited in the early morning hours of June 4, 2008, between 4:08 and 4:35
A.M
.

“Can you tell us about the first full action,” Willmott asked,
referring to a listing from his report of the Web sites Travis had visited that morning. “What is it telling us?”

“Well, it’s an action that documents a Web site that was visited and the date and time the Web site was visited,” Dworkin replied.

“Okay. Can you tell us what Web site was visited?”

“Yes. It was YouTube.com. . . . And the date and time is June 4, 2008, at 4:08:11
A.M
.”

“. . . Does it tell us anything else in that action?”

“Yes, it tells us the name of the file that was accessed, the YouTube file that was accessed.”

“Okay, and what was that?”

“The title of the file is ‘Drunk (Daft Punk—Hard Body, Faster, Stronger),’” Dworkin replied.

By providing no further details about the file, his response made it seem like Travis had accessed a YouTube Web site dedicated to pornographic materials. But I knew otherwise. These were music videos for the band Daft Punk and did not have any sexual content. Willmott’s inquiry ignored that Arias had previously described this video to Detective Flores when she was questioned on July 16, 2008, and she had told him that Travis was viewing some stupid music video with people dancing with foil boxes on their heads.

“. . . The next action?” Willmott continued in what seemed like a deliberate attempt to create the impression for the jury that Travis had continued to view pornography.

“. . . The time is 4:11
A.M
. in the morning and four seconds.”

“Okay. What’s the Web site? . . . What’s the date?”

“The date is also June 4, 2008. . . . The Web site is YouTube.com,” Dworkin said, adding, “The title of the video that was viewed is ‘Daft Hands—Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
.
’”

“And the next action?” Willmott elicited. “Let’s start with the date.”

“Okay. June 4, 2008.”

“And the time?”

“It’s 4:15 and thirteen seconds in the morning.”

“Okay. And the Web site?”

“The Web site is again YouTube.com.”

“Does it tell specifically where on YouTube?”

“The title of this file is ‘Daft Hands—Double Speed (Faster, Better).’”

The purposeful way Willmott was posing the questions appeared to be a deliberate attempt to lead the jury to make assumptions, making it difficult for me to sit and wait until I could question the witness and clear up the impression being created during the direct examination.

Willmott next turned her focus to Dworkin’s examination of “an external hard drive,” a portable storage device that he described as “the size of a hard drive you would find on a laptop.” Willmott failed to immediately identify the owner of this hard drive, leaving room for the jury to assume that it belonged to Travis, because Dworkin’s testimony thus far had been related to his examination of Travis’ laptop.

“Were you asked [by defense counsel] to pull photographs, everything you can off of the mirror image [of the hard drive]?” Willmott asked, to which Dworkin indicated that in addition to photos, he had also been able to access some other information from a mirror image he made of the actual hard drive.

“. . . Do you recognize those as two photos taken off of this mirror image?” Willmott asked, focusing Dworkin’s attention to defense exhibits 393 and 394, two 8½-by-11-inch glossy photographs, each depicting a man’s penis.

The photographs were enlarged in such a fashion that the penis in one measured 8½ inches and in the other 9¾ inches, in an obvious attempt to shock whoever viewed the pictures.

“. . . Defense moves—I forgot the number, defense moves to enter exhibit number—”

“Three ninety-three and three ninety-four,” responded Dworkin as he held up the pictures, allowing the jury and
those in the courtroom to see that each exhibit was an enlarged photograph of a man’s penis.

I stood up and objected on the grounds of relevance, pointing out that Dworkin could not identify whose penis was depicted in each of the photos. And I requested that the court permit me to ask questions of Dworkin to show that he lacked the foundation necessary for the pictures to be moved into evidence.

Judge Stephens allowed me to interrupt defense counsel’s questioning so that I could challenge the foundation for his opinion about the photographs. “Sir, with regard to the part of the human body that’s there, do you know who it belongs to?” I asked.

“I do not.”

“That’s not your area of expertise, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” Dworkin quickly conceded.

Based on my objection, the court decided to recess for the day, allowing Judge Stephens time to consider whether the photos of the unidentified penises would be shown to the jury.

The defense’s approach for the day was obvious; they had planned to leave the jury with the impression that Travis Alexander could potentially have been masturbating to this “harder, faster stronger” video and taken photos of his penis, because the jury had yet to be told to whom the external hard drive belonged. It was a Thursday, and court was not in session on Fridays, so the jury now had the weekend to ponder what they had just seen when Dworkin held up the pictures.

When we returned to court the following Monday, February 4, Judge Stephens brought the jury in and instructed Willmott to continue her direct examination of Dworkin. But she ruled that the two photographs that I had objected to that past Thursday were not admissible in evidence. It seemed convenient to me that it was only after the judge’s ruling to exclude the photographs that Willmott asked the witness to identify the owner of the external hard drive. “And the mirror image
that was taken of a hard drive; do you know whose hard drive that belonged to?”

“According to the document that was provided along with the hard drive . . . it appeared to belong to Jodi Arias,” Dworkin responded.

“All right. Okay,” Willmott continued. “I want to talk to you—want to move on a little and let’s talk about a Helio phone that you looked at. . . . What is a Helio phone?”

“A Helio phone—it’s actually Ocean Helio, it’s an early predecessor to today’s smartphones,” Dworkin explained. “It has the ability to surf the Web, take photographs, record audio, things of that nature.”

“. . . Do you know who the phone belonged to?”

“I believe it belonged to Jodi Arias,” Dworkin said.

Willmott next asked him about the audio recordings on the Helio phone.

“. . . I did not just play the audio over its internal speaker and then try to pick it up with a microphone. I connected the phone directly from its audio out, or headphone jack, directly to my computer and I recorded the audio,” he said.

The audio that Dworkin was referring to was a phone sex conversation between Arias and Travis that Arias recorded on May 10, 2008, without Travis’ knowledge. It would not be introduced to the jury until eight days later, through the testimony of Jodi Arias herself, so it was unclear why defense counsel traveled this tortuous road to its introduction in evidence, rather than wait until Arias was on the stand for her to identify the voices and give the date it was recorded. Only then would jurors hear the soon-to-be-infamous sex tape where both Travis and Arias are heard discussing their sexual fantasies and masturbating until each climaxed, Arias twice.