Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars (35 page)

“Why did you decide to come forward with all these things that you’ve been hiding? Mr. Alexander’s sexual interests, the sexual relationship, the violence: Why did you feel comfortable coming forth with that information?”

Arias paused, readjusted herself in the chair, and looked at the jurors. “It wasn’t an overnight decision by any means,” she began. “From day one, there’s a part of me that always wanted to but didn’t dare do that. I would rather have gone to my grave without confirming that I could have done something like that.

“I was extremely ashamed of it. It wasn’t in line with who I am or how I had been living my life all the way up to that point. So as the years went by, however, I began to—it feels very fraudulent from day one, especially when there are so many nice people reaching out to you and they believe you or they believe in you. . . . It feels wrong.

“. . . It was a process that happened over a long period of time. But by the spring of 2010. . . . I confessed.”

“When you say you confessed, what do you mean by ‘confessed’?”

“I basically told everyone what I could remember of the day and that the intruder story was all BS, pretty much.”

“That’s all the questions I have, Judge,” Nurmi said, paving the way for me to begin my cross-examination.

C
ross-examination is a bit of an art. The evidentiary rules allow questioning beyond matters raised in the direct examination as long as the inquiry touches on facts in dispute. So, my approach is to always ask questions that are germane to the case, but I like to start by inquiring about matters that are not expected by the defendant, avoiding rehearsed answers.

In the case of Jodi Ann Arias, I don’t think she anticipated that I would begin her cross-examination, on the morning of February 21, by talking about unflattering names she had called family members in conversations with Travis that had not been discussed in her direct examination. I wanted to begin by showing jurors she had a double standard, which she believed allowed her to make demeaning comments about others while expecting those around her to refrain from engaging in the same type of name calling. I also planned to weave into the first part of my questioning that the injury to her left ring finger she claimed to have sustained during an assault by Travis on January 22, 2008, the day after she alleged to have found him masturbating to pictures of young boys, had actually happened during
her
attack on Travis on June 4, 2008. I knew these two topics were unrelated, which is why I chose them, because it would make it difficult for Arias to predict the questions I would pose.

I had learned from her interviews with Detective Flores that conducting my cross-examination in a linear fashion would
be ineffective. That was the approach he had employed during his interrogation, which allowed Arias to became comfortable and weave the story about intruders killing Travis. Preparing scripted questions in advance, even as to minor points, would have been counterproductive, because Arias ad-libbed even as to undisputed facts, rendering useless the next question on the scripted page.

“Ma’am,” I began, showing Arias Exhibit 413, a close-up photograph of her and her sister, Angela, with a date stamp of May 10, 2008, that defense witness Lonnie Dworkin had recovered from the memory card of Arias’ Canon camera. “Do you recognize this exhibit?” I asked, knowing that she was familiar with the photograph because her witness had introduced it into evidence on her behalf. “That’s a picture of you, correct?”

When Arias agreed, I asked her about the teen with the dyed red hair in the photo with her. “And the other one is a picture of your dumb sister, correct?”

“That’s my sister,” she affirmed, her clipped response indicating her displeasure with my characterization of Angela. “She’s not dumb.”

“Well, do you remember having a conversation with Travis Alexander back on May 10, 2008?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And during that conversation isn’t it true you said, ‘but I honestly think,’ talking about Angela, ‘she’s a little dumb.’ You said that, right?” I asked, referring to comments she made about her sister during the May 10, 2008, sexually explicit phone call with Travis.

“Yes, I called her dumb and stupid.”

“Did I ask you whether or not you called her stupid?” I countered, in an effort to prevent her from controlling the questioning.

“No.”

“I asked you whether or not you called her dumb, right?”

“Yes.”

“Now take a look at Exhibit 452,” I instructed, showing Arias another photograph of her and Angela, taken from a different angle that showed more than just their faces. “Do you recognize the two people?”

“Yes,” Arias replied, enabling me to move it into evidence.

“. . . And what date was the photograph taken?” I asked, directing Arias to look at the date on the back of the exhibit, which read May 2, 2008. “And with regard to this photograph, it also features you and your sister, the one that you said was stupid, correct?”

“Yes,” she said, admitting to engaging in name calling, which allowed me to point out that she was upset with Travis for engaging in this very same behavior.

“Now, with regard to this name calling . . . your text message was that you were upset at some point because Mr. Alexander said that you were going to turn out just like your mother, or you were acting like your mother. Do you remember that text?”

“Yes.”

I followed up by referring to a portion of her direct examination where she had detailed the bad words Travis supposedly said about her mother.

“I don’t remember.”

“Do you have a problem with your memory, ma’am?”

“Sometimes,” she responded.

Citing memory issues would become one of the ways Arias would attempt to avoid answering my questions when it appeared that her responses might reveal an inconvenient truth.

“. . . And you can tell us, for example, what type of sex you had with Mr. Alexander many years ago, but you’re having trouble telling us what you said a couple of days ago?” I asked.

“When I’m under stress, yeah, it affects my memory,” Arias retorted, refusing to back down from the excuse.

“I thought you said the relationship with Mr. Alexander was very stressful?”

“Some of the sex wasn’t.”

“Pardon?” I asked, not sure if I had heard her answer correctly.

“Some of the sex wasn’t,” she repeated.

Before this point in the trial, Arias had attempted to present herself as someone who was meek and compliant in her sexual dealings with Travis, someone with religious values.

She had spent an inordinate amount of time on direct examination describing the sordid details of her many sexual moments with Travis, replaying them for the jury as if they were musical pieces with different beats and tempo, but all with the same bad note—she just could not say no.

She had spoken of their first encounter in Murrieta, California, where she claimed he foisted himself on her, performing oral sex until thankfully he moved his mouth away. She even lamented their time in Ehrenberg, where she expected a weekend of romance only to have the time spent “grinding” or having oral sex, but all the while Travis seemed distant, making her feel like a prostitute. She avowed that her willingness to engage in anal sex after she allegedly discovered Travis masturbating to images of young boys was nothing more than a self-sacrificing act on her part, done only to calm Travis’ pedophilic urges. So, it was quite revelatory that she was now saying that she had liked some of the sex in direct contradiction of her answers when she was questioned by defense counsel.

“So, you did enjoy the sex then, is that what you’re telling me?”

“At times I did,” she admitted blandly.

“But you did indicate as part of your examination that Mr. Alexander at some point said something about your grandfather also . . . That he made some pejorative comments, some bad comments about him, right?” I solicited, switching
back to a specific comment Arias made during her direct testimony in an attempt to attack Travis’ character and paint him in a bad light.

“My grandfather,” Arias answered. “Yes, his name,” she said, making sure the jury knew that Travis allegedly belittled her grandfather’s good name.

“. . . One of the things that seems to be coming out here is that you seem to have a double standard here with regard to making comments about people, don’t you?” I asked.

Judge Stephens overruled Nurmi’s objection that my question was argumentative, allowing Arias to respond.

“I do,” she said, but then immediately backtracked, offering justifications for her responses.

When she became upset over Travis’ comment about her grandfather, it was because she was already upset about something else that day. As for calling Angela “dumb” and “stupid,” she made those statements at a time when she was feeling “sentimental.”

“. . . You have a different standard for Mr. Alexander, correct? Yes or no?”

When Arias responded “No,” I continued this line of questioning by referring to another, more illustrative, example of her double standard when it came to Travis, recalling an incident that happened less than two months after she broke up with him.

“. . . Back in August of 2007, you went over to Mr. Alexander’s house . . . and at that time you were broken up with Mr. Alexander, right?”

“I had broken up with him,” Arias replied.

“. . . And you broke up with him on June 29, 2007, right? . . . But you felt that it was okay for you to go over to his house in August 2007, didn’t you?”

“After he told me,” she said, in an attempt to justify her action.

“Yes or no,” I asked, my voice rising. “Did you feel it was okay to go over to his house?”

“I said yes,” Arias challenged, even though she had not previously provided me with an affirmative answer.

Arias’ answers were being delivered with a perceptible edge, and on numerous occasions, she appeared to scold me, “I said yes” or “I said no.” The tone in her responses ordained my continuing use of a stern approach to overcome her obvious unwillingness to give straightforward answers.

“And . . . you started to peep into the house, didn’t you?” I continued, my voice still raised.

“Yes.”

“So you went around the back to look, right?”

“I went around the back to get in,” she admonished me.

“. . . But when you got to the back to get in, you started to look at what was going on, right? . . . You saw something inside that upset you, right? You saw Mr. Alexander, right?”

“I did not know it was him at first,” she replied, appearing reluctant to provide a more definitive answer.

When I pressed, she admitted that she saw Travis and he was with a woman she “did not recognize.”

“. . . And you were able to see that they were making out, right?”

“Oh yeah, they were.”

“. . . So what happened then is you were actually watching what they were doing then, right?”

“Briefly, yes.”

“. . . And after you saw this, one of the things you did was that you took off, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you felt strongly enough about this that the next day you called your father, right?”

“I called my parents’ house and my dad answered.”

“Yes or no. You spoke to your father?”

“I did speak to him.”

“And you were crying, right? . . . And you were upset about this, right? . . . And you told him why you were upset, right?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you said before that you didn’t discuss these issues involving you and Mr. Alexander?”

“Not typically.”

“. . . You said you didn’t yesterday and all the days before. Remember telling us that?” I asked, referring to her previous testimony in response to Nurmi’s questions.

“The violence, yes,” she replied, her way of clarifying that she had simply been referring to the alleged domestic violence in her relationship with Travis, not Travis’ behavior with other women.

“Oh, I see,” I said. “But you did discuss the fact that you saw him kissing somebody else to your father, right?”

“Yes.”

“And as a result of that, you decided to go talk to Mr. Alexander about it, right?”

“Yes.”

“What in the world gave you the right to go talk to an ex-boyfriend?” I probed. “According to you, you had broken up with him. What right do you have?”

Nurmi objected that my question was argumentative, and his objection was sustained by the judge. I rephrased the question, forcing Arias into acknowledging her double standard. “Weren’t you broken up?”

“Yes.”

“You were being territorial with him, weren’t you?”

“No.”

“Then why in the world would you even care what he was doing?” I asked.

“Because he was trying to court me back,” she snapped, justifying her unannounced appearance at his house that evening.

“. . . And so you could have left that situation alone, but you decided to confront him anyway, right?”

“Of course.”

In keeping with my nonlinear approach, I asked Arias about her sexual encounter with Ryan Burns immediately following the sexual interlude in the afternoon of June 4, 2008, with Travis Alexander. “At the end, right when you killed him, you indicated that you were monogamous with him, right?”

“Yes.”

“And at that time you then left the killing scene, if you will, and you went right to Utah, right? . . . And you went up to Utah, ma’am, you ended up with somebody named Ryan Burns? And you ended up in his bed, right?”

Arias admitted laying down with Burns, clearly unfazed at the audacity of rendezvousing with him after just having slept with and killed another man.

Arias contended that she wasn’t sure if Travis was actually dead when she arrived in Utah on June 5, 2008, to meet with Burns, claiming that she didn’t know Travis was dead until she received confirmation on June 10.

“So if you didn’t think he was dead . . . then it’s okay for you at that point . . . to sort of roll around with Mr. Burns . . . ?”

“I’m single,” Arias answered in a snit, ignoring that Travis was also single at the time when she confronted him about kissing another woman.

I believed she had been taken sufficiently off course that I could now circle back to the reason I had begun my cross-examination with the photographs of her and her sister, Angela—the injury to the left finger.

“With regard to Exhibit 452, it does show you, right, correct?” I asked, showing her a photograph that had been taken on May 15, 2008.

“Yes.”

“Shows something else on there, though, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it show your hand?”

“Yes,” Arias replied, unaware of where I was going with my inquiry.

“And in fact, let me show you another close-up of your hand,” I said, presenting her with Exhibit 453, which was an enlargement of her hand pictured in the previous photograph.

Directing Arias’ attention to the ring finger on her left hand, I asked, “Do you remember that you testified that on January 22, 2008, you and Mr. Alexander were involved in some sort of violent encounter? . . . And you told us that during that encounter, he threw you down. . . . And while you were down, he kicked you. . . . And when he kicked you, ma’am, one of the things that happened was that you put up your left hand. Do you remember telling us that?”

“Yes, both hands,” Arias replied, now embellishing her story to include both hands.

“Well, you told us specifically about your left hand. . . . And when you put up your left hand, according to you, he kicked you and he damaged your ring finger on the left hand. . . . And in fact, you even held it up for us, didn’t you?”