Trials and Tribulations

I have been fascinated, possibly in a morbid way, by the Jodi Arias vs State of Arizona trial. For those of you living under a rock for the last month, Jodi Arias (a Mormon) killed her lover and former boyfriend, by stabbing him 29 times, shooting him in the face and slitting his throat just about decapitating him. She then drug his body into the shower and left him there naked and bleeding to die. She is on trial now for the murder and the prosecutor in Arizona is going for the death penalty. If convicted and if she gets the death penalty, she will be the thirteenth woman put to death in the United States since 1976, the most recent one being Teresa Lewis, whose sentence was carried out in 2010 in the state of Virginia. 

Eva Dugan was the first and the last woman executed in the state of Arizona in 1930 and was the cause for Arizona changing it’s method of execution from hanging to the gas chamber. This was due to the fact that when Eva was hung, the snap of the rope decapitated her and her head rolled to a stop at the feet of unsuspecting spectators. This grisly scene caused five people, two of them women, to faint. Present day Arizona uses lethal injection as it’s method of execution. 

I am for the death penalty in cases of serial killers and mass murderers when there is irrefutable proof that they committed the crimes they are accused of. I am not for it in any other cases because our justice system is not perfect and people are wrongly convicted all the time.

For all it’s worth, I feel so sorry that Travis died the way he did. I feel bad for his family No matter what he did he did not deserve what happened to him. But he is gone now and not only can not defend himself but the woman who readily admits to killing him is on trial for her life so she is saying things now that may possibly ring true with not just members of the jury but in the court of public opinion. I know that some of things she has described have at times given me great pause for thought. There are many parts of her story whether true or not that I personally can relate to.

Jodi claims that she was so in love with Travis that she did not know any other way to be. She claims she loved him so much that even though she knew he was a pedophile, she had not only a desire to please him but also to protect him and his reputation. She claims that the “beautiful parts” of him, over whelmed the “bad parts” and that she was trying to encourage him to get help for his “issues”. She claims that he got progressively violent with her after she discovered that he had an attraction to young boys. She claims that she loved him so much that even after breaking up with him and moving away, she still participated in a sexual relationship with him because she believed that if he continued to have sex with her, it would abate his attraction to children. She talks of being elated and on a “high” when he would call her and be nice to her, that this made her want to please him, even in ways she was not comfortable with. She talks of struggling to end it with him, to move on and find someone new but that he had this invisible hold on her. 

 Travis and Jodi’s relationship had a religious component as well. Travis was a devout Mormon and at some point in their relationship, Jodi converted to Mormonism and Travis was the one who actually baptized her. They had religious and philosophical discussions and as Jodi puts it, they had a “meeting of the minds”. This caused the sexual attraction to become even more intense according to Jodi.  

Jodi lied…a lot…to a lot of people before finally confessing that she killed him. There are many things that she has said since then that calls into question her honesty. For example: Travis being a pedophile. Anyone in IT knows that forensic labs now can pull anything off a computer or memory card/stick even if it has been deleted. There was no evidence on Travis’ computer, cell phone or any of his electronics or any disks that gave evidence that Travis had visited, or downloaded or had been viewing ANY kind of pornography, let alone child pornography. Also, there is no evidence what so ever of Travis and Jodi having a volatile violent relationship. She mentions a number of incidents where physical violence was involved and yet, there are no police reports, no pictures of injuries, no reports from roommates of anything they overheard, no reports from either Jodi or Travis’ friends that this violence was going on.

If what Jodi went through is true, I can relate and I feel sorry for her but there isn’t any circumstance I can think of where she had to kill Travis, particularly in the manner that she did. She lived a thousand miles away, she could have blocked his number, she could have at any point given up and walked away. Having been in an abusive, manipulative and controlling relationship on a couple of occasions myself, I know that there comes a time when you just have to throw your hands in the air and just give up. When a guy is an asshole, he is an asshole, and you are not going to change him. No matter how many good qualities he may have, there is always a line and once that line is crossed, if only for your own sanity, you walk away. She knew I wasn’t going to work. After she moved away she should have never spoken to him again. 

I fear now that Jodi Arias will in fact become that thirteenth woman, put to death in the state of Arizona. An infamous distinction and one I’m sure she did not think about as she was stabbing Travis, cutting his throat from ear to ear and then shooting him in the face, leaving him to die in the shower naked and alone. For what ever his faults were, his life had a very hard beginning. He had managed to overcome and make something of himself. And considering all he had accomplished, his ending was not deserved. Executing Jodi will not bring him back. It may bring some closure to his family but it will serve no purpose now to execute her. In my mind a better punishment for her would be to live a long life locked up with only the thoughts of what she did to Travis to occupy her time.