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Trial Day 1 – January 2nd, 2013 [REPLAY]

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Happy New Year peeps!!!

With 2014 now underway, I thought this would be a good time to re-watch the trial from last year. So it kicks off again today with video of Trial Day 1 and Jennifer Willmott’s Opening Statements from this day last year, January 2nd, 2013, together with audio from the Prosecution’s Opening Statements, plus Marie Hall & Sterling Williams’ testimonies.

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Trial Day 1 – January 2nd, 2013:

Defense Opening Statements:

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DAY 1 – Audio Only:

Prosecution – Opening Statements
Defense – Opening Statements
Marie Hall (friend of TA)
Sterling Williams (patrol officer)

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Defense attorney Jennifer Willmott began her opening statement by telling the jury Arias killed Alexander in self-defense. She described the couple’s relationship as psychologically abusive and controlling, stating Alexander kept Arias as his “dirty little secret,” Meanwhile, Willmott stated Alexander repeatedly degraded Arias by telling his friends that she was a stalker.

On the day of the murder, Willmott said Arias was subjected to rough vaginal sex. Willmott stated Arias killed Alexander while she was defending herself against her angry ex-boyfriend after she dropped his new camera. Willmott discussed two time stamped photos taken on the day of the murder. One photo points up at the bathroom ceiling light after apparently accidentally falling. The other, a bloody photo of Alexander. Willmott concluded by telling the jury that if Arias had not chosen to defend herself in the one minute that passed in between those photos being taken, she would not be here today.

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Remember: WE ARE TEAM JODI – AND WE WILL BE VICTORIOUS in our quest for JUSTICE FOR JODI!

Leave your thoughts and comments below…

SJ
Team Jodi

If you would like to help Jodi by way of a financial donation to the official JAA APPELLATE FUND, click the Team Jodi link below for further details. All donations go directly to the fund for assisting with the legal fees associated with appealing Jodi’s wrongful conviction. Thank you for your support!

We Are Team Jodi ---- And We Will Be Victorious!

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64 Comments

  1. First! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!! 😀

    It’s January, 2d right … Don’t know how to feel about this. One year ago, we were all so optimistic and at some point almost positive that true Justice would prevail… 🙁

    • Congrads my loving friend Maria for being ‘first commenter’ !!! But don’t think for a minute that I will not have my ‘come back’! (evil grin)…. wait for it babe! 😉

    • Congrats Maria on being first! Pandora don’t worry I’m sure you’ll be first again, and me HA I’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of being first. Since I’ve been laid off I don’t get up until mid afternoon your time. 🙂

      (((((MARIA♥)))))
      (((((PANDORA♥)))))

      Ray in H-burg Va.

  2. It’s sad that Jodi has been through such a nightmare for so long! Hopefully, this will be the year that the truth will be heard and justice will happen for her. We must all keep thinking positive and praying for her freedom. ((((JODI))))

    • Onetimeagain… you made the first comment of the year in the previous thread! That says a lot! (clapping hands!!!)

      Greek conspiracy??? Not from me! (giggling)… Maria is doing all the dirty work and I’m getting the blame! SJ… help me out here!!!!

      (((((onetimeagain))))))

  3. Congrats, Maria, on being first!!! I have a question for anyone who can help me! Since I didn’t know about Jodi’s trial from day one, I am glad, SJ, that you are putting the trial videos up from the beginning! I watched and listened to both of them. On the second video, audio only, Mimi Hall was testifying and she was telling what happened when she finally decided to go over to Travis’s house since he wasn’t responding to any of her texts. She said she called her friend Michelle and then Michelle called her boyfriend, who was Travis’s best friend. I thought Mimi also said that Michelle’s boyfriend was Travis’s roommate also? Is that correct? If that is correct, then why didn’t the roommate/best friend know anything about where Travis was, etc.? Wow, that testimony just sounded SO suspicious to me! So many things in Mimi’s testimony just don’t add up! Wow!

    • I haven’t listened to the audio yet – does Mimi say that on the stand, that Michelle’s boyfriend was a roommate of Travis’? Might have been in the past, I guess, Travis had a lot of roomies over the years. But it seems like he would have known the garage keypad code if he’d lived there, and they had to call Taylor Searle for that.

      Presumably, no one knew where Travis was. The roomies who actually lived there at the time were not close to Travis, knew he had a trip to Cancun coming up and told Flores they assumed he’d gone on his trip. Aside from Mimi – who was supposed to go on the trip with him and therefore expected some communication beforehand – none of Travis’ good friends seemed particularly concerned that they hadn’t heard from him in a few days. Even Chris, who’d been the last ‘friend’ to speak to Travis when he called to confirm that Travis was hosting a conference call that evening, didn’t bother to follow up on why Travis had bailed on the conference call.

      • I never got that Travis was supposed to host the call. If that were the case, it is incredible that no one followed up sooner. Journee, can you recall how you learned that he was scheduled to host? Because if it wasn’t “his” call, or he wasn’t meant to lead it, then I could see folks assuming that he bailed if he was known not to listen in on every call.

        • It’s in Flores’ report. Chris told Flores that Travis was supposed to host the call.

        • BTW, it’s also in Flores report that Travis told Enrique about that call when they saw each other in the kitchen that morning before Enrique left for work. Travis told him he’d only had a couple of hours of sleep, and told him about the scheduled call.

          AND, also in the report, when Enrique saw Travis for the LAST time, shortly after 7PM that evening (as in, an hour and a half after Travis was presumably dead in his shower), Travis was walking down the stairs, talking on his phone, went into his office and closed the door – Enrique assumed Travis was on the conference call he’d mentioned that morning.
          I know the roomies gave a lot of conflicting stories about when they did laundry and when they’d last seen Travis, but that memory of Enrique’s stands out to me, because of that call – because of Enrique connecting it – in his mind in that moment that he saw Travis – to what Travis had told him that morning.

          • I have to admit I have not given a lot of weight to what the housemates said because when they were asked to recollect, they were not in a good frame of mind, and the average person has a difficult time stating with any accuracy what they did four of five days prior. The phone records would be more accurate. Also I have wondered from time to time about the body bug that Travis wore to gather physiological data relevant to his workout regimen.

            • But I do see your point, Journee, about the phone call that E. saw if he connected it to what T. had told him about an upcoming conference call that afternoon.

            • Regarding ‘phone records’ – something else that was conspicuously not mentioned at trial and never specifically referenced in the Flores report was the fact that Travis had a land-line. Jodi mentioned it to Flores, either in one of the early phone conversations or during the interrogation… I think she told him on the phone, though.

              Anyway, while Travis’ cell phone activity would have been immediately accessible to the police, the land line records would have required a separate and specific action. And, it seems to me, the land-line would likely be the phone used to host a conference call.

              • That makes sense – the land line would have been used. And not to have the land line records mentioned in the police report? I suppose he found “nothing out of the ordinary”, as with the emails initially.

                • They may never have even looked at the land line records. The cell phone gave them more than they knew what to do with – or wanted to deal with, apparently. They had their killer, no sense confusing the issue with evidence that something else may have happened.

    • Weird how Mimi says she was bagging, pounding FFS on the door and ringing the doorbell for 2 MINUTES with the dork barking this entire time YET none of the people inside bothered to see who it was!!! SMH…

      She says Michelle Lowery called her EX boyfriend who was Travis’s best friend, then both girls met at Travis’s house and Michelle brought her current boyfriend while she was on the phone with Travis’s best friend (and ex boyfriend). That same friend suggested they go in through the garage door. HE gave them the access code to the garage door, she doesn’t explain nor is she asked HOW or WHY he had the code. She says nothing about Michelle’s ex boyfriend being an older roommate, though.

      • SMH too! Once again Maria, here we go with those “friends” . They are unbelievable to say the least. Their stories never added up. There is much more to their story. . . which hasn’t been told YET. Hmmmmm

          • You amaze me~! I do good to speak English and Hillbilly, your just such a smartie! 🙂

            • Frankly, I’ve always wondered why it was Mimi,finally, who first spoke to the authorities. She wasn’t dating him in a romantic way; was just a friend who only agreed to go on a gratis cruise because other people she knew would be there. She was not the last person to see him alive, and wasn’t TA’s girlfriend. She did not reside at the house. Seems like the housemates were hiding behind her skirts, if you ask me.

                • Martinez is a piece of work! Marie (Mimi) did seem to act like she didn’t know Travis that good to the Defense; then when Martinez seemed to be leading her into she did know him pretty well. I guess what I was thinking she was kinda giving 2 different versions of her knowledge of Travis Alexander. I believe she knew him much better than she professed. I thought it interesting that she knew where his bedroom was because it was near the theater room (?) hmmm. Marie aka Mimi let Travis know he wasn’t going to get what he was looking for from her. That had to make him mad and frustrated to be turned down. Also, she said Travis never said Jodi was the stalker but Martinez tried to make it seem like he had told her that.

                • Remember the crime scene photo of the area where they found the camera bag? That was a loft like area at the top of the stairs, just outside Travis’ bedroom, where they used to have those fight night parties.

                • Would Mimi have gone to those kind of parties? She presented herself to not be into the same things Travis was into. I have her pictured on a pedestal.

                • I kinda did too, til I found out she’s Dave Hall’s sister. How pure and sweet can she be growing up with him in the family?

                • Another interesting thing (to me) was the Policeman said he got there after the Fire Dept. So was the bloody Boot print from a roommate, Fireman or a Policeman OR someone else who knows all about the murder of Travis Alexander.??. It is so weird that the boot print never is brought up by any of them. Matinez also lead Mimi into saying she smelled a bad odor as soon as she entered the house but no one else had????? So very interesting.

                  And why would a Mother want her daughter who was not even dating a guy to go to his house to look for him by herself????? Not me for sure! Let one of his “guy friends” go IMO!

                • Besides, I got the idea those parties were just a reason for a get together – it’s not like they were drinking or anything.

                • It had to have been left by someone who walked in Travis’ blood when it was still wet. If any of the blood in that bathroom was still wet on the night of the ninth, it was not blood that was there when Jodi left the house on the fourth.

              • I believe she was put in this position because they needed her to cover for them without her knowing it. They needed someone else to find him and then they could place all of the blame on Jodi! She played right into their hands . . .sort of like Jodi. Talk about Master Manipulators!

                • Dave Hall’s sister. . .Good Grief. . .I need to wake up! Geez. So it was Dave Hall’s Mother on the phone with her?!?!?! OMG

                • OMG Journee! There is no telling at all what happened in that house. The truth was swept away so fast it would make our heads spin!

                • That tidbit about Dave and Mimi came from one of Gus Searcy’s interviews at Pitchforks.

      • Maria, you’re right! I listened again to the second video again and Mimi does NOT say Michelle’s ex-boyfriend was Travis’s roommate! I don’t know how on earth I got that out of it the first time I listened to it!!! LOL! Thanks! I can really screw things up sometimes! 🙂

  4. Go Jennifer!

    Just as Jennifer started to state self defence kermit jumped for his first objection! (rolling eyes! – you know, the samantha way)… You see, Jen was ruining his opening where he would try to convince the jury that it was premeditated…. (rolling eyes again, ffs!).

    As for tanisha… ya, I get her pain but if she couldn’t handle it, she shouldn’t have been in the courtroom… From ‘hello’ she started her act of rolling eyes, shaking head, devistated hiding head, etc! (rolling eyes and sucking cheeks the tanisha way).

    • Samantha and Tanisha, both very dramatic. Their actions in the court room had to influence the jury. Any judge that was worth a shit would have thrown them out of the court room. ffs. (rolling eyes, arms crossed, tapping foot, and gritting teeth) (if I had any teeth)…..

      Ray in H-burg Va.

    • Yes, I was impressed by Jennifer and thought she did a good job of covering Travis and Jodi’s relationship. I had forgotten about the pictures on the computer that Travis couldn’t obtain also. He was a ticking time bomb. Thank SJ for repeating these videos. Martineze is disgusting and doesn’t miss a beat does he??!?!?! And yes the drama in the audience is very distracting BUT that was their objective wasn’t it? Hopefully, Haters might venture through the videos also and get some new perspectives. Mainly, the truth, it is sooo obvious!

      Love to TEAM JODI AND JODI!!!!!!

  5. Hi everyone, I’m an old poster, back under a new name to be a cheerleader for fundraising. Now that we know from Jodi’s message (posted here 12/27) that she needs $250,000 for a private lawyer regardless of how the retrial turns out, it’s time for us to leap into action. Let’s make sure we don’t let her down now when she needs us most! Here are some thoughts on the task at hand.

    INDIVIDUAL ACTION: Jodi has at least several hundred declared supporters — but I don’t think it’s safe to assume she has more than that who are willing to do anything much. So a good working assumption is that she needs $1000 from the average supporter. Now this shouldn’t be such a big problem. It isn’t that hard for a typical American adult to come up with $1000 for something they really, really want. That’s less than $3/day, or $20/week, for one year. There are so many things you can do to raise or save that amount. Skip some restaurant meals, and eat at home or bring a lunch. Get books or movies from the library instead of buying them. Sell some of your old stuff. Get a temporary part-time job. Put it on your credit card! Everyone of average means should start thinking now about how they can best help get this job done.

    Of course, many Americans just can’t spare that much in a year. They may be single mothers barely able to feed and clothe their children. They may be retirees scraping by on Social Security. They may have gone bankrupt in the recent recession. To compensate for people who can’t contribute $1000, I suggest that supporters who are better off should make $2000 their goal instead. I will give that much myself this year, maybe more.

    GROUP ACTION: It would also be great to see groups forming to brainstorm fundraising ideas, then acting together on them. What could be a better job for a JAII Task Force than this?

    I’m sure many people will have better ideas than I do, but here’s one: “cold-call” letters to wealthy people. Not just any rich person. There’s probably a snowball’s chance in hell of getting money that way from, say, Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. But you can try to think of rich people who could have some special reason to care about Jodi’s case, which offers a hook to hang a personal appeal on.

    For example, I have a list of five female detective novelists that I’m going to write to (since they love to think about murder cases already), plus one rich guy who got screwed by the American legal system and is very vocal about it. For another angle, people reading this will have no trouble thinking of famous entertainers who have been victims of domestic violence or have spoken out about it. The Dixie Chicks are an example of the latter (“Goodbye Earl”). Another audience: lawyers in general, or defense lawyers in particular. If a supporter group could find a list of either and do a mass mailing of a well-written letter explaining how Jodi’s trial was a travesty of the legal system, that might pull in significant money.

    I’ll stop there, since what I most want is just to stimulate other people to think, talk, and act. Let’s get to work immediately! We don’t know when crunch time will come, but presumably it could be as soon as the end of the retrial, a few months from now. Remember: without a private lawyer, Jodi may never know another day of freedom, or even another day out of solitary if she gets a DP. So nothing — nothing! — is more important than fund-raising right now.

  6. I’m sorry Im so late in posting! I want to wish everyone here a Happy New Year and best wishes for 2014!
    I’ve been busy but my thoughts are with all of you and hope to participate more this year!!!!

    <3

  7. So did I dream it or did Someone tell the Bishop about Travis’s extra curricular activities? And did anyone interview the Bishop of this CHURCH? Or is that a nono?

    • You mean about the pedophilia? Or just the bad behavior in general? Supposedly he and Deanna went to their respective bishops about their bad behavior – but all we really know is that Deanna said she went to hers and Travis told her he’d gone to his. And there was that post on his MySpace cautioning him not to violate the terms of his probation.

      I don’t think there is *A* bishop for his church – I think there are several bishops, maybe sort of like Deans in a college, with certain people assigned to them.

      • Yes and also his sexual encounters with Jodi. If he had told the Bishop of his sins then he must have really be in very low standing with his Higher-uppities of his church. And, would not this have caused major conflict with someone else besides Jodi. . . would they not have wanted him dead (since he was not going by their rules) to save the face of his so called church?

        • Mimi tried to make it sound like the Bishops were loving and understanding but it is hard to believe. Just by the way these characters have acted. I have not seen the smallest amount of Love or Understanding from any of the people who have known Travis. They appear to be a Blood thirsty group of people.

        • OH, I imagine there were a number of people who might have had cause to do harm to Travis. He wasn’t above poaching other men’s wives.

          But honestly, R Love, I half suspect that behavior like Travis’ might not be so very frowned upon, or even thought to be out of the ordinary, within the male echelon of LDS. Those rules are there for the same reason they always were: to keep the women subservient.

          • It all just makes my stomach churn! Ugh! I just do not understand, our Poor Jodi! Bless her Mother’s heart! I’m sure her parents are beyond sick over this horrible mess.

  8. Hi, Team Jodi!!!

    You know, wouldn’t you think that since Mimi Hall had her Mom on the phone with her since she was afraid going over to Travis’s house to check on him because he had told her he had a stalker that she and others who met up with her at Travis’s would have been very cautious when entering the house? After all, if no one answered the door, how did they know that the stalker wouldn’t still be in the house? Also, after finding Travis dead, how did they know the stalker or killer/s weren’t still in the house, like in the other bedroom/s??? I think, after seeing Travis’s dead body, I wouldn’t have been so bold as to knock on another closed bedroom door??? Maybe whoever killed Travis is lurking in there, is what I would have wondered!!!! Hmmmmmmm?????????????

  9. The defense introducing their client as a “dirty little secret” was an opener that never sat right with me.
    I am dismayed, to say the least, that they went to that level of trashy, soap opera style rhetoric. It proved to be of NO assistance to Jodi. In fact, it was detrimental to her case because it tended to impute a reason for her to be very angry with him. Did Jodi THINK of HERSELF that way AT THE TIME? No, she did not.

    She thought of herself as his friend. She knew he was trying to hide what remained of the relationship to avoid conflict with certain of his friends, but their sexual activities had always been mostly a secret. So WHEN, exactly, did SHE – not only their sexual activities – become the “dirty little secret”?

    To refer to Jodi that way suggests that 1) She was always, in certain aspects, a secret, when, clearly, the relationship was initially out in the open, and 2) that Jodi somehow thought of herself that way and therefore was FULLY conscious and accepting of how TA was using her. Rather, she was too in love with him to see how much he wanted to take advantage of her.

    Her emails to him show that she wanted to be on an emotionally and morally level “playing field” with TA. Why else would she have shown up at his place on the way to see another man in Utah? It was because she knew they were BOTH moving on. She was not able to clearly see, however, the implications of his being upset about her moving on as well. Again, she could not fully understand the degree to which his feelings were conflicted about her, because she wanted to love him without judgement. But Jodi had no real interest in maintaining the half-baked relationship any further. It was something that she wanted to end, without ending the friendship. She was finally putting her feelings ahead of his, but that can be a dangerous thing to do in a relationship in which one has been reliably subservient.

    In representing Jodi, JW and KN could have made Jodi’s behaviors with respect to TA more palpable and vivid for the jury. By describing the defendant instead in that objectified manner, they only degraded her and set themselves up for failure as legal professionals. They needed to give themselves a firm foundation upon which to defend Jodi. The only way to have accomplished that in this case would been to have accurately made clear how Jodi’s position and her intentions manifested in the relationship in those final weeks and months, not to attribute to TA an imagined valuation of Jodi during some indefinite period of time. Their duty and obligation was to represent JODI, not TA. And they did him a disservice too, by, in effect, speaking for him, when they had no business doing that.

    I did not hear these opening arguments until weeks after the verdict. But if I had, I would have thought they lost it from the beginning, because they played into the same fractious virgin/whore mentality that seemed to consume TA. Jodi, having grown up in a different culture, simply did NOT fully grasp the importance of this mindset to TA nor its unlimited potential for destruction. How could she have understood that she would be in danger when she challenged that mentality by choosing to exit from a position of strength – that is, as a fully autonomous individual pursuing the same freedoms and choices that are available to men – when she had grown up in a completely different world?

    Jodi’s attorneys should have made it clear to the jury that Jodi was OUT OF HER DEPTH in Mesa, Arizona, NOT that she was somehow reveling in a sleazy posture without full awareness of her true feelings. She was aware of the gradually increasing degradation that was enveloping her. She KNEW how she felt. She had wanted to please TA, but her journal shows that she was getting tired of it. What she did not understand was how HE felt. So, to put it plainly, Jodi did not comprehend the “dirty little secret” mentality; therefore, it should not have been associated with her so blithely. Jodi should not be defined by it, and neither should this case.

    Jodi was frustrated, disappointed, and broke, but she did something about it. She moved back to Yreka. If she had really understood that it was going to take a very long time, if ever, for TA to accept her as an equal (for many reasons, not just that she was a woman) she would never have visited him in Mesa again. She would have only agreed to see him in Northern California – if at all – on her own turf.

    • whichtrial? ——— Very well explained post and I agree with you! I believe, also, that Jodi should have been presented, in opening statements, as a very credible, loving, and intelligent woman who loved Travis Alexander with all her heart and soul!!! After receiving info on PPL from someone and after looking over the info decided to go and check it out, therefore being at the wrong place at the wrong time, since this is where and when Travis Alexander noticed Jodi Arias, a beautiful woman, and approached her and introduced himself to her which is how the whole story began! I do really like Jennifer Willmott and believe, as a poster on next days postings stated, that she did and does have Jodi’s best interest at heart and does not want Jodi to get the death penalty and tried so very hard and did an excellent job to fight for Jodi! I just believe that sometimes you see your mistakes later (by, like you stated, whichtrial?, presenting Jodi in the wrong light as “Travis’s Dirty Little Secret” , which in Jodi’s case, was not a good way, at all, for Jodi to be presented to the jury!!!

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