Jennifer Willmott - Page 10

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Morning peeps!

As positive momentum starts to build once again over the injustice in the Jodi Arias trial, check out a few excerpts below from the excellent “All Things Crime“ blog – then click here to read the post in full. It’s well worth reading.

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The Infamous Trial of Candy Crush, by Lise LaSalle:

Strange that at times with our Criminal Justice system, we wonder on what side the real unrepentant criminal is.

On December 10, 2012, the circus/trial of Jodi Arias started in Maricopa County Superior Court.

I refer to Arias as Candy Crush because throughout her trial, a string of Mormon/PPL (Prepaid Legal now Legal Shield) men referred to her in the media as ‘having a stripper vibe’. And a stripper needs a good stage name before the show/trial can go on.

It was easy to come up with a name; she had become an addiction for the nation not unlike the Candy Crush game and candies like Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks were an inherent part of the cheap mystique floating around her sex games.

As an attractive lady who was considered eye candy most of her life and used as such by Travis Alexander, the name could not have suited her any better. And let’s face it, not many people cared enough to find out who she truly was anyway. So Candy Crush was born and the game began!

Having worked in courtrooms for years as an Interpreter, I had to listen carefully to what was said in these sacred rooms and learn to be an instrument of communication without taking sides. I had to interpret the words of a defendant without trying to make him/her look better or worse. This is how I approached Arias’ trial.

From the very beginning of the trial, with Judge Sherry K. Stephens at the helm, prosecutor Martinez showed he was going to play hard ball. During jury selection, he was trying to ‘’systematically exclude’’ women and African-Americans. Knowing how some Arizona residents despise Mexicans, the fact that Arias was of Mexican descent probably convinced him to also eschew Mexican jurors.

And then entered Juan Martinez; the prosecutor who was accused of prosecutorial misconduct countless times and who was known to play fast and loose with the truth. When he walked into the courtroom, it felt like Apocalypse Now and Juan ‘loved the smell of death penalty in the morning.’ He came across as a sadist who did not give a damn about the truth.

I had never witnessed such a legal fiasco while working as a court Interpreter and the trials I had watched on TV, always had order in the court with a judge running a tight ship.

As a juror, I would have been flabbergasted by some of the whoppers I heard. Detective Flores, who had conducted the original interview with Arias and sat at the table like a dummy throughout the trial, had said countless times that Travis had been shot first and stabbed afterwards. But, as it did not fit Martinez’s strategy to introduce the cruelty factor in order to qualify for the death penalty, he did a switcheroo. Now Travis had been shot last by Jodi in a final sadistic ‘Sayonara’.

The problem is that medical examiner Dr. Kevin Horn had told Flores that Travis was shot first and it was written in his report that Travis’s brain’s Dura matter had not been perforated, meaning that the bullet had stayed in the sinus cavity. Which meant he was conscious and wrestling with Jodi.

Conveniently, the Judge, the prosecutor and the medical examiner changed the order of the crime so it would fit their scenario. When asked by the defense attorney about his report, Dr. Horn said it was a typo. I could not believe my ears.

In my opinion, the best defense witness was psychologist Dr. Robert Geffner. His experience and testimony were unsurpassed and he explained the defense argument with brilliance. The weakest prosecution witness was psychologist Dr. Janeen DeMarte who had no experience whatsoever in domestic violence and was too green for the type of assessment asked of her. But by all accounts, the jury went with her version and totally resisted anything the experienced experts had to say. It showed the prejudice that prevailed in this case…….

.Click here to read the post in full.

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Leave your thoughts & comments below…

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

Make no mistake.

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!

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Check out the post below from RF, which I thought was more than worthy as a main post in the site.

Here it is:

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In defense of Jodi:

1) How could a person aspirate blood spatter into a sink from knife wounds to the back, or from a wound to the back of the neck? And how could blood spatter of some velocity appear on and around the toilet?

The angle of the gunshot wound is consistent with Jodi’s story of T charging her and falling into her from a “takedown” position when the gun went off, accidentally discharging. If she had sneaked up on him in a premeditated fashion, that sink and toilet blood spatter would be in the shower, or on his bed pillow, where she would have shot him in his sleep. Instead, the wound occurs in such a way as to spatter during, not before, T’s fall to the floor.

Given the disparity of their physical sizes, Jodi would not have premeditated a disorganized attack such as the one the evidence irrefutably shows.

It was well known, moreover, that the deceased had a fighting, i.e. wrestling background. But let’s get back to the hard, physical evidence.

Given the angle of the gunshot wound, it would have been impossible for Jodi to have shot T after he was re-positioned in the shower after the fight. The right side of his head was not presented to her. She would have had to shoot his left side, but clearly, SHE DID NOT.

2) How could the many cuts on T’s back prove premeditation? Do they suggest instead an attempt to flee?

Learning that the purported stab wounds on T’s back, under proper forensic scrutiny, are described instead as less mortal slash wounds, and knowing how numerous they were, and seeing that the fight extended into the hallway/bedroom area, the evidence points in the direction of a defensive fight on Jodi’s part, not an offensive one with murderous intent. The area over which the fight took place suggests as well an attempt by Jodi to flee by the bedroom door.

3) Why did Jodi run into the closet and grab a weapon?

The fact that Ms. Arias was unable to flee by the bedroom door and that somehow the fight became a mortal one not far from that exit, supports her significant claim that she feared she would not be successful in using that door to escape after T had initially attacked her with the body slam to the bathroom floor. Thus J’s choices to flee T by running into the closet the very first time she ran from him, and her impulse to grab the weapon she was fairly certain was still on the closet shelf, are logical in hindsight.

The gunshot had to have come first to account for the bathroom blood spatter, since the knife fight resulting in T’s demise ended in the hallway or bedroom. The spatter on and around the toilet is consistent with Jodi’s story of the gunshot occurring as T was lunging toward her in a “takedown” that resulted in both of them landing on the floor. If she had planned the gunshot, the blood would not have spattered near and on the toilet, i.e. in those lower areas of the bathroom, outside of the shower.

After the gunshot, the evidence points to T’s having gone to the sink and mirror to see where the blood was coming from. The autopsy report, absent Dr. Horn’s later oral contradictions, does not describe an incapacitating wound. Blood from the sinus area had to have been coughed out to create the type of aspirated spatter visible on the side of the sink. The sink spatter is more evidence that the gunshot was NOT incapacitating.

Somewhere upon rising from the floor, Jodi begins to have no memory formation. This is his second attack upon her; her brain is no longer functioning correctly by this point. We don’t know exactly who reached for the knife first.

What is very probable:

The slash wounds on T’s back are the types of wounds a person would inflict if trying to free themselves from another person’s grip, bear hug, or pinned-down position, but without intending to make the effort to inflict life-threatening knife thrusts. The deeper wound on the back of the neck, in all likelihood, was made by J in a desperate attempt to break free, and also likely to be the one that resulted in her being able to take those few successful steps toward the bedroom door. So that deeper cut in the back of T’s neck above the shoulder could account for the continuation of the fight further down the hall – and a pursuit.

4) What supports Jodi’s claim that she felt threatened enough to grab a gun and point it at T?

She states that T became infuriated that she dropped his camera; that he picked her up and body slammed her to the bathroom floor because of this. In picking Jodi up and flinging her in such a manner, he would have completely overpowered her, so for a few seconds, during the lift and slam, Jodi would have experienced no liberty whatsoever. She would have been completely and utterly at his mercy of his fury.

5) What proof is there that she ever dropped the camera? What proof, in other words, is there, that (according to Mr. Nurmi), “something went wrong” and that someone over-reacted to the mishap?

The PROOF that she DROPPED the camera is in the PHOTOGRAPH of the CEILING. The camera obviously slipped from her grasp as she PUSHED THE SHUTTER button.

There IS ample proof that the fight was disorganized and unplanned. The chaos evidently begins with the photo evidence of the ceiling.

The Prosecutor was successful in presenting the evidence in this case in such a way that the jury took their eyes off the ball. Like a good orchestra conductor, he emphasized the notes and the tone that he wanted the audience to hear, nonetheless his case against Jodi was and remains UNSUCCESSFUL because his narrative is NOT CONSISTENT with the EVIDENCE.

That the “Finders of Fact” – the jury – accepted his fractured narrative while the defense team effectively countered the prosecution’s version of events every step of the way is proof that the case against Jodi was supported and bolstered from the emotions that were constantly injected into the case in the courtroom and from outside sources, such as HLN.

A close look at the evidence AT the scene provides reasonable doubt that Jodi planned any of it, so the prosecution “dumped it”, that is, the scene itself, instead concentrating on circumstantial “evidence” leading up to the fight. To reach back to Jodi’s life at the age of say, ten, in the fifth grade, was just par for the prosecution’s course. In AZ, trying a death penalty case on circumstantial evidence works just fine, apparently, even in the presence of evidence that refutes the circumstantial “story”.

Even in presenting the case as a circumstantial one, the prosecution created more distractions; they had to, since no piece of that evidence makes a whit of probative sense taken by itself. Thus, the steady creep of hearsay and gossip into the state’s case, and the need for the defense to introduce text messages and emails to counter same.

6) Did the prosecution prove that Jodi “knew” that T was taking another girl to Cancun or that she cared one way or the other?

Of course not. And why has imputing so many EMOTIONS to Jodi been so necessary to “win” this conviction? An interpretation of the evidence at the scene should be paramount; judicious procedure should not be “dumped”. The forensic crime scene evidence was ditched because it tells the wrong story for the prosecution. This should not have happened; but clear-minded people do see that an injustice has been done.

Ironically, when HLN takes a break from its soap opera “news” reports on current cases and celebrities, it broadcasts the crime show “Murder By The Book”, which consists of documentary-style reports on forensically solved “textbook” cases.

So the truth is that (and not that this would seem to particularly bother anyone in charge at that network) Jodi’s conviction would not survive the forensic scrutiny it would be subject to in order to qualify for coverage by the HLN crime TV show, “Murder By The Book”.

I want to thank geebee, Journee, and Maria R. for their contributions to this site, because without their input, this post would not exist.

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Thanks to RF for the post.

In the meantime — and while we wait for the AZ State Circus to return to town again — always remember…

WE ARE TEAM JODI – AND WE WILL BE VICTORIOUS in our quest for JUSTICE FOR JODI.

Make no mistake.

Leave your thoughts & comments below.

SJ
Team Jodi