Trial Day 31 – March 14th, 2013 [REPLAY]

45 Comments

1. Juan accusing Dr. Richard Samuels of having a lust for Jodi. Where did that come from?

   First to comment today!

   • ”I beg your pardon , sir? ”
     I REALLY loved the way Dr Samuels stressed its word and composed himself. He proved he’s a gentleman and a professional even when shit like Martinez try to smear him.

     That was one of the most ridiculously outraging moments of the trial. I would have spitted on his ugly face! (that’s what Greeks do when the other person says dishonorable things about them LOL. It feels sooooo good, trust me)

     • I’ve come to the conclusion that Travis’ supporters believe that men are powerless to do anything but follow their d*cks through life. That’s why ‘poor Travis’ became Jodi’s helpless victim, and of course it can be the ONLY reason why any man could support Jodi, the ONLY reason why the jury couldn’t get a unanimous DP verdict.

       They call us ‘man-haters’ when they’re the ones who don’t have a very high opinion of men.

       • Marvelous point, Journee!

         • And I think this ‘helpless men’ attitude is the flip side of the same coin that portrays Jodi as this all powerful femme fatale. In this case Jodi is so powerful that she is able to beguile any man who even just lays eyes on her. (“Burn this witch who threatens my world!”, the women scream.)

       • This speaks profoundly about what’s going on at the deepest levels of this drama. The misogyny we are seeing is just the tip of what lurks in the collective subconscious of our 21st Century society. The illogical and backward thinking used to convict a woman is nothing less than pathological. And note that the biggest portion seems to be coming from other women, which is actually logical since the subconscious minds of the group who held the power turned women against each other many millennia ago. And each new generation has reinforced that attitude so that those with power could maintain power and those without the power, given no other choices, could survive.

         The good thing that could come from all this sorrow (with a lot of effort on a lot of folk’s part) is that Jodi’s story may ultimately be the impetus to bring these attitudes about women (by both men and women) to the surface to be thoroughly examined in the light of day. Without even having intended,
         Jodi may end up being the Rosa Parks in women’s struggle to be treated equally (and viewed with equal standards) at all levels of society.

         • I agree with your assessments here, Justus, about how this case has resonated on the deepest levels of misogyny in today’s collective unconsciousness, and that Jodi might possibly be seen one day as Rosa Parks was: Not giving in to the “3/5ths of a person” lie.

           The big issue of this case is the human rights question of whether a woman truly has an equal right to defend herself against a man as any man has – and without going into a lot of detail, I will say it is very significant that most of the Jodi bashers on HLN have been women, (some even from the DV community) and that obvious fact made it alright, in many people’s minds, to join in on the pile-on. If all of those broadcasters had been men, doctor DP would NEVER have come up with the unmitigated, awful BS he’s put out about Jodi. He wouldn’t have had the nerve.

         • Jodi needs to write a book about the experience of being put on trial for first degree murder Justus Forusall. Perhaps the title should be ” A Nation Mislead.” Jodi could very well think of something better too.

           • I’ve made this suggestion to Jodi and I hope that it someday happens. I like your title, but here’s my suggestion: “The Law Of Fatal Attraction”.

             • I dunno – I think ‘Fatal Attraction’ got thrown around the media too much in this trial. This was a real tragedy for a lot of people, and using a popular movie title diminished it – helped HLN and their ilk turn it into ‘entertainment.’

               • I bet you could think of a good title too Journee.

               • I thought about it over the past couple of days and this is what I came up with: “Presumed Guilty”.

               • Jose Baez beat you to “Presumed Guilty”, Jeff – that was the title of the book about Casey.

             • Good one Jeff!

               • “SALEM, EAST OF THE I-15
                 A 21st Century American Tragedy”

                 The oblique reference to Theodore Dreiser is intentional.

       • Journee, isn’t that sad and sexist? The notion that any man who supports Jodi is doing it only because they think she’s hot?

         • Sadder still, frightening even, this notion that men just can’t help themselves and therefore can’t be blamed for, er, helping themselves. That’s how we get adults – parents/teachers/coaches – coming to the defense of male athletes/frat boys for gang-raping young girls.

           • Journee, you are so spot on with this!!! So true! Or blaming the victims for getting drunk at a party or dressing provocatively with the ole she put herself in that situation so she deserves what she gets mentality.I also think some of the men who hate Jodi do so because they perceive any woman who kills a man as pure evil but their thinking is about their own perceptions and beliefs about woman and subservience. They feel threatened knowing that can happen in life and demonize jodi because of fear. MB used to write some great posts about this concept and it’s rooted in feminist theory. ARG!!! I’m not MB. do you remember some of her posts about this? I’m not explaining it well. Maybe I can try and find some that explain it better.

             • MB was such an eloquent intelligent knowledgeable poster. She had so much insight in so many different issues.

               I truly honestly miss her and if she’s reading this I want to tell her that it would be awesome if she came back to us.

               (((((( MB ♥ ))))))))

               • (((( SHOUT OUT TO MB from JAII – WE MISS YOU))))

             • Can’t tell you how many conversations I had at HuffPo with people who insisted that Travis was just a ‘normal guy’ – a ‘player’, sure, but that doesn’t mean he deserved murder. Well, ok, many men do behave that way, but honorable men do not. And messing with people’s emotions may not make a person worthy of murder, but it might get them killed anyway.

               And you’re right about the guys – guys who saw their own behavior in Travis’ did NOT like seeing what that behavior could get them. They have every right, they say, to take what a woman is giving away and then walk away. And the women agree with them.

               • It seems that that is how Jodi saw it, though, that they both had a right to take what each other was giving sexually – and then not actually “walk away”, but be FRIENDS – maybe not end up together, but be friends nonetheless, in a manner similar to how she was still friends with Daryl and Matt. Their loyalty to her provided her with a point of reference. She neither understood nor anticipated any need for TA to mischaracterize her publicly, other than to pretend that they weren’t intimate physically. She did not comprehend until after she returned to Yreka that something was severely afflicted in TA’s willingness to stand by her socially even as just a friend.

                 She makes this plain in one of her emails to him after she moves back to Yreka – that she wants to be respected as a friend because, for one thing, she creatively contributes to his life in a positive manner. She is beginning to sense though, that there is some darkness enveloping the relationship when she realizes that he could have mentioned her assistance to his writing project but attributes nothing to her in the acknowledgements. Here, their friendship is put to a test, and it fails. He thanks one woman, but not her, though Jodi’s contributions were equal to or greater than that of the other friend. When he tells Jodi that she “knows” he can’t let it out that she worked on the piece, it begins to dawn on her that something is unfair in how he outwardly represents her, yet how he publicly defines the relationship is still unknown to Jodi.

                 So now she has an inkling that her prospects for how they will proceed socially are probably different from his. The dawning must have stripped away some of her illusion that the relationship was healthy to any degree. At that point, however, Jodi had formulated no plan to sever TA from her life completely. Her personal life strategy was to try to normalize the relationship by putting some distance between them and then, move forward by dating other men without TA’s interference. Jodi’s writings and the recorded phone conversation demonstrate that she hoped to continue openly as friends after they’d both moved on to other relationships.

                 She was motivated at the end of May 2008 to see him again to solidify their future social bond, but at that point, she was genuinely mystified as to why he wanted to keep even the non-sexual aspects of their friendship a secret. It simply didn’t make sense to her, (especially as she had moved one thousand miles north), but neither did his angry outbursts. She was in a state of confusion. Relocating to Yreka had alleviated some of her distress, though she continued to be drained emotionally by the ups and downs in their long-distance contact. Nonetheless, she only looked to herself for explanations. Again, her state of mind is evident in her writing, spelled out in diary notations.

                 Jodi eventually explains to Flores during one of their table interviews that she’d had problems keeping a job in Mesa – and had never before had difficulty holding a job. It is evident that her strained feelings about her relationship with TA had been tied up with feelings of failure in her sales position and in her inability to consistently make money, even as a waitress. She doesn’t seem to have pursued her photography business much, if at all, in Mesa. Jodi was not assessing her relationship with TA and its negative effects on her self-esteem clearly because she was overwhelmed with the very real priorities of trying to improve her financial condition and job status. She was still in her twenties then, a tumultuous time for many people as they date and pursue new careers. So, in returning to Yreka, her most important short-term goal had obviously been to simply establish herself again as a productive person in her own right. She wanted to take responsibility for her life, not blame her situation on TA or Daryl. Thus, she had secured another waitress job in Yreka and scheduled several photography jobs before taking another break from work.

                 Jodi had been new to Mesa’s social sphere and had not grown up with strict religious codes about chastity. This case illustrates the clash of different worlds, and how varied social attitudes served to individually influence both Jodi and TA. Bearing this schism in mind, it is crucial to understand that Jodi never fully digested the degree to which TA sought to obscure his behavior with her and with other women. She had only known that he wanted to keep their sexual trysts private. There was no understanding on her part that he was denigrating her to the extent that he was within his own social milieu. Therefore she had the reasonable expectation that insults or maltreatment from TA were momentary outbursts that should also have been private. And, since she kept silent about the volatility of their relationship and spoke well of him, she had reason, based (at least partly) on a shared belief in “The Law of Attraction”, to believe that TA was doing the same.

                 Hence, in 2008 Jodi would not have experienced the full force of the humiliation that must have felt to her like cold acid rain during the trial, when she finally realized the totality of what we can all see now.

                 The alleged “motive” attributed to Jodi to premeditate TA’s demise, which is based on “jealousy” and/or “feelings of humiliation” needs to be looked at more carefully by another jury. The same legal test that is frequently put to witnesses in cases of fraud or even in the case of abuse of executive power by a head of state should also apply to Jodi’s trial: What did she know and when did she know it?

                 Jodi was not cognizant of the fact that TA was playing the same card in the greater world with respect to her that he continued to play in his representations about Deanna: That card that said she was obsessed with him – “a jealous stalker”. Setting the stage in this manner, he could appear chaste and available to other women while Deanna was still a part of his everyday life. And Jodi was effectively muzzled by their own sexual secrecy. She had no effective way to determine whether or not certain things he said about Deanna were true. Nor did Jodi know that Mimi was to be TA’s (chaperoned) companion on the Cancun trip, though TA had said to Jodi that he might like to marry her.

                 Jodi did not know and could not have known of the many convoluted efforts TA made to keep her (and Deanna) “in the picture”. The entire picture was “not televised”. It was unavailable for her scrutiny, but Jodi could appreciate the positive expressions of affection he made to her directly. She came to crave that affection and sweet talk because it had the sweeping power to momentarily cancel low feelings that the insults had produced. Yet she remained unaware of the extent to which even more insults had been broadcast. If she had known of them, she would have cried to her father on the phone more than just once. And her father would have had a chance to guide her in a more protective manner.

                 Jodi simply could not have resented what was purposefully kept from her considered awareness. And if she had been “obsessed” with TA romantically when she returned to Yreka, she would not have invested any time in Ryan Burns at all, not even through phone calls or text messages. If she’d been obsessed with TA at that point, unable to really move on, she would have found reasons to talk about TA with Ryan, even if just to gush about what a great guy he was from a professional standpoint. After all, Ryan knew she’d had a relationship with TA in the past, and testified that TA himself had been a key motivator for his own success. But Jodi and he did not discuss that relationship beyond a brief mention, as Ryan would later testify in court.

               • Great in-depth analysis, whichtrial.

               • Excellent post, Journee! I couldn’t agree more.

         • Journee & Alexis, yes it’s truely sad.

     • The way Dr. Samuels presented himself when he made the statement “I beg your pardon, sir” even furthermore indicated to the veiwers that Juan pulled that from out of nowhere Maria.

       • That is true Journee.

       • Seemed to be pulled from the “Witch Hunt” playbook.

         • Lol whichtrial.

   • It’s the same, failed argument that most anti-Jodi people try to use to explain why men support Jodi. “You only do so because you want her for a booty call!” *yawn* Next.

2. Good morning SJ!

3. Happy Friday Peeps!

   Here’s today’s song to get your day (and your weekend) started
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJJYpsA5tv8

   SJ
   Team Jodi

   • Darnit! It says that this video can’t be played in my country.

4. Good song to listen to for the first time.

   • Hi Ryan,

     Cool! I’m glad YouTube eventually let you watch it.
     Which country are you in?

     SJ
     Team Jodi

     • I am getting the same message – US

     • I am in the United States SJ. I believe you are from England or somewhere in the United Kingdom?

       • Hi Ryan!

         Yes, I’m in that region. Hopefully the next video links will play ok.

         SJ
         Team Jodi

5. Sj I’m having the same issue…

   Oh Maria…I am right there with you and I’m not Greek. What a low life scrum bag of crap.

6. this is same song but link works http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNbZJ-IgAEg

7. (Since it’s Friday and we are putting up songs for the weekend 🙂 )
   I was listening to this old Mariah Carey song today and thought how much it fits Jodi’s story:

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IA3ZvCkRkQ

   • Great song, Maria!

8. It appears the ”Perjury” petition is doing very good! YAY! More than 3,000 people have signed but we do need more.Share it with your friends and family. C’mooooooon Team Jodi! 🙂

   (I know it’s in the Petitions section but I’m gonna paste it here anyhow)

   https://www.change.org/petitions/arizona-governor-jan-brewer-order-an-investigate-into-perjury-committed-during-the-jodi-arias-trial

   • Great petition. I signed it. I’m asking my family to do so as well. Thanks maria for posting 🙂 We should keep posting too.

   • Done!

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