Court in the Jodi Arias trial resumes Monday so let me play catch up. Well for a couple days last week, I appeared on HLN’s new show HLN After Dark: The Jodi Arias trial. If EVER there was a show that was meant for me, this was it. Each night, there is an in-studio jury of twelve that has to render a guilty or not guilty verdict on the “Bold Accusation” for the night. Last week I had to rule on “Jodi Showed No Remorse” and “Jodi Brought the Knife.”

“Jodi Showed No Remorse”

Wednesday night’s show focused on whether or not Jodi showed remorse for the killing of Travis Alexander. Well if you’ve followed the trial you will remember the sequence of events. After Jodi stabbed, shot, and severed the head of Travis Alexander, she drove to the home of Ryan Burns, a guy she was also dating at the time. She sat, chatted, kissed and fondled with this man until she was satisfied and then went home and back to her life. According to Jodi, she doesn’t remember what happened after she shot Travis Alexander. She remembers becoming lucid in her car in the desert, with blood all over her hands which she washed off with a pack of Costco water she kept in the trunk. She remembers changing into a spare pair of shoes, dumping the rope in a dumpster, chucking the knife in the desert, and then going to Ryan Burns’ house. That clearly doesn’t show remorse. She didn’t call the police, or a girlfriend, or family member and report that something horrible had happened. She didn’t drive back to Travis’ house to figure out what she may have done (if you believe the story that she blacked out and has no memory). She kept going so that she could play kissy face with her new beau.
When Jodi is finally questioned and arrested, she asked if she could see the pictures of the crime scene. WHO DOES THAT?! She said it was a bit of “morbid curiosity”. That doesn’t sound like remorse to me. That sounds narcissistic and cray cray. You shot him in the head, slit his throat, and destroyed his back with a steak knife. And now you want to see it? Oh ok then.
Even while standing trial for her life (this is a death penalty case), Jodi still finds it hard to show remorse. Her cries are only seen when she is trapped in her web of lies and they are being unraveled by the prosecution. Juan Martinez, the lead prosecutor, had Jodi Arias pinned in a corner Bernard Hopkins-style and she hung head, flung her poorly trimmed hair into her face, and sobbed through his questions about the moments the murder occurred. But even for all her whimpers and all the balled up tissues she used to quell her “sniff, sniff”, we rarely, if ever, saw real tears stream down her face. You loved a man whom you shot, stabbed, and killed, and you aren’t wailing? You aren’t hunched over in the physical pain that your emotion is causing? Well Jodi isn’t. The one time in court I can recall her showing real emotion, with the requisite red eyes, and wet, salty tears, is when they were talking about a dog. A dog. Well hopefully PETA can pay for half of her defense.
“Jodi Brought The Knife”

Thursday night’s show focused on whether or not Jodi brought the knife used to kill Travis or if she got it from Travis’ house. Jodi Arias alleges that part of the sex games they played the day he was killed included her being tied to his bed with rope. According to Jodi, Travis tied a noose on each end and she slipped each hand in and was tied to the bed. She doesn’t remember picking up the knife but alleges that it must have been near her in the bedroom or in the bathroom as he used it to cut the rope from around her wrists. She also has a memory of putting a knife in the dishwasher but doesn’t remember where that memory comes from. Convenient. The evidence shows the following:

1) No rope was found at the scene.
2) No knives were missing from Travis’ knife block in the kitchen.
3) The knife block also had a pair of scissors, still in place.

So where did Jodi get the knife? I believe Jodi took the knife from her grandmother’s house, the same day she took the .25 caliber gun she used to kill Travis. Jodi’s grandmother left home one day about a week before the murder around 10am, leaving Jodi in the house alone until early afternoon. Grandmother returns home around 3:30pm to find the house burglarized and the gun missing. How many people, once they count their valuables, go to the kitchen to count the silverware after a robbery? Not many. And there has been no evidence presented about the processing of the scene at the grandmother’s house and whether or not the knife could be from her house. And while I’d like to blame shoddy police work by local police, I don’t think it would matter because we don’t even know what the gun looked like because Jodi threw it out into the desert, along with the gun, when she “came to”. So we can’t match it up to Grandma’s knife set. We could only approximate by determining if she had knives that would make a similar stab wound (depth, width, etc). Nevertheless, I don’t believe there was a rope to cut! There was no rope found and Jodi doesn’t know what she did with the rope or if she took it at all. And if there was no rope, there was no knife needed to cut it. Also, if Travis needed to cut this alleged rope, why wouldn’t he use the kitchen scissors in the same knife block instead of sawing away at it with a steak knife?

Photo evidence showing no knifes missing from knife block in Travis Alexander’s kitchen.

Plain and simple Jodi brought that knife. The question is can the prosecution prove it? Luckily its not the main issue in the case and her conviction won’t turn it on it BUT it is important when we get to the penalty phase of this trial because IF she brought the knife it can be considered an aggravating factor when assessing the death penalty.

I had a great experience on HLN After Dark this week! I was even able to share the stage with my good friend Trisha who I have Casey Anthony to thank for bringing us together. I promise it won’t be the last time you will see me so keep watching!