**Graphic and adult content**Jodia Arias Trial Discussion #7

shiloh42 said:

I think a lot of the controversy tonight is that we are all very curious people who want to understand exactly what happened. But I'm not sure it really matters in the long run. I just hope the jury doesn't get as hung up on this one point as this group is, because if that happens: disaster.

Click to expand...

Please explain what you mean 'disaster'. Do you think there is any way a jury can find her not guilty? Or are you talking about the degree of murder she will be found for? I am not sure what would happen if she is found not guilty of premeditated. What would be the difference. Would it be murder in another degree or what? I really don't know. tia

LambChop said:

I, too, believe if the bullet did not immediately bring him down he would have been able to subdue her and protect himself. So it can't be both ways. If he were still able to move and knew he was being attacked I believe he would have easily overpowered her and gotten the gun from her.

We know he tried to get the knife away from her and that the heart wound was fatal within minutes. So if he had been shot first and she stabbed him in the heart it's not likely he would have made it down the hall to the bedroom. And I believe he was able to make it all the way to the bedroom because JA went to get the gun wherever she had it hidden. jmo

Click to expand...

But all the wounds would have been fatal within a couple minutes. This whole thing only lasted 1 minute 15 seconds which is why I think it makes it very hard to sequence.

I would love the DP for her....but AZ is not very fast with their executions. Not CA slow....we had six last year, the most recent one last month, but we are slow-ish. I am still waiting for Frank Atwood's time to be up......I was a little kid when he harmed a little girl but my dad watched the news religiously and i remember in my little kid mind being so scared that he would come after me.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

LambChop said:

We know he tried to get the knife away from her {snipped for space}

Click to expand...

Actually no, we don't know that. We know he had defensive wounds on his hands, front and back and he obviously tried to protect himself, but whether he tried to get the knife away from her (versus shielding himself) is speculation.

Karmady said:

It got kicked there after the fact? Or it fell from the towel it landed on originally when the towel was used to try and clean up. Idk. I'm just not convinced it's impossible based on a pristine casing. I'm interested in seeing what the defense expert has to say about the order of things, if anything. Not sure it helps the defense, so maybe they won't say anything at all about it.

I'm not tyring to convince anyone to agree with this theory, btw. The more I think about it, though, the more plausible it is to my mind.

Click to expand...

LambChop said:

Okay, what experience is it that tells you the ME is only guessing????

Click to expand...

Oh geeze I should have known this would come back at me...there are many gun shot wounds to the head and people live. I'm not sure how to articulate this but to say this ME said that decomp played a roll that he wasnt sure of, so therefore he had to go based on an EDUCATED guess. After all he hasent experienced this himself so he has to go on what? Still be sure of my position that she is guilty I just can't see JA overpowering TA with a knife IF he saw it coming so ALL I'm saying is gun shot first. NOT JA innocent!

mck16 said:

Please explain what you mean 'disaster'. Do you think there is any way a jury can find her not guilty? Or are you talking about the degree of murder she will be found for? I am not sure what would happen if she is found not guilty of premeditated. What would be the difference. Would it be murder in another degree or what? I really don't know. tia

Click to expand...

If not 1st degree murder, then it would be 2nd degree. She'll still go away for a long, long time, but with 2nd degree she would someday (decades later) be able to apply for parole.

IMO the bullet trajectory was easy to establish. The ME takes a stick, inserts it into the entry wound, and lines it up with where it landed.

The ME was unable to produce his dissected brain tissue as it was mush.

Bullets don't magically curve around to miss brain matter. I don't care how many times or ways the defense claims otherwise.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

princesspjs said:

Of course I can say that with 100% certainty.

The mere fact that the ME admits that he can not see the exact place that the bullet went through his brain shows that he can not know what effect it had on Travis 100%. He might know with 95% or even 99% certainty but, that leaves room for error.

Click to expand...

Only another ME could conclude with 100% certainty that he does not know the exact path of that bullet. My husband was a police detective and he attended a few autopsies and he said he was amazed at what they can determine about the path of a bullet. So I'm inclined to believe the good doctor when he said the path went right threw TA's brain in an area that would have affected his motion. Unless there was a space between his skull and that portion of the brain the bullet had to go through I don't see how it is possible not to have damage from a bullet wound. It obviously did a lot of damage if that portion of his brain was like mush. jmo

LambChop said:

Only another ME could conclude with 100% certainty that he does not know the exact path of that bullet. My husband was a police detective and he attended a few autopsies and he said he was amazed at what they can determine about the path of a bullet. So I'm inclined to believe the good doctor when he said the path went right threw TA's brain in an area that would have affected his motion. Unless there was a space between his skull and that portion of the brain the bullet had to go through I don't see how it is possible not to have damage from a bullet wound. It obviously did a lot of damage if that portion of his brain was like mush. jmo

Click to expand...

His whole brain was mush due to decomposition


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

johunt said:

Oh geeze I should have known this would come back at me...there are many gun shot wounds to the head and people live. I'm not sure how to articulate this but to say this ME said that decomp played a roll that he wasnt sure of, so therefore he had to go based on an EDUCATED guess. After all he hasent experienced this himself so he has to go on what? Still be sure of my position that she is guilty I just can't see JA overpowering TA with a knife IF he saw it coming so ALL I'm saying is gun shot first. NOT JA innocent!

Click to expand...

I have to go back and read the me's testimony. I watched it and I swear I do not remember him saying any of the above. I will go back and read because I am not sure. thanks.

Madeleine74 said:

If not 1st degree murder, then it would be 2nd degree. She'll still go away for a long, long time, but with 2nd degree she would someday (decades later) be able to apply for parole.

Click to expand...

IIRC - the second charge is feloney murder and i think after reading it, it means she killed during a commission of a crime - imo

yes here are charges that were posted on HLN
Charges: 1 count of premeditated 1st-degree murder or the alternative of felony murder

here is a link to read az felony murder statute
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_rule_(Arizona)

shiloh42 said:

The reason I think they were taken w/o his permission is that she didn't use the flash on so many of them. Also the were poorly framed, badly composed, and taken from weird angles which don't look good. If he was posing for them, they'd have been better. jmo

Click to expand...

Or she's just a really bad photographer...

Or taking photos wasn't on her mind, murder was.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

johunt said:

Oh geeze I should have known this would come back at me...there are many gun shot wounds to the head and people live. I'm not sure how to articulate this but to say this ME said that decomp played a roll that he wasnt sure of, so therefore he had to go based on an EDUCATED guess. After all he hasent experienced this himself so he has to go on what? Still be sure of my position that she is guilty I just can't see JA overpowering TA with a knife IF he saw it coming so ALL I'm saying is gun shot first. NOT JA innocent!

Click to expand...

He did not say the wound would have instantly killed TA. The ME stated it would have prevented him from movement such as protecting himself from defensive wounds and he would have been in shock and not capable of attack her much less defend himself. I believe that is what he said.

I wouldn't say it was an educated guess, I would say TA was a live, functioning person so the brain was intact when he was shot and the area the bullet passed through would have left him unable to function normally. The ME knows this for a fact which he clearly told defense. She tried to say he did not know for sure and he corrected her and he said he most certainly did know what path the bullet took without the brain matter present. jmo

I want to listen to the ME's testimony again. Has anyone posted/got the link? I heard it when he testified, but I'd like to hear it again and don't remember what day it was.

Folks we are on the same page JA is guilty as charged as the evidence so far has proven. It doesn't matter what happened first. We each are have an opinion of how things played out but we are all in agreement with her guilt!

My personal feeling on why she used the knife first to attack Travis...

The plunging of a knife through her lover's naked, wet skin and into his body was as personal a way to kill him as there is.

In a sense, she was finally 'penetrating' him. She would have eaten him alive if it had been possible, she was so consumed by her obsession with him. She may have even perceived a morbid sense of intimacy with him in this death struggle.

I think she sliced his throat to silence his screams. She plunged that knife in so deep, and ripped it across his neck with so much fierce strength, she almost took his head off.

Pulling him back down the hallway and into the bathroom, and then shooting him in the head was done simply out of panic, I think. She had no way of knowing if his prior screams had been heard, and if outsiders may soon be busting down the door. In her fantasies of killing him, she probably never anticipated the noise.

I don't think the blood and gore bothered her very much. I do believe her fear was of getting caught. Anyone looking to buy her a birthday present should just send her blown up pictures of Travis' autopsy photos to wallpaper her cell room walls. I bet she would never tire of viewing them.

I think that with his death, by her own hands, she finally felt she 'owned' Travis, forever. And, also in his death, she exacted her revenge for a love unreciprocated. Like a 21st Century Betty Broderick. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned", and all that. She knew she was losing him. She'd rather have him dead than not have have him at all.

I think she "brought the gun to a knife fight" because it was her insurance policy and her back up plan. If things got too out of control, she'd just shoot him. Like she did, in the end.

Who knows? Maybe the gun was her way of making sure he let her in his house.

here is the premediated first degree murder
http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=1362

princesspjs said:

I have explained my thoughts to you a couple of times now. You are either not reading what I'm writing or you just don't understand what I am saying.

In any case, it doesn't matter on way or another so I'm done with this discussion.

Click to expand...

I understand perfectly what you are trying to say. I just want to know if you have experience in the medical field in this area. We do have nurses and ME assistants here that have had some experience in these areas and their input is often very valuable.

Before I'm ready to discredit the ME I'd like someone with some type of expertise to prove the doctor is wrong. The experts who have spoken up in this thread so far agree with the doctor. If someone has verified information that differs from the doctor's report we'd like to hear about it. So that is all I was trying to find out. jmo