Phoenix, AZ—American Justice has taken a shameful turn here
with the murder trial involving a troubled young woman. Jodi Arias is on trial for her life but
throngs of has been television pundits along with a Social Media lynch mob have
been allowed to seriously corrupt our trial process.
With today’s technology the vast majority of jurors can be
counted upon to break every rule to avoid media and get their verdict guidance
from all the wrong places.
A public criminal trial was never an invitation to turn a
metropolis into a worldwide entertainment event. Aside from a celebrity prosecutor mugging for photos
with his new fans while signing autographs this inquisition extravaganza has
been out-of-control from the beginning.
Cries of Justice for Travis Alexander, the young murder
victim seem to suggest he will somehow be resurrected after the hanging of Jodi
Arias. Millions of young women have
injected themselves emotionally into this trial and are demanding the jury
reach a guilty verdict and death sentence.
They all want to watch a public execution.
The government here has sponsored this Roman Coliseum style event
and should at least have opened a box office to collect money from the
worldwide lynch mob. TV rights,
advertising placards on the courthouse and the court personnel and witnesses
should wear logo tee shirts. The shirts
worn by the defendant and her lawyers could defray the defense costs. Absurd?
No more absurd than what they have already created.
Trial must be public but live broadcasting; tweeting and
curbside television studios outside the courthouse are beyond over the
top.
They way to end these freak shows is for a higher court to invalidate
any convictions obtained as they set the accused free. Doing that would cause suicides among these
pathetic true crime swine, court viewers that must watch these trials because
they don’t have lives of their own.
One thing for sure the jury has plenty of guidance from the
fine people sending them important thoughts on Twitter.
UPDATE!!! The jury has announced that they have reached a verdict. It will be read at 1:30 PM Phoenix time. Perhaps they should call in Nancy Disgrace from her HNL street studio and have her read the verdict!
THE VERDICT: The jury voted Guilty of Capital Murder as the huge bloodthirsty lynch mob cheered outside. Disgraceful to say the least.
APPEAL? It will be automatic with a litany of disasters that robbed this woman of a fair trial. Decades and million of dollars will be wasted trying to kill this woman...
UPDATE!!! The jury has announced that they have reached a verdict. It will be read at 1:30 PM Phoenix time. Perhaps they should call in Nancy Disgrace from her HNL street studio and have her read the verdict!
THE VERDICT: The jury voted Guilty of Capital Murder as the huge bloodthirsty lynch mob cheered outside. Disgraceful to say the least.
APPEAL? It will be automatic with a litany of disasters that robbed this woman of a fair trial. Decades and million of dollars will be wasted trying to kill this woman...
All of what you say does have some validity but you, strangely enough, mention the crime for which she is charged in just a passing manner let alone leave out the means in which she carried out the alleged crime.
ReplyDeleteAllow me;
Charge - 1st degree murder
Method - Gun shot to the victims head, stabbed 27+ times and had his throat slashed (some would call this overkill)
To quote you; ",,,involving a troubled young woman."
Social media or not, that line sounds like it was stolen from MSNBC.
What you have called overkill it's more accurately described as heat of passion. That is not what first-degree murder is all about. This is not liberalism versus conservatism but instead it's about fundamental fairness at the hands of a incredibly strong all-powerful government. This trial is definitely like something that happened between 1933 and 1945 in Nazi Germany.
ReplyDeleteI was not looking at liberalism versus conservatism but rather telling the washed down and incomplete story (MSNBC) vs. the unvarnished truth, respectively.
ReplyDeleteDefining the alleged crime is just a matter of semantics and matters not to the act of murder. She should have tried the insanity plea if that route/excuse was to be used.
As to a parallel to Nazi Germany I would use it in the context of aftermath being the Nuremberg Trials - much media attention for very heinous crimes. Other than that there is no comparison in my opinion.
Show trials are wrong. The Death Penalty is wrong, not because some don't deserve it but because sooner all governments abuse it. This trial was an insane circus.
ReplyDeleteThis was NOT done in heat of passion. This was VERY carefully and methodically planned... from beginning to end.
ReplyDeleteThe shooting and stabbing overkill indicates otherwise normally. None of us are inside that crazy bitches head to know exactly what went on. I don't call guesswork evidence.
ReplyDeleteIt is not guesswork when "the crazy bitch" changed her story numerous times in order to cover the truth.
ReplyDeleteTo suggest overkill (I pleased you picked up my terminology)indicates other than 1st degree murder is ludicrous when taking into account of the aforementioned lies as to her account.
As to capital punishment, I am an advocate but this sub-human wishes to take her own life and I am good with that as well. Matter of fact, I am sure many would supply the means for free, being it would save thousands of taxpayer money and years of knowing the bitch still breathes.
It won't be thousands wasted but rather millions as always is the case when the Death penalty is involved. Taxpayers have to pay for both sides because the defendants are always indigent.
ReplyDeleteI am not going to suggest for a second Jody didn't do something absolutely terrible but I think that our politicians can't be trusted to make the right choices when it comes to who they want to murder.
Respectfully, It is not politicians deciding who gets the punishment of death (not murder BTW) but rather voters who either keep the statute or rid their state of it.
ReplyDeleteThen in the case of the former (states that have the statute) it is up to the jurors should a prosecutor decide to seek it.
I would think you as a former police officer would know as much.
Your premise that the voters decide what will or won't be the ultimate penalty for murder is flawed at least in most states. Laws are promulgated and pushed through state legislatures by politicians.
ReplyDeleteUntil the Timothy Ring case most death sentences were handed down by judges, not jurors.
The death penalty seems to be good politics in conservative circles but it is anything but good. The death penalty are the tools of scum like Hitler and Stalin.
There is no question we have murdered a lot of innocent people in United States. When I was a young policeman that clearance and conviction rate for murder suspects was around 85%. Today less than 35%.
Today we have all kinds of high-tech surveillance video systems and DNA early to implicate or exonerate suspects.
Thousands of eyewitness identifications that would have convicted innocents have been nullified because of television surveillance images. The eyewitnesses are more often wrong then right when identifying suspects.
DNA has resulted in many exonerations yet prosecutors still fight efforts by defense lawyers for this tool.
People serving on jury's have to guess the guilt or innocence of many defendants. Their findings and their pronouncements are often flawed.
Do we have to really want the death penalty with all of its flaws and the likelihood of 's abuse?
We would save billions of dollars nationwide by ridding ourselves of this curse because we have to pay for the endless appeals that are guaranteed by our United States Constitution.
All the constitutional rights in the world cannot prevent perjury by witnesses, evidence handlers or police.
It's all fun and games until it's you or someone that you love that is caught up in a horrific bogus prosecution.
Good article, Mr. Crimefile! Hurray!
ReplyDeleteI'm sick of 24/7 show trial coverage! Pathetic HLN, every time I put it on it was Jodi this, Arias that, and panels of a HALF A DOZEN --ahem-- "legal experts" to discuss things like how evil is she, what's the prosecutor thinking, blah blah blah.
SICK of it!
Show trials = Lynch mobs. O. J. Simpson convicted by the media jury, at least our dark-skinned cousins were more skeptical then.
Casey Anthony, convicted by professional insulters who played up the white trash meme for all it was worth.
Zimmerman, where the prosecution leaked this and that, and the Media Lynch Mob demanded more. We must make the great-grandsons pay for the sins of the great-grandfathers.
It's distractions from the window on Reality offered on the Internet into WHAT MATTERS.
Crimefile,
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with you objection to the death penalty, but with your conclusion.
Shortly, I don't think courts need to be, or should be appendages of the government bureaucracy.
Interestingly, it was not always so. Courts were at one time entirely locally composed. Judges were chosen locally. Decisions were in the hands of the jury. And much of prosecutor's current power once resided with the Grand Jury.
But the contractual framework of government by compact absolutely required that the judiciary be corrupted for government power to grow. Enter cartelization of the legal profession via the ABA from stage right.
Lord Acton's maxim really sings at such times.
Without the concentration of power out of local hands, locals must consider that any power they exercise may be immediately used against them. This doesn't prevent abuse - far from it! But it does curb its scope.
Yes, the media is way over the top for this trial, but to me, it still looked like a fair trial. I do see that the jury probably would have been lynched by the mob if they came back with not guilty, or even just 2nd degree murder.
ReplyDeleteYou probably would have written this article about the Casey Anthony trial, which received the same hysteria, but the jury acquitted her.
No high profile trial should ever be commenced with today's social media and television emotional and hysterical coverage. This would be inherently unfair.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Huebl on every point. From the beginning I have felt sorry for Jodi because of the way the media was obsessing over this trial. My feelings are motivated in part from my dislike of Nancy Grace. Nancy struck out with the Casey Anthony trial when Anthony was found not guilty. As she has done with this trial, Nancy then promoted herself as judge, jury and executioner, telling viewers what to conclude according to Nancy's opinion. I thought it was great when the jury found Casey not guilty. When I would hear other's shoot their mouth off saying things like: "oh, you know Casey did it. She killed that child" I would always put these people on the spot and ask - How do you know this and based on what evidence? In todays anti intellectual climate, questions like this never go over to well. The point is the media in these unnecessarily high profile cases have grown of control as they implicitly belittle the role and importance of a fair trial by jury. "Headline News" give me a break! None of this was disserving national headline news, maybe local Arizona news but certainly not national. Television viewers are not the jury and shouldn't be inclined to think so. What pissed me off more is after the verdict was reached, fat mouth Nancy kept reminding viewers that the trial by jury process is why our American democratic way is so special. Oh really? Was Nancy making a funny by suggesting the logical conclusion of democracy being Mob Rule. Better yet, would Nancy and her asinine panel of lawyers, experts and media whores come to the same conclusion if the jury reached a different verdict? This trial, as we were exposed to it, was all about Nancy's revenge and our county's slide into total fascism. I agree, it's all fun and games until Nancy is telling the world what a scum bag you are for stating your dislike or distrust of government. It's starts with cases like this and ends with political show trials.
ReplyDeleteCanada has no Media coverage during trial. Media Blackout.
ReplyDeleteThis was a media lynching of a case that should have been 2nd degree murder.
ReplyDeleteThe bigger problem is this was all done to coincide witht he benghazzi trials, so the mindless sheep would pay attention to this and not another giant cover up by our Federal government.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on this for the most part. The lynch mob always wants blood, and in trials like this, the prosecutors choose people who are already pro-death penalty to be on the jury.
ReplyDeleteThe death penalty does not deter crime, is unequally applied to minorities and the indigent, and has likely executed innocent people (see people who have been exonerated from DNA evidence, which was not available to the accused in the past).
Given all of these things, there is no argument for it, other than sick human beings who like to watch others suffer. I do not take pleasure in the suffering and death of other human beings. I wonder when our society will leave the likes of Iran and North Korea (which have the death penalty), and join the rest of the industrialized world (that does not have it).
Please see my site which clarifies how non-existent and stupid the state's case really was, how Alexander had just 3 stab wounds, the prosecution misconduct and much else. She should have been found not guilty in the first phase, if the jury had followed the law correctly (and perhaps if the defense had performed more strongly - they didn't get everything right ).
ReplyDeletehttp://jodi-arias.wikispaces.com
And thank you Paul for you valiant work with Debra Milke.
Excellent article. Love this quote, "The Death Penalty is wrong, not because some don't deserve it but because sooner all governments abuse it." - Best argument ever against the death penalty.
ReplyDelete