Def's opening statement:
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| Jodi |
Transcript and Video posted of the Defense's opening statement.
Jodi Arias killed Travis Alexander. There is no question about it.
The million dollar questions is: What would have forced her to do it?
Throughout this trial you will hear that Jodi was indeed forced. In just under 2 minutes, we go from the last picture taken of Travis in the shower. In just under two minutes ...to the picture of Travis' body. You can see the foot in the front, with his head and his shoulders, and blood clearly on his shoulders.
In just those 2 minutes, Jodi had to make a choice. She would either live or she would die.
The full video
Jodi did not always tell the truth about what happened that night. She was scared; scared about what had happened, and scared about what she had done. She had absolutely no experience with police interrogation before. And so when they talked to her, she wasn't always truthful. Her fear and her panic about what had happened, led her to tell different stories. But you will learn that what she said-- those stories --were not the truth.
Throughout this trial you will learn more about Jodi Arias, much more about Jodi. You will find that she is an articulate, bright, young woman who's a very talented artist and photographer. But most of all what you will learn is that Jodi Loved Travis.
And so what would have forced her to have to take Travis' life on that awful day? In order to answer that question, we have to go back to the beginning. Back to before -- just before -- she and Travis first met.
Travis and Jodi met in September 2006, and at that time Jodi was in a relationship - a long term relationship with Darryl Brewer. Jodi and Darryl had been together for 4 years at that point.
Now Jodi and Darryl first met when Jodi was working at the Ventana Inn and Spa, and Darryl was actually her boss. But she was quickly promoted to event planner and once she was promoted, he was no longer her boss. And so the two began to date. And at the time Darryl had just gotten through a very difficult divorce, and he really had no intention of getting married again. But despite that they still embarked on a relationship to see where it was going to lead them.
It was serious enough that in June of 2005 they both put money down on a house and bought a house together in Palm Desert, California. Part of the idea was to get some roots, you know - set some roots down, but also the fact that Jodi really wanted some financial stability ..that financial stability was there because it was important to her because she really wanted to be able to pursue her dream and her passion of being an artist. And in order to do that, she needed to have some financial stability.
But unfortunately in 2006, like it did for the rest of us, the market crashed and Jodi and Darryl's finances crashed along with it. And so Jodi was at a point in her life where she was not happy with her financial stability 'cause it wasn't there. She was working several jobs, all at one time, just to make ends meet.
And at that time, early in 2006, she met somebody at one of her jobs who just wander in, and out of the blue asked her: Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Before Jodi can give him an answer, that man told her -- well, I'm going to be retired. And then he proceeded to tell her and fill her in on where he worked and what he did. What he did was he worked for a company called PrePaid Legal, and PrePaid Legal, if you're not familiar with it, is a company that sells legal insurance. The idea is that ..it's a multi-level marketing firm, so in other words, the idea is the more people you can get to sign up underneath you, the more money you make. And that's the kind of business it is.
And so he left the information with Jodi, trying to sign her up perhaps, but Jodi wasn't really interested in it at that point. And so she really didn't do anything with it, and basically that information collected dust for about a month or so until one day she decided she was going to throw it away -- she was cleaning up - and she found the DVD that he gave her, and she decided that she'd watch it before she threw it away. Well, once she watched the information about PrePaid Legal, she really got interested. And from there, she googled more information about it and ultimately she signed up online. Once she signed up online, she actually received a call from a Michelle Higgins, who formally signed her up as an independent associate of PrePaid Legal.
Now, this was in March 2006, a full six months before Jodi had ever heard the name, or met, Travis Alexander. Now, PrePaid Legal has two big conventions a year, and they had just had their big convention in March, which Jodi missed 'cause she was just signing up. And so the next convention was in September, and the person who signed her up really talked to her about how important it is to go to these conventions so you can learn more about how to get people to buy insurance and so forth. And so in September of 2006, it was with the hope of gaining more financial stability that Jodi, Michelle, and another girlfriend hopped in the car and drove up to Vegas. That's where the convention was being held, and it was actually being held at the MGM Grand.
Now the idea of this convention is that it's a long weekend full of meetings. Meetings about how great PrePaid Legal is and as long as you can sell what they're trying to sell, and you can get people to buy, you can stand to make a lot of money. And so lots of parts of these meetings are people giving speeches about how to do it and why and how much money you can make.
After one of these meetings one day, Jodi was having lunch with some of her friends that she had just met, and some of her friends that she came with. They were at the Rainforest Cafe at the MGM Grand, and she was standing just outside the Rainforest Cafe. There was a group of people, and she sees one man across the way. That man walks right up to her -- makes a bee line -- and says, "Hi. My name's Travis Alexander."
That is how Jodi and Travis first met.
They spent -- over the rest of the weekend, Travis spent a lot of time with Jodi, wowing her about how important he was. Because he was actually an executive director - an executive director at PrePaid Legal, which means he was at a higher level in the company. He had a lot of people signing up underneath him, which pushes him up to a higher level. She learned that because he was an executive director that he would get to go the executive director banquet. And after meeting Jodi, he invited Jodi to go. And so it's normally a place where she wouldn't get to go because she had just signed up, she got to go to this executive banquet. He also invited her to sit in the front seats, so usually at these meetings, the front seats, the front rows, are reserved for people who are considered important in PrePaid Legal. It wouldn't have been Jodi at that time, but because of Travis and his invitation, she got to sit up front.
He took her through a tour of the casino. They talked, and talked and talked. And in fact at one point that sat at a bench in the casino to the wee hours of the morning, where at some point Travis actually tried to kiss Jodi, but Jodi stopped him and reminded him that she had a boyfriend, Darryl.
During the time they spent together, Jodi learned a lot about Travis. Not only was he an executive director at PrePaid Legal, but being an executive director he made many speeches at these conventions to try and get people to sign up at PrePaid Legal. Not only that, he was a Mormon, which is a religion which really emphasizes and values marriage and children. And they spoke a lot about that- that weekend. Jodi was captivated.
After the convention, Travis kept in touch with Jodi. They talked on the phone for hours;they continued talking and texting after- after the convention. And in fact it was just four days after the convention when Jodi had a sit-down talk with Darryl. They talked about their relationship, how it wasn't really progressing, and they eventually broke up. Darryl moved into a different bedroom within their own house.
It was only the following weekend after the convention, about a week and a half after the convention ended, that Travis convinced Jodi to come and meet him at his friend's house in Marietta California. And that was Chris and Sky Hughes. And Jodi agreed, and so Jodi drove up to meet Travis with his friends at their house and spent the weekend with him. It was that weekend, a week and a half after first meeting Travis, that they introduced her to the Mormon church, and they took her to church. It was a few days after that, the following Wednesday, that Travis on his way home from California, back to Mesa, Arizona, stopped in Palm Desert, California to see Jodi once more. And when he stopped, he met Jodi at a Starbucks. It was at that Starbucks that they had some more discussions, and that was when Travis gave Jodi the Book of Mormon.
Shortly after that visit at Starbucks, Travis sent missionaries, Mormon missionaries to Jodi's house in Palm Desert. And those missionaries came to visit her once a week from the end of September all the way through October. The missionaries would have sit-down talks with Jodi, discuss the LDS church, discuss the Book of Mormon, and all the good reasons why it was to join and convert. And so, in November of 2006, just two months after meeting Travis, Travis convinced Jodi to convert to Mormonism.
Now, not only was Travis portrayed as an important member of PrePaid Legal, but he was a very important member of the Mormon church as well. He was a Temple member, and a Temple member is not just a member of the church. A Temple member is special. It's special because in order to become a Temple member, one actually has to live what they consider a worthy life. And a worthy life is someone who has no alcohol, no tobacco, no tea, no coffee, and above all, that person has no sex without marriage - of any kind. It was a prestigious honor to be a Temple member, and Travis was. He was someone to be admired, to Jodi. He was a good Mormon man that she had met. And in November,
Travis baptized Jodi into the Mormon church.
Now Travis and Jodi took many trips together during the time that they knew each other. Well, Jodi's a wonderful photographer, so much of their trips are actually documented in photographs. And so they took a lot of trips together for church trips - in other words, going to visit different Mormon churches, special places for the Mormon church, and then just trips together. Certainly on the outside, looking in, it really appeared that they were involved in a very loving and healthy relationship. But nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, behind the smiles in these photographs there was a whole other (or nother?) reality Travis created. Because in reality, Jodi was Travis’ dirty little secret. Despite projecting himself as a good and virginal man, someone who was a Temple member, from the moment he met Jodi, he was pushing and pushing her to have a sexual relationship with him. And it took just about a week, because the weekend they met at Sky and Chris Hughes’ house, he got what he wanted. As Travis would explain to Jodi, oral sex really isn’t as much of a sin for him as vaginal sex. And so he was able to convince her to give him oral sex. And later in their relationship, Travis would tell her that anal sex really isn’t much of a sin compared to vaginal sex. And so he was able to persuade her to allow him to have anal sex with her.
Being a Temple member and an executive director at PrePaid Legal, outward appearances would be very important to Travis. And so while he continued this façade of being a good and virginal Mormon man, he was inwardly dealing with his own sexual issues. And in Jodi, he found somebody who was easily manipulated and controlled, someone who would provide him with that secretive sexual relationship that he needed. While on the outside, he can still pursue the appropriate Mormon woman.
Jodi wanted nothing but to please Travis, and in doing that, in some points in their relationship he would tell her, you know, maybe you ought to see somebody else, date somebody else. But the moment that Jodi would ever even text another man or talk to another man, Travis would instantly degrade her, yell at her, embarrass her, and humiliate her. And so Jodi learned very quickly how to deal with Travis’ temper. She learned how to deal with is temper by being humble, compliant and agreeable, and that was one good way to help avoid his temper.
Jodi officially broke up with Travis in June of 2007. And this June of 2007, she broke up with him because she found out that, despite having sex with Jodi and saying things like he loved her, he was pursuing other women, and so because of that Jodi broke up with him. But Travis didn’t want to break up. Travis begged her for forgiveness, and even though they were considered “officially” broken up, they never stopped seeing each other., they never stopped talking with each other, or emailing or texting.
At the time they had broken up, Jodi was living in Big Sur California, and Travis was living in Mesa, Arizona. In July of 2007, Travis sent Jodi a poem – a poem that basically apologized for his behavior, and asked her to be with him. Later in July of 2007 Jodi actually flew out to see Travis in Mesa and spent the weekend with him. That weekend sealed the deal because Travis showered her with attention, was nothing, but sweet and kind, and so shortly after that Jodi moved from Big Sur, California to Mesa, Arizona. She moved in with a girlfriend of hers she knew from the Mormon church.
Now despite the attention Travis paid to Jodi in private, he treated her far differently in the public eye. You’ll hear how Travis degraded Jodi to his friends. You’ll hear that he often referred to her as a stalker or claimed that she was crazy. And if she did anything, like speak with another man or text another man, he would further degrade her by calling her names like “slut” and “whore.” He would text her these things and email her these things. The more that Travis distanced himself from Jodi to his friends, the easier it was for him to keep control of her and to keep her his own sexual needs.
Now one of the witnesses you’ll hear from is named Alyce Laviolette. Ms. Laviolette is an expert in dealing with domestic violence. She has decades of experience with domestic violence counseling, and in fact she started in I think 1978 counseling battered women in shelters. But today her specialty is treating people for domestic violence. She treats the victims of domestic violence, but she also treats the abusers in domestic violence. Ms. Laviolette will explain to you how domestic violence relationships are created. She will explain to you that they are not created over night. And she’ll also talk to you about how in domestic violence – when we refer to domestic violence – we’re not always talking about physical violence. In fact, a lot of times domestic violence comes from control through verbal abuse. She’ll talk to you about the difficulty with domestic violence and how a lot of times domestic violence goes unreported and unprosecuted. She’ll talk to you about the reasons for that because a lot of domestic violence victims are ashamed of what happens to them. Domestic violence victims sometimes fear that their abuser is going to get even more violent if they actually report it. And sometimes domestic violence victims believe and hope that the abuser will change, like he promises he’s going to. Most importantly, Ms. Laviolette will talk to you about why domestic violence victims don’t have the same ability as everybody else does to make that decision to leave. Because if somebody is abusing you – get up and leave; Ms. Laviolette will explain to you that it is not an easy decision to make for somebody who has been abused because there’s a lot of psychological components that go into that decision.
Now the best evidence of Travis’ manipulation of Jodi is his insistence to others that Jodi stalked him. His insistence to others that Jodi wouldn’t leave him alone, but yet it was always at his demand, and his beckoning that Jodi spent time with him. In fact, at one point during their relationship, Travis even had a t-shirt made proclaiming his ownership of Jodi. Now I know that in some circles and in some relationships, maybe that would be considered cute or funny. But if you understand the inner workings of the relationship between Travis and Jodi, that t-shirt is a perfect example of how Travis treated Jodi.
In April of 2008, Jodi had had enough because Jodi found out that once again Travis was pursuing other women, even though he was having her in his bed, Travis was still pursuing other women. And in April 2008, Jodi had enough. She moved from Mesa, Arizona back to California to Yreka, which is where her grandparents live. Even though she moved, Travis didn’t let her go. He continued emailing, texting and calling. He guilted her about leaving him. And the thing is, with the type of relationship they were in, the minute that Travis was nice to Jodi and caring about Jodi, she fell right back into that relationship with him. And so even though she left and moved states, they still continued to talk and email and text.
In fact, even though they didn’t see each other from April in 2008 until June of 2008, Travis was still able to use Jodi for his own sexual desires – through the phone and phone sex. You’ll actually hear a recorded phone call, recorded call between Travis and Jodi that’s very explicit. And this phone call is made just a couple of weeks before Travis dies. It’s clear in this phone call that the both of them are talking about how they’re going to marry, find somebody and marry somebody else. Jodi very clearly knows that Travis is not going to marry her, and she’s not going to marry Travis. And they discuss it. Travis talks about how he’s going to Cancun with somebody else. Jodi knew that, and she expresses absolutely no dismay about it whatsoever. And this is just weeks before he dies.
Most importantly, when you hear this call, it’s crucial to understand the difference, the difference between the type of person Travis portrayed himself to be versus the things that he said on this recorded call. Because while he was supposed to be this virginal Mormon man, who didn’t want to have any type of relationship with Jodi and she just wouldn’t leave him alone, in this phone call he talks about his fantasies – his fantasies with Jodi of tying her to a tree and putting it – forgive me – in her ass all the way. That’s Travis. And then, when Jodi pretends to climax during this phone call, Travis tells her that she sounds like a twelve year old girl who was having an orgasm for the first time. And then he tells her it’s so hot.
These comments are not comments of a man who is being relentlessly stalked and who wants to have no contact with Jodi. These are comments of a man who has a real problem with the comparison with the person he portrays himself to be and who he is supposed to be versus the person his own private reality and the person who he really was.
So, what would have forced Jodi. It was Travis’ continual abuse. And on June 4 of 2008 it had reached a point of no return. And sadly, Travis left Jodi no other option but to defend herself. On that horrible day, Jodi believed that Travis was going to kill her. He threatened to kill her, and given her experience with him she had no reason to not believe him.
Travis knew that Jodi was planning a trip to Utah ‘cause they had talked about it. He knew that she was going to stop along the way and see different friends of hers. He kept asking her to come and see him, and at the last minute Jodi decided that she would veer off and take a short trip to Mesa to come and see Travis at his beckoning. And so she gets to Mesa early in the morning around 4 or so in the morning. Travis is in his den, which is downstairs. He’s on the computer, and we know this because there’s a forensic examination done on his computer, so we know he was on the computer at 4 in the morning. Travis wanted to have sex, but Jodi said she was too tired, and so the two went upstairs and they went to sleep.
They slept until about 1 in the afternoon, and when they got up at 1 in the afternoon, they began to engage in sexual activity. Travis had always wanted to tie Jodi up, and he had done it before, he had tied her with rope before, but the rope he had used really hurt her. And so this time he was prepared. He had rope that was soft, the kind of rope that people use for decorating, to hold curtains back, so it’s like a softer rope. He had that kind of rope, and he was ready, and so Travis tied Jodi up, tied her to the bed with this rope. He used a knife to cut the rope when it was at the appropriate length. They engaged in sexual activity and then part of what they were doing that afternoon too was that he wanted to take pictures of Jodi. He had gotten a new camera just a month or so before, and he wanted to use it to take pictures of Jodi.
Now, the kind of pictures that Travis wants to take of Jodi are the kind that would make most people cringe with embarrassment, and we show you these photos not for any type of shock value, but you’re going to see them in trial because these are the photos that Travis took of Jodi – very up close. Travis also liked to see Jodi in pigtails, and so she put her hair in pigtails for him. These photos were taken in the afternoon.
Later that afternoon, Travis and Jodi were downstairs and they were back in his den. They were pouring through pictures of all of their trips together – all the different pictures that they had. And there was a problem because Travis couldn’t pull up pictures on his computer, and he was having a problem getting to see these pictures. Well, we know that there was a virus on Travis’ computer, and we know that because of the forensic examination that was done. And so when he tried to pull up these pictures it wasn’t working right. Well Travis’ temper flared, and he took this CD, and he threw it up against the wall in the den. Jodi went immediately into a protective mode. Protective mode means that she’s trying to calm him down, trying to do something that will avoid his temper, telling him that it’s ok, I’ll fix it, don’t worry about it, and as she was telling him she knew that the one thing that calms his temper down the quickest is sex. So as she’s telling him it’s ok, I’ll fix it, don’t worry, Travis grabbed her and spun her around, afraid that he was going to hurt her. Jodi was actually relieved when all he did was bend her over the desk, pull her arm up behind her back, pull her pants down, and have quick and rough vaginal sex with her, ejaculating all over her back. When Travis was finished, Jodi was allowed to get up and go to the restroom across the hallway from the den. She washed herself off.
And then the two went upstairs to the bedroom, back up to get her stuff, but Travis, his temper had now subsided, and he was back into this sweet talking mode, he was sweet talking her to stay for a little bit longer because he had – in preparation for his Cancun trip that he was going to be leaving on shortly, he had been working out, and he had been dieting, and so he really wanted to have pictures taken of him, tasteful pictures, to show his progress on what he’s done with his dieting and working out, and he wanted Jodi the photographer to take those pictures of him. And so, she did.
They went upstairs, and he went into the shower, and Jodi began snapping pictures of him, tasteful pictures, waste up pictures for Travis. She was snapping picture after picture after picture, and you can see that this one was taken at – these pictures are ultimately found, and time stamped, so you’ll see that this picture was taken at 5:29 in the afternoon. The next picture is the last picture of Travis taken in the shower, and you can see that in this picture, you can’t see so much if he’s sitting or standing, but you can see that his shoulders are out, and in the next picture you can see that his shoulders are out sitting on his knees. There’s a difference in a little over a minute between the two pictures. This is the last picture of Travis taken in the shower during their photo session, because the next picture is taken when Jodi accidentally dropped Travis’ camera. You can see that it’s not an intentional picture because 1. It’s blurry, and 2. It’s of the ceiling facing up.
Jodi accidentally dropped Travis’ camera, and as that camera was falling, that was enough for Travis, because he lunged at Jodi in anger, knocking her to the ground in the bathroom where there was a struggle. Jodi’s life was in danger. In just under a minute, in just a minute we go from this picture we go to the next picture, where it’s Travis’ body – he’s clearly injured already. In a minute. Now that very brief moment of time – a minute – is not the result of premeditation. It is not the result of a planned-out attack.
(Objection, argument. Sustained)
The evidence will show that it is not the result ..
(Objection, argument. Counsel approach)
It is just one minute. Just one minute from the time you see the camera falling and you see the picture of Travis with blood. One minute. In that one minute, had Jodi not been forced to defend herself, none of us would be here. In that one minute, had Jodi not chosen to defend herself, she would not be here. Thank you.
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