Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars (26 page)

It was unavoidable that the explicit nature of some of the photographs caused a stir in the courtroom, especially the ones of the afternoon sex session, which included close-ups of Arias’ breasts and vaginal area, along with photos of Travis and Arias posing nude on Travis’ bed with a tube of K-Y jelly in the foreground. By introducing all the photos—including those of a sexual nature, the first of which was time-stamped at 1:44:52
P.M
.—I wanted to establish that Travis and Arias had spent a substantial amount of time together that day. And during that whole time, Arias had the gun and knife stashed somewhere nearby, ready to access them when the moment was right.

I followed up that first set of photographs with the introduction of the pictures of Travis in the shower, with the first one bearing a time-stamp of 5:22:24. Travis appeared very much at ease and altogether defenseless, without so much as a layer of clothing to protect him as he poses nude in the shower for what the defendant had described to Detective Flores during their interview on July 16, 2008, as a “classy photo shoot.” The last photograph in that series, which was taken approximately eight minutes later at 5:30:30, does not show Travis’ face, only his torso and buttocks as he sits on the shower floor. Just forty-four seconds later, the next photograph was snapped, which
was the first of a set of three inadvertent pictures that capture parts of Arias’ attack at three separate moments.

In displaying this final set of photos, I wanted to show that less than a minute had elapsed between the time Arias admitted holding the camera to when the initial inadvertent photograph was snapped.

As I showed him the first of the three inadvertent photographs, I asked Detective Melendez, “What do you see there?”

“It’s the ceiling area and the upper wall portion of the bathroom.”

“And the time?” I asked, making sure to establish that it had been forty-four seconds since the last posed picture of Travis in the shower was taken.

“5:31:14,” he replied, confirming the time gap.

I went from the photo of the bathroom ceiling to discussing the second inadvertent photograph, which showed a stocking foot in front of Travis’ head, blood spilling from his neck onto his right shoulder, as he lay lengthwise along the hallway with his feet toward the bathroom. I asked, “When you recovered this photograph, were you able to know or tell whether or not the camera, when it snapped the photograph, was it right side up or was it upside down?”

“It was upside down.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because when I looked at the original image, it was upside down.” This meant Arias had carried the camera throughout the attack until she apparently dropped it as she went to drag his body back down the hallway.

“And this area down here,” I asked, pointing to Travis’ right shoulder and the blood streaming to the tile floor. “. . . Can you tell what this is?”

“. . . It’s a stain. It looks like blood,” he answered, knowing it was blood, but not committing to it because he hadn’t tested it.

When asked about the third and last inadvertent photo
graph, Detective Melendez explained that this showed Arias continuing to drag the body toward the sink area.

All of these photographs, starting with the ones taken in the early afternoon to those in the early evening, were so incriminating that it was clear why Arias was so concerned with wanting to look at them during her interviews with Detective Flores in Yreka and why she came up with the excuse that she had killed Travis in self-defense. Having these graphic photographs now in front of the jury, I was interested to see how defense counsel would deal with them, since they contradicted Arias’ assertion that she had been the victim. She obviously wasn’t being forced to pose for the afternoon nude photographs, and she showed her physical strength as she dragged Travis’ limp 189-pound body down the hallway.

In her cross-examination of Detective Melendez, Jennifer Willmott focused on questions related to the time gap between the last photograph of Travis in the shower and the first inadvertent photograph of the bathroom ceiling, apparently hoping to signal to the jury that while the pictures placed Arias in the bathroom of the master bedroom, they didn’t capture the attack in its entirety, allowing Arias to argue what may have happened during that undocumented period of time. It would have been fruitless for Willmott to challenge any of the photographs, so she resorted to pointing out what she labeled as a “forty-five second gap” between the pictures, because that was the only unaccounted time period that would allow Arias to make her self-defense claim.

Because the case was being televised, I was the subject of media scrutiny almost from the inception of the trial, particularly with regard to my courtroom presentation, which was being described as too animated and at times combative. The criticism was brought to my attention so that I might conform my style to what some in the media thought was a better way to approach the prosecution of the case. I was a little taken aback by the criticism, as this had always been my approach
and juries seemed to have appreciated the passion I had displayed during my previous presentations. I was not putting on a show because the media was in the courtroom, but was trying the case as I would any other. I had to follow the style of prosecution that had worked well for me many times before, so I ignored the criticism, always reminding myself that it was the jury’s opinion that mattered.

My conduct in the courtroom would come under further scrutiny during my redirect examination of Detective Melendez.

As I was holding Travis’ camera in my hand, I suddenly dropped it on the floor, to the surprise of everyone in the courtroom, and asked the detective, “Did that take forty-five seconds, sir?” My dramatic gesture drew a strong objection from Willmott.

“Judge, I am going to object. That’s evidence that was just dropped on the floor,” Willmott shouted, an objection that the judge immediately overruled.

I hadn’t planned to drop the camera. I did it in response to Willmott’s implication during her cross-examination that it had been Travis who had initiated a confrontation during the forty-four-second gap. It was a way of illustrating that although Detective Melendez did not know what had happened during those forty-four seconds, whatever had happened occurred unexpectedly, just like the camera hitting the floor. And it showed that just as everyone in the courtroom had been caught by surprise, so had Travis when Arias attacked him with the knife.

T
he case I had presented thus far was based in large part on the investigation by the Mesa Police Department and left little room for the jurors to conclude that anyone other than Jodi Arias was solely responsible for killing Travis Alexander. But there was still the issue of premeditation for the jury to consider and decide, and with that in mind, I turned to the efforts of other agencies that had assisted in the inquiry, including the Yreka Police Department, the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office, and the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner.

Dr. Kevin Horn, a graduate of the University of Maryland, had been with the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner since 2001. My objective in calling Dr. Horn was to describe Travis’ many injuries, the order in which they occurred, and how these injuries led to Travis’ death. Dr. Horn would also be able to address the defense’s claim that he had given erroneous information to Detective Flores that contradicted his findings with regard to the sequence of the injuries Travis sustained.

With Dr. Horn on the stand, I moved to introduce forty-one autopsy photos to supplement his testimony. There were photographs showing the injuries to Travis’ head and body, as well as photographs of several X-rays that indicated where the bullet had come to rest in his left cheek. I began my presentation by putting the first photo of Travis’ face onto the ELMO courtroom system, which projected it onto the three monitors
strategically placed around the courtroom. The ELMO was connected to a large movie-style screen that dropped down from the ceiling for jurors to view, as well as to two TV monitors, one behind the witness stand and the other facing the gallery. This first picture was a close-up shot of Travis’ face, which appeared purple and splotchy in areas and showed the gunshot wound above his right eyebrow.

I saw Travis’ siblings in the first and second rows out of the corner of my eye and realized the presentation was affecting them, as both Samantha and Tanisha had started to silently cry. I know that for family members and friends of the victims in the courtroom listening to the testimony is never easy. Still, I had a responsibility to present the best evidence to support my case, and I focused on that.

Having established Travis’ identity by this first photo, I moved to the photographs of the X-rays, which would identify any foreign objects in either his head, neck, or chest, the areas that had sustained the mortal injuries. The most significant of the three was a frontal view of the head, which showed that the bullet had gone through the brain and come to rest just inside Travis’ left cheek. According to Dr. Horn’s testimony, the path that the bullet traveled was a downward trajectory, indicating that the muzzle of the gun was above the head when the shot was fired. Because she was at least two inches shorter than Travis, this trajectory implied that Arias stood over him as she fired the gun.

Before we talked about the multiple injuries he observed during his visual examination, I asked him to explain how he determines whether a wound has been inflicted before or after death. “If there’s hemorrhaging associated with an injury, then it is before death,” he said.

“What is it that causes a person to hemorrhage . . . ?”

“If you have a heartbeat, you are going to have blood flow to the area that’s injured, and so you have blood flow from an injury. So if the skin is cut or torn, there will be a great deal
of blood that will come from an injury in a living person,” Dr. Horn clarified. “A deceased person will lose some blood but not a great deal.”

“If an individual is dead, and somebody applies some force, hits them, are they going to bruise necessarily or not?” I asked.

“There may be something that would look like a bruise, but it will not be as large and the color will be different in a deceased person, because there is no blood flow to the area.”

“Are you familiar with the term ‘defensive wound’?” I asked, eager to have Dr. Horn speak to the deep incisions on Travis’ left hand as illustrated by the next autopsy photo I put up for the jurors.

“Yes,” Dr. Horn replied. “They’re based largely on location on the body. If you have injuries to the back of the forearms or to the palms or backs of the hands, you can have gunshot wounds in those locations, or in the case of an assault with a knife or an edged weapon, you can have cuts or incised injuries to the back of the palms or backs of the forearm. And it’s consistent with someone trying to either grab the knife or fend off wounds—or fend off injury.”

To illustrate the concept of defensive wounds, I pointed Dr. Horn to the photo of Travis’ left hand and asked him to explain the injuries in the image. Dr. Horn determined that all the injuries on the left hand were consistent with defensive wounds. Dr. Horn couldn’t identify the kind of blade that was used to inflict the injuries, and could only say that it was a “sharp-edged object.”

Speaking about all of the wounds on Travis’ left hand, I asked, “Are they consistent with defensive wounds?”

“Yes.”

“And does that mean that Mr. Alexander was alive at the time these injuries were inflicted?”

“I believe he was.”

I next displayed a photo of Travis’ naked body lying faceup
on the autopsy table showing the areas from the top of the head to just below his genitals. A number of incision-type injuries and stab wounds were visible in this photo, including the ear-to-ear gash to Travis’ throat. There was a perceptible reaction in the courtroom, and I could feel the tension as I began asking Dr. Horn to provide details of each one.

He began by describing a one-inch, superficial injury on the right shoulder, before moving on to the three stab wounds to the chest, starting with the one right near the biceps.

“That one goes all the way to the breastbone,” he said. “But does not go all the way to the chest cavity. It would not be fatal.”

The same could not be said for a second, deeper wound in the middle of the chest area that he described as a “stab wound.”

“That one actually penetrates a major vessel coming into the heart,” he said as he explained how the vein drains into the heart.

“So what happens when the knife goes in and causes this amount of damage . . . ?” I asked.

“Well, depending on the position of the body, you may have significant internal bleeding. Or, if the person is leaning forward, they may bleed outside the body, because there’s a tract leading from that vessel outside. But this was a major vessel. It’s not going to bleed as fast as an artery, but it will bleed a considerable amount.”

“With regard to this considerable amount of bleeding that’s going on, is this a wound that could kill this person?” I continued.

“Yes.”

“And do you have an estimate or is there any science out there that tells you, well, this type of wound, given what I know about it, would take
x
amount of time (for death to ensue).”

“No,” Dr. Horn replied. “It depends on so many factors. It depends on the person’s health. It depends on the care that they received. It depends on their blood volume to begin with, and the position of their body.”

This was an important detail to spell out, because I wanted to establish that Travis had been experiencing mental anguish and excruciating physical pain after the initiation of the attack, proving he was the one who needed to defend himself, not Arias, as she alleged. Dr. Horn went on to describe that while “eventually” unconsciousness would result from the wound, it wouldn’t happen right away.

“When you say eventually, do you have an estimate, maybe minutes, seconds, between the time of infliction and the time that he lapsed into unconsciousness?” I asked.

“If that were the only wound, and it’s not, probably a few minutes, because we’re dealing with a vein and not an artery, so it’s a lower-pressure system, so blood loss is slower. . . . With this wound to the heart, he should have been able to get his hands up and attempt to defend himself.”

“If he was in a seated position when this wound was inflicted, would he have the ability, even though this was inflicted, to get up and walk somewhere or move quickly somewhere as a matter of fact?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Horn’s answer, when considered along with the evidence collected at the scene, confirmed the sequence of the mortal wounds. While the stab wound to the chest would eventually be fatal, Travis would still have been conscious at first, giving him the opportunity to grab at the knife, as shown by the defensive wounds on his left hand. He also had time to make his way to the vanity, where he stood bleeding over the sink while Arias stabbed him repeatedly in the back, resulting in the type of blood-spatter patterns identified by Lisa Perry on the mirror and sink.

The large ovoid stain on the carpet at the threshold between the bathroom hallway and the master bedroom confirms that
after standing at the sink Travis got as far as the doorway before collapsing to the floor, where Arias slit his throat from ear to ear, causing his neck to bleed profusely. The left palm print swathed in Travis’ and Arias’ blood on the west wall, along with the inadvertent photographs, detail Arias’ next move, which was to drag the body back down the hallway into the bathroom.

She stopped dragging his body in front of the sink long enough to shoot him in the head while he was on the ground, with the downward trajectory of the bullet leaving no doubt that she stood over him when she fired the single shot. The casing from the semiautomatic gun was ejected, landing in a pool of Travis’ blood that he had previously shed. She completed her ghastly pilgrimage by dragging the body the rest of the way and shoving it into the shower, where it stayed until it was found five days later.

Dr. Horn discussed other nonlethal wounds, which included a five and three quarter inch puncture by the belly button that he believed had been inflicted from left to right and slightly downward, as well as contusions on the right leg that were consistent with the body having been dragged.

Travis had also sustained a “grouping” of nine injuries to the back, which were visible in the next photograph I displayed. “More likely than not they occurred close in time and they—a lot of them, most of them, have the same orientation,” Dr. Horn explained, referring to a cluster of nine wounds on the upper back. “In general, except for one exception I can see at the lower edge, they are oriented exactly the same direction. They are in a diagonal extending from the right shoulder toward the lower left side of the back.”

From Dr. Horn’s testimony, it was clear that Arias had the knife in her right hand when she inflicted those wounds as he stood facing the sink with his back turned which created the blood-spatter patterns in and around the sink area.

To illustrate this theory, I did a demonstration for the jury,
motioning with my right hand as if I were holding a knife and repeatedly stabbing in a downward motion. “And these injuries that we’re talking about coming this way like that, could they be consistent with an individual having his back, as I have to you, turned to the attacker and the attacker is stabbing him like that?” I asked Dr. Horn.

“Yes . . . we have nine injuries and they are all clustered together. They’re in the center,” he explained, indicating their location on Travis’ upper back. “. . . They’re all about the same depth. They are about an inch and they are going into the back part of the ribs, and the spine, the spinal bone, and stopped there. And none of them . . . entered the chest cavity.”

Of the two fatal stab wounds, the most significant one was the gaping slit to Travis’ throat, which Dr. Horn described as so deep it “passes through the airway, so the windpipe is cut through.”

“Let me stop you,” I interjected. “When it passes through the airway, does this individual . . . lose the ability to scream at that point or not?”

“It’s below the larynx, below the voice box, so yes,” Dr. Horn replied. This was disturbing because it suggested that Arias cut his throat to stop him from calling out for help as he struggled for his life.

“And if this person—well, this person is alive at this point, according to you, right? He’s still alive?”

“Yes.”

In a literal sense, this left Travis gasping because the air from his lungs was now being pushed through the gash in his throat rather than through his nose and mouth, causing agonal noises as the air was expelled. “Where would the blood start coming out as a result of this wound here?” I asked, still pointing to the throat.

“Well, right next to the windpipe are the major vessels of the neck. You’ve got the carotid artery, you’ve got the jugular
vein . . . My examination did show that the jugular vein and the carotid artery on the right side were both cut,” Dr. Horn said.

It was during this part of Dr. Horn’s testimony that I noticed Arias, dressed in a blue top and black cardigan, hiding her face behind thick strands of her long brown hair, as if trying to shield herself from the graphic images being displayed for the jurors. At certain moments, she appeared to be crying behind the thick-framed glasses that she had begun wearing during the trial, raising her left hand up to her eyes as if to wipe away tears. As the presentation continued, she was either turning her face away from the images or staring blankly as they appeared on the monitor, which made me wonder if she was just feeling sorry for herself because she got caught.

I didn’t let myself get distracted by her performance, and instead continued my direct examination by asking Dr. Horn to describe the depth of the wound to Travis’ neck.

“It goes all the way back to the spine, so it’s three inches, four inches,” Dr. Horn continued. “. . . It doesn’t go through the spinal cord. So it doesn’t penetrate that bone. So it’s actually the soft tissues in the front of the neck and then stops at the bone.”

“Once this was inflicted on Mr. Alexander, is this something that’s number one, rapidly fatal and number two, what about lapsing into unconsciousness? If you could talk to us about those two things.”

“He has two major vessels in his throat that have been cut. He’s going to lose a great deal of blood very quickly. He’s going to lose consciousness within seconds likely, and then die a few minutes later.”