Jodi Arias faces the death penalty in her trial because the original jury decided that she killed her former boyfriend Travis Alexander in an especially cruel manner.
Despite the conviction last year of the 2008 murder, the jury couldn’t come to a unanimous decision, leading to the current situation of a new jury being chosen.
The new jury “will decide only if there are mitigators that outweigh the cruelty,” explained AZ Central.
“The aggravator is called F(6) in the statutes, ‘especially heinous, cruel or depraved.’ In Arias’ case, the trial judge would only allow for cruelty. All murder could be deemed cruel, but ‘excessive cruelty’ is supposed to refer to great physical suffering and mental anguish before death.”
But the report notes that it’s almost impossible to draw a line between murders that should get punished by death and those that don’t.
The prosecutors choose which ones should. Juan Martinez in this case.
“The only narrowing function is prosecutorial discretion,” defense attorney Eric Crocker said. “You’re at the whim of the prosecutor’s office to determine which cases are capital and which are not.”
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery feels that prosecutor discretion is necessary because each murder case is different. “You can’t have a formula if you look at each one on its merit,” he said.
Now that the new jury has been chosen, the actual retrial will start on Tuesday. Live video will not be allowed--in fact, no video will be allowed until the trial is completely over.
