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Sex, Lies and Audiotape: The Jodi Arias Trial

Aired March 15, 2013 - 22:00   ET


ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. Welcome to this special report, "Sex, Lies and Audiotape: The Jodi Arias Trial," week 11.

Eleven weeks of watching in shock and horror and raw fascination, watching and wondering, just who is this woman? What's inside her mind? Is it the mind of an abused victim who struck back with deadly force only to save her life, as she claims, or something far more sinister? That is the central question of this trial and the main focus of what was another remarkable week.

Here's Randi Kaye.

RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR: Anderson, for 11 weeks, Jodi Arias has been on trial for killing Travis Alexander. Now the trial turns to experts and explanation.

The psychology of what made her kill Travis Alexander, the reasons her memory seems so often foggy. Will the jury agree? For Jodi Arias, that answer may mean life or death. We have to warn you, the language and images are graphic and may be too explicit for younger viewers.



KAYE (voice-over): Jodi Arias has dominated the witness stand for over a month, answering questions for the defense.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you want to kill Mr. Alexander on June 4?

JODI ARIAS, DEFENDANT: No, that was not a goal of mine.

KAYE: The prosecutor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That was a lie? Is that what you're saying now?


KAYE: And even those written by the jury and read by the judge.

STEPHENS: "After all the lies you have told, why should we believe you now?" ARIAS: Lying isn't typically something I just do.

VINNIE POLITAN, HLN HOST: They want a reason. Why should we believe you? How do we know you're telling the truth now? And that's her problem. That's her problem, not telling the truth time after time after time. The jury has scene it. They have heard it. They know that she can sit there and look 100 percent truthful and be spewing a lie.

JUAN MARTINEZ, PROSECUTOR: One of the things is you don't lie, right?

KAYE: Lying, Martinez asserted, was easy for Jodi, convenient, and frequent, even if it flew in the face of her Mormon faith.

MARTINEZ: This is the faith that you tried to follow, right?


MARTINEZ: And that's what you told the jury, right?


MARTINEZ: These books that we talked about, specifically the Book of Mormon, it does talk about lying, right?


MARTINEZ: OK. Why don't you tell us based on looking at that what the mandate is involving lying?

ARIAS: That, more or less, you're condemned to hell.

POLITAN: I think what Juan Martinez is doing when he's bringing up the Mormonism and the lying and what happens to you when you lie is to establish that, you know, this is a woman who claims to be a Mormon. But she's saying this. She's making up stories. She's trying to protect herself. She says whatever she needs to say to get herself out of the situation.

KAYE: If it was forbidden in her faith, it was clearly not bothering Jodi Arias. This is, after all, her third version of this story, her third attempt to explain what happened to Travis Alexander.

It was early June 2008, and roommate Taylor Searle was worried about Travis.

TAYLOR SEARLE, ROOMMATE OF TRAVIS ALEXANDER: He called me one day and said, hey, I have totally broken it off with Jodi.

KAYE: Travis told Searle that he had confronted Jodi about hacking his Facebook account and sent her a blistering message.

SEARLE: After he read back to me the message he sent, my comment back to him was, aren't you afraid she might try to hurt you or something? Because that was really harsh. She's definitely going to get the message that he does never want to talk to her, see her, or be around her ever again.

KAYE: Since their breakup, things had been complicated between them. They still had an active sex life. At the same time, Jodi was acting out against Travis.

SHANNA HOGAN, AUTHOR, "PICTURE PERFECT": She slashed his tires. She broke into his e-mail account. She just did these crazy stalking behaviors.

KAYE: So it may not be surprising when Jodi left on a road trip June 2, 2008, she said she was going to Utah, but turned up instead in Mesa, Arizona, at the home of Travis Alexander.

POLITAN: Not like 8:00 at night, but early morning hours. Travis is there, according to her, and he's online, and they go to sleep. But when they wake up, then they get back to what Travis and Jodi always do, which is engage in sex.


KAYE: At 5:30 p.m., Jodi took the last picture of Travis alive. He was in the shower. Then the details and Jodi's memory get foggy. Days later, Jodi turned up in Utah, and Travis' friend David Hughes thought she was acting strange.

DAVID HUGHES, FRIEND OF TRAVIS ALEXANDER: When I saw her in the parking lot, and I noticed the cut fingers, and then she also flipped the license plate upside-down on her car. There was weird things like that that stood out, long-sleeved shirts in the middle of the summer.

KAYE: And that wasn't all.

(on camera): On June 4, she left a voice-mail for Travis. On the 6th, she sent a text two days after the killing, and on the 7th, an e-mail. Why would she do that?

BETH KARAS, TRUTV: There's no question she was putting distance between herself and the crime. She needed law enforcement to believe she wasn't even in Arizona.

KAYE (voice-over): Meanwhile, back in Arizona, no one had seen Travis Alexander for days. So a handful of concerned friends went looking for hip.


911 OPERATOR: Nine-one-one emergency.


KAYE: Travis' body had nearly 29 stab marks, including the slash across his neck from ear to ear. There was a gunshot wound over his right eyebrow, and massive amounts of blood all over the master suite, soaked into the bedroom carpet and all over the bathroom, the sink, the mirror, the floor. His friends had immediate s suspicions about who did it.

911 OPERATOR: Has he been threatened by anyone recently?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, he has. He has an ex-girlfriend that's been bothering him and following him and slashing tires and things like that. Her name is Jodi.

KAYE: But when investigators reached Jodi by phone, she insisted she hadn't been near Mesa in months. This was version one.



FLORES: You haven't been back in town since then?

ARIAS: No, I haven't at all.

KAYE: As the phone call ended, Jodi offered a final thought.

ARIAS: What if I had just gone down there? What if I had never moved and I would have been there and I could have come help?

KAYE: But hair, a handprint, and pictures show Jodi had been in Travis Alexander's house the day he died.


ARIAS: I wasn't there.

FLORES: You need to be honest with me, Jodi.



ARIAS: Are you sure those pictures aren't from another time?

FLORES: Positive, absolutely positive.




This is his shower.

KAYE: Then, the very next day, Jodi changed her story. KARAS: She talked about two intruders coming into the house, and that they attacked Travis, and they're attacking her, and she gets wounded in the incident, and he's being stabbed and he's yelling and he's screaming and telling her go to the neighbors and get help.

ARIAS: They didn't discuss much. They just argued.

FLORES: About what?

ARIAS: About whether or not to kill me.

FLORES: For what reason?

ARIAS: Because I'm a witness.

FLORES: A witness to what?

ARIAS: Him, of Travis.

FLORES: Of Travis' murder?

KAYE: Jodi took version two to the court of public opinion months later, on the show "Inside Edition."

ARIAS: I witnessed Travis being attacked by two other individuals.



KAYE: And she made this bold prediction.

ARIAS: No jury is going to convict me.

QUESTION: Why not?


KAYE: Soon, a jury will decide if Jodi's prediction was right or wrong.

For weeks, Jodi has been making a case for version three, that she killed Travis Alexander because she had to.

POLITAN: Story one, I wasn't there. I wasn't there. What are you talking about? Version number two, all right, I was there. But there were these two ninjas that came in and they killed Travis and they threatened to kill me and I was able to get out of there. Story three is what we're hearing at trial. Yes, I was there. And I did it, but I did it in self-defense because Travis was going to kill me.

KAYE: For Jodi Arias, whether this version sticks or doesn't could be a matter of life and death. Coming up, will Jodi Arias pay the ultimate price?





UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The state of Arizona vs. Jodi Ann Arias, indictment, count one, first-degree murder, premeditated murder.


MIMI HALL, FRIEND OF TRAVIS ALEXANDER: They said that they saw blood, that there's blood everywhere. I stopped looking. Then the roommate ran out and said he's dead, he's dead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jodi Arias killed Travis Alexander. There is no question about it. The million-dollar question is, what would have forced her to do it?

KAYE: While Jodi admitted killing Travis Alexander...


ARIAS: Yes, I did.

KAYE: ... she claims self-defense, that she was forced to kill Travis.



KAYE: The defense's explanation was to blame the victim.

KARAS: I wanted to know what he did that would justify her action.

KAYE: "In Session"'s Beth Karas has been in the courtroom every day of the trial.

KARAS: And I want to know after stabbing him nine times in the back, and in the heart, and in the abdomen, and slicing him, and he has defensive wounds as he's stumbling down the hall, what was going through your mind when you took that knife and drew it across his throat?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How long did you date Travis for?

LISA DAIDONE, FORMER GIRLFRIEND OF TRAVIS ALEXANDER: I would say about seven to eight months.

KAYE: The defense calls witnesses, including a Mormon ex- girlfriend to try and shatter the version of Travis as the pure Mormon man, what they claimed was nothing more than a facade.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let's talk about the first time that you broke up. What was the reason for that?

DAIDONE: I came to the understanding that he was cheating on me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know who he was cheating with?



DAIDONE: Jodi Arias.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jodi was Travis' dirty little secret. Despite projecting himself as a good and virginal Mormon man, someone who was a temple member, from the moment he met Jodi, he was pushy and pushing her to have a sexual relationship with him.

KARAS: Travis Alexander, there's no question he was conflicted. He was trying to be a good Mormon and probably was, except when it came to Jodi Arias, who would have sex with him, and they kept it a secret. But if this got out, that if people knew about this, it would hurt his reputation in his community. It would hurt his standing in his church, in his social circle. It might have hurt him professionally.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In your religion, is premarital sex allowed?


UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did Travis claim to be a virgin?


UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did he seem happy to be a virgin?


UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And did he seem proud?


TRAVIS ALEXANDER, VICTIM: Why don't we just talk for a little bit about happy things and get normalized for a moment? And then we will see where it takes us.

(LAUGHTER) KAYE: The defense with Jodi on the stand also used Travis' own words to attack his character.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you hear this call, it's -- it's crucial to understand the difference, the difference between the type of person that Travis portrayed himself to be vs. the things that he said on this recorded call.




KIRK NURMI, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Your life was pretty ideal up until about age 7. Was something different after age 7 or...






NURMI: What do you mean by use it on you?

ARIAS: She would hit us with it.

NURMI: She hit you hard?

ARIAS: It felt pretty hard, yes.

KAYE: She said those spankings by her mother and father left welts and painful memories.

NURMI: How did you feel when your own mother was beating you?

ARIAS: When I was younger, I remember feeling -- I didn't have a word for it then, but I can describe it as betrayed and confused. And as I got a little bit older, it would just really make me mad.




ARIAS: I was in my church clothes. He was in his church clothes. The kissing got more passionate, more intense. And then he spun me around. And he bent me over the bed, and he was just on top of me. I didn't think anything was -- I thought he was just going to keep kissing me. He began to have anal sex with me. And...






NURMI: He says that this photo shoot is going to be one of the best experience of your life and his. He also says "you will rejoice in being a whore, that the sole purchase is to be mine to have animal sex and to please me in any way I desire."

POLITAN: The defense is trying literally to trash Travis.

NURMI: You're still willing to be tied to a tree if that's what he wanted.

POLITAN: Attack his character.

ARIAS: Assertive, aggressive, and authoritative.

POLITAN: Make the jury dislike him.

ARIAS: He said I looked like a pure whore. POLITAN: Hate him, loathe him, because he's the bad guy, he's the evildoer, he's the sexual deviant. This guy is bad news and he's the one who ruined Jodi Arias' life. He's the one that made her do it.

KAYE: To the defense, it was Travis the monster, Jodi, his victim. But to the prosecution, it was all an unsustainable lie.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When do you decide to tell the truth, when you're in this court and no place else? Is that what I'm hearing from you?


KAYE: Next: exposing Jodi's lies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just because you're in this court doesn't mean you have to tell the truth. Right? I mean, that's what you're telling us, right?

ARIAS: That's not what I'm telling anyone.




KAYE (voice-over): This was Jodi Arias on "Inside Edition" in 2008.

ARIAS: No jury is going to convict me.

QUESTION: Why not?


KAYE: This is Jodi Arias now.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that you saying that you're going to not be convicted because you're going to commit suicide.

ARIAS: That's correct.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're saying that you're innocent, right?


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you believe that no jury would convict you because you're going to lie your way out of it, right? ARIAS: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Objection. Argumentative.

STEPHENS: Sustained.

KAYE: Jodi Arias has since admitted to killing Travis Alexander, but claimed it was a justified split-second decision to save her own life.


KAYE: They go to what they say was Jodi's attempt at a cover-up, like wanting a less conspicuous rental car for the drive to Travis' house.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You didn't want the color red, correct?


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The color red seems to stand out, doesn't it?


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right, and so it had to do with the police department, right? You did not want to stand out.

KAYE: Borrowing gas cans from a former boyfriend.

POLITAN: The gas cans. She didn't want to leave any trace behind that she was ever in Arizona, because story number one was I wasn't there, so she fills the gas cans up with gas so she doesn't have to stop at any gas stations in Arizona.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the tape number 365.

ARIAS: My phone died so I wasn't getting back to anybody. And what else? Oh, I drove over 100 miles in the wrong direction, over a hundred miles, thank you very much. So, yes, remember New Mexico? It was a lot like that, only you weren't here to prevent me from going into the three digits, so fun, fun. Tell you all about that later.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the reason that you went to great lengths to do that was if there was any suspicion, it wouldn't be drawn to you, correct?

ARIAS: Not immediately. That was the point, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right, you wanted to -- the police to look elsewhere, right?

ARIAS: I guess.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And so you called Mr. Alexander and you left him a message, right?


But let me know, and I will talk to you soon. Bye.

COMPUTER VOICE: End of message. To delete this message, press seven. To save it in the archives, press nine.

KAYE: But Jodi's effort at a cover-up didn't work. Ultimately, she confessed and took the jury step by step through the grisly details of the killing, starting with her dropping Travis' new camera.

ARIAS: At that point, Travis flipped out again. He stood up and he stepped out of the shower, and he picked me up as he was screaming that I was a stupid idiot, and he body-slammed me again on the tile.

He told me that a 5-year-old can hold a camera better than I can. As he was screaming at me, there was spit coming out -- or maybe it was water. But I was getting wet, and when I hit the tile, I rolled over on the side and started running down the hallway.

So I ran into the closet and I slammed the door. And, as soon as I got in there and began to run, I remembered where he kept a gun.

KAYE: According to Jodi, she had discovered the weapon on a previous visit.

BETH KARAS, CORRESPONDENT, TRUTV'S "IN SESSION": And she said she was cleaning in his closet, and she found on the shelf this gun. And it's a .25 caliber gun.

ARIAS: I grabbed the gun. I ran out of the closet. He was chasing me. I turned around. We were in the middle of the bathroom, pointing it at him with both of my hands. I thought it would stop him. If someone were pointing a gun at me, I would stop. But he just kept running. He got like a linebacker. He got kind of low and grabbed my waist. But before he did that, as he was lunging at me, the gun went off.

VINNIE POLITAN, HLN ANCHOR: There's zero evidence, independent evidence, evidence other than words out of Jodi Arias's mouth, that establish Travis Alexander as a gun owner. There is none.

JUAN MARTINEZ, PROSECUTOR: Your grandfather also had guns, didn't he?


MARTINEZ: You heard what items were taken, including a .25 caliber hand gun. You heard that, right?

ARIAS: Yes, I heard that.


KAYE: When Travis's body was found in the shower, there was only one bullet wound but almost 30 knife wounds. And he'd nearly been decapitated. An unforgettable scene that Jodi claims she doesn't remember.

ARIAS: I have no memory of stabbing him. I was in the bathroom. I remember dropping the knife, and it clanged to the tile, made a big noise, and I just remember screaming. I don't remember anything after that.


KARAS: She had such memory recall of things from years before. Details of meals, how many people were in the elevator, what happened on this date and what kind of sex she had on that date. And when it came to slicing and stabbing Travis Alexander 29 times, she had no recollection.



MARTINEZ: So it appears, then, that your memory becomes faulty immediately upon you shooting him?

ARIAS: Yes, things get very foggy from there.

MARTINEZ: That's immediately -- the shot takes him down, and it creates a fog for you, is that what you're saying?

ARIAS: It begins to create a fog.

MARTINEZ: You said that, right? What right do you have to do that? You seem to have a double standard here.

KAYE: Martinez was relentless about Jodi's memory lapses.

MARTINEZ: Even though you're in a fog, I'm asking whether you acknowledge that you removed the gun from the crime scene.


MARTINEZ: If you were in a fog and you hadn't -- didn't know what you were doing, why take the gun, ma'am?

KAYE: The prosecution also attacked Jodi's claims of self- defense. KARAS: How can you assert self-defense when you can't even describe what you were defending yourself against? Really, she cannot describe any of the slashings and stabbings and what justified that.

MARTINEZ: Does that refresh your recollection?

KAYE: Martinez used his cross-examination of Jodi to try to take apart the defense's story of an abusive Travis.

KARAS: She claims that her disfigured ring finger on her left hand was caused by Travis Alexander in a domestic violence incident.

KIRK NURMI, ARIAS'S DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Could you hold up your hand for us so we could see?

KAYE: She'd shown her still-crooked finger to the jury, but Martinez confronted her with this picture, no bent finger, taken months after the alleged incident.

MARTINEZ: You don't have a bent finger here in Exhibit 453, do you?

ARIAS: My finger is bent there.

MARTINEZ: You're saying that your finger is bent there?


JUDGE SHERRY STEPHENS, PRESIDING OVER TRIAL: Ms. Arias, please take the stand.

KAYE: After days of tough questioning and gripping testimony, the defense would try to bring the sympathetic Jodi back to the witness stand.

STEPHENS: Please be seated.

KAYE: Next, the jury's questions.

JUDGE SHERRY STEPHENS, PRESIDING OVER TRIAL: "Would you decide to tell the truth if you never got arrested?"

ARIAS: I honestly don't know the answer to that question.


STEPHENS: "Why is it that you have no memory of stabbing Travis?"


KAYE: After more than four weeks on the stand, accused murderer Jodi Arias faced new questions.

STEPHENS: "Why did you put the camera in the washer?" ARIAS: I don't have a memory of that. I don't know why I would do that.

KAYE: Questions posed not by the prosecutors or the defense but by the jury.

STEPHENS: "How do you determine when you will tell the truth and when you will not tell the truth?"

KAYE: Arizona is one of a handful of states that allows jurors to question defendants, including those facing the death penalty.

POLITAN: On every trial, the most dramatic moment is when the jury speaks, when they deliver their verdict. This week was pretty close to that.

STEPHENS: "Why did you take the rope and gun with you?"

POLITANO: It's rare that jurors ask question. It's rare that a criminal defendant takes the stand, and it's rare that someone is facing the death penalty.

STEPHENS: "Why didn't you call 911?"

KARAS: I have never in all of my years of trying cases or reporting on cases seen anything like this.

KAYE: As Judge Sherry K. Stephens peppered Jodi Arias with more than 200 questions submitted by the jury...

STEPHENS: "Did you ever take pictures of yourself after he hit you?"

ARIAS: No, I did not.

KAYE: ... Jodi was pressed to detail her relationship with the victim, Travis Alexander, and the circumstances surrounding his brutal death.


ARIAS: That was not a side of Travis that -- that he wanted to even exist.

POLITAN: They're taking her story, and the different times she's testified, and matching it up against prior testimony. But you know, you said this over here, but then you said that over here. Which is it? It's almost as if this jury is given Jodi Arias another round of cross-examination.

STEPHENS: "Do you know what time you left Travis's house on June 4, 2008?"

ARIAS: I don't remember the exact time.


ARIAS: I don't remember.

STEPHENS: "You say Travis had attacked you before June 4, 2008, but would apologize to you after he did it. So why was the June 4, 2008, incident so different?"

ARIAS: June 4 was escalated. On prior occasions, I never feared for my life. It wasn't until after that incident when I reflected back on it that I realized I could have died.

KAYE (on camera): And no matter how many times they heard her version of the crime, they wanted to hear it again. They wanted her to walk them through it.

KARAS: This case comes down to those seconds, no more than two minutes inside the bathroom. That's what this case is all about. What happened in Travis Alexander's master bathroom, and was Jodi Arias reasonable in her reaction?

KAYE (voice-over): It started, Jodi says, after she dropped Travis's new camera.

ARIAS: He got very angry, and he stepped out of the shower. He lifted me up from the crouched position. And he body-slammed me on the tile.

KAYE: Jodi says she ran for the gun in Travis's closet as he pursued her.

ARIAS: I just wanted him to stop so I pointed the gun at him, hoping that that would just make him halt. And it didn't. Instead, he lunged at me right around the time that the gun went off. And I didn't mean for it to go off.

STEPHENS: "Why not run out of the house to get away?"

ARIAS: After I shot him, after the gun went off, we fell over, and he was trying to get on top of me. It's hard to describe the fear. It was -- it was like mortal terror.

STEPHENS: "Would you agree that you came away from the June 4 incident rather unscathed, while Travis suffered a gunshot and multiple stab wounds?"

ARIAS: As far as making comparison of physical injuries, him versus mine, yes, I would have to say that's a relatively accurate assessment.

POLITAN: I thought that the majority of these jury questions were just oozing with skepticism. I mean, listening to the way they're asking it, you could almost hear the attitude in the questions.

STEPHENS: "Would you decide to tell the truth if you never got arrested?" ARIAS: I honestly don't know the answer to that question.

KAYE (on camera): It's so interesting to watch Jodi Arias in court, because with almost every single answer, she turns to the jury and answers it. Why is she doing that, and will that be beneficial to her?

KARAS: The more they are interacting with her -- and I say interacting, she's looking at them day in and day out -- perhaps the less likely they will send her to the death chamber.

STEPHENS: Ladies and gentlemen, are there any other questions from the jury at this time? Mr. Nurmi, you may follow up.

KAYE (voice-over): Now defense attorney Kirk Nurmi asked Jodi Arias the only question that seemed to matter.

NURMI: So Jodi, that is the ultimate question. Why should anybody believe you now?

ARIAS: Like I said before, all of my -- I lied a lot in the beginning, and each of those lies tied back directly to two things. Travis and protecting his ego -- I mean, his reputation. And my own, partially. And to relate it to any involvement in his death.

So I understand that there will always be questions, but all I can do at this point is say what happened to the best of my recollection. And if I'm convicted, then that's because of my own bad choices in the beginning.

MARTINEZ: Objection. Irrelevance. It begs a premise of the jury.

STEPHENS: Sustained.

KAYE: Next, Jodi's last day on the stand and in the sights of Juan Martinez.

MARTINEZ: Did you have the knife in your hand when you shot him?

NURMI: Same question.

STEPHENS: Overruled.


ARIAS: As Jodi Arias testified for the 18th day, the focus fell solidly on just 62 seconds.

MARTINEZ: And what you're telling us, under your scenario, is that in 62 seconds, you get body-slammed, you get away. You run down the hallway. You go in the closet. You grab a gun. You shoot Mr. Alexander. After you shoot Mr. Alexander, you pick up the camera, and he's already down the hallway with his throat slit.

POLITAN: Juan Martinez has called Jodi Arias on her story. He's put a number on it: 62 seconds. Sixty-two seconds, Jodi Arias, you say that Travis Alexander attacked you, chased you, you grab the gun, you turn around, you shoot and kill him and then you stab him. All of this is happening in 62 seconds?

And Martinez has her locked in because of the time stamps on those photos. Locked her into this time frame. Trying to establish in front of this jury, that's impossible.

MARTINEZ: It's 5:30:30, correct?

ARIAS: Correct.

POLITAN: That all of this, all that Jodi Arias says happened could have happened in 62 seconds.

KAYE: To prosecutor Juan Martinez, none of it added up.

MARTINEZ: Then that would mean that after he body-slammed you, and you took off, he started looking at the camera, right?

ARIAS: If that was what I believe. But I didn't say that's what I believe.

MARTINEZ: Well, you said it was possible before, didn't you?

ARIAS: Because somebody asked if it was possible.

MARTINEZ: You did say it, yes or no?


MARTINEZ: If he's doing that, if he's looking at the camera and you're down the hallway, he's not very close to you, is he?

ARIAS: Not at that -- if that's even what happened.

KAYE: Though Jodi stabbed Travis over two dozen times, she couldn't even say where the knife came from.


NURMI: Objection, argumentative. Same question.

STEPHENS: Overruled.

ARIAS: No, I did not.

KAYE: Arias says she shot Travis in the face first, before stabbing him in an unconscious fog.

MARTINEZ: If you didn't have the knife in your hand, you needed to go get it from somewhere, right?

ARIAS: I guess. I don't know.

MARTINEZ: No, no, no. There's no guessing here now. Uh-uh. KAYE: Now, for the first time, Arias suggested that Travis may have escalated things himself, using more than his words and a body slam.

MARTINEZ: If you didn't have it in your hand and you just shot him, you needed to go get that knife at that point, correct?

ARIAS: No, it's possible Travis grabbed the knife first.

POLITAN: I cannot believe Jodi Arias is now trying to put the knife in Travis Alexander's hand. This is the first time we've heard that from Jodi Arias. And it's possible that Travis grabbed the knife and was going after her? Why doesn't she have any wounds if he's got a knife in his hand? And what she does, though, is then she pulls back into the fog.

ARIAS: I'd say the fog started to come in after the gunshot.

POLITAN: The fog comes over the situation. "I don't know exactly what happened, but maybe Travis -- maybe Travis grabbed the knife. I just don't know because I don't remember."

MARTINEZ: There's another reason why your scenario isn't possible.

KAYE: When Travis was stabbed may be a critical factor for the prosecution.

MARTINEZ: Given the time constraints here, it would have been impossible for you not to have the knife with you when the attack happened.

KAYE: If Martinez can prove Jodi stabbed Travis before shooting him, it highlights just how cruel her killing was and makes way for a death penalty request.

KARAS: She mutilated him. That's why they're seeking death. Not just pre-meditation, but just the aggravating factors, cruelty, mental and physical anguish. This man suffered.

KAYE: Jodi Arias, Martinez said, was a heartless killer with a very faulty memory.

ARIAS: I don't know, because I don't remember a lot from that period.

I don't remember a lot from that period.

I don't recall an exact time.

I don't remember the order the photos were taken in.

I don't know.

I don't know. POLITAN: Juan Martinez's theme is clear about the fog. That this fog that Jodi Arias has created becomes a fog of convenience. That when there isn't a good answer for this jury, the fog rolls in, and Jodi Arias suddenly has memory problems.

MARTINEZ: So you lied to him, right?

KAYE: On his final exchange, Martinez made the one point that seemed to matter most to him. Jodi Arias is a liar.

ARIAS: I did not confess that I was the person responsible for Travis' death.

MARTINEZ: So you lied to him, right?

ARIAS: Well...

NURMI: Objection. Argumentative. Asked and answered.

STEPHENS: Sustained.

MARTINEZ: So you didn't tell the whole story, then, right? That's what you said, right?

ARIAS: That would be accurate.

STEPHENS: Ladies and gentlemen, that is all for today.

KAYE: All for the day and all for Jodi Arias's marathon stay on the stand. Eighteen days of direct, cross and redirect examination. Two hundred thirty questions from an attentive jury.

POLITAN: The only thing more shocking than the moment Jodi Arias got on the stand was the moment that it's over. Eighteen days and it's finally over? I mean, at some point, we thought "This is never going to end." Every time she says something, the jury has another question. Kirk Nurmi has another question. Juan Martinez has another question. But, finally now, over 5,500 questions; it's over.

KAYE: In the end, Jodi's reasoning for self-defense could make or break this case.

STEPHENS: Please be seated. The record will show the presence of the jury, the defendant and all counsel. Ms. Willmott, you may call the next witness.

JENNIFER WILLMOTT, JODI'S DEFENSE ATTORNEY: The defense called Dr. Richard Samuels.

KAYE: Next on the stand, the defense's expert psychologist, Richard Samuels. His first order of business? Explaining how stress causes memory loss.

DR. RICHARD SAMUELS, PSYCHOLOGIST: What may happen is that some memories can be retained and formed anew. But they may not be clear. They may be foggy. KAYE: Samuels went on to say that less than 10 people out of every 100,000 in the general population experience amnesia every year. And, yet...

SAMUELS: Up to 30 percent of convicted homicide cases claim to have amnesia at their trial.

KAYE: And what causes this amnesia?

SAMUELS: Physical exertion. Emotional or psychological stress. Pain, medical procedures. Sexual intercourse.

POLITAN: I expected some of the testimony that we heard from Arias's expert about the posttraumatic stress and what causes it. But taking it to a place. Taking it to the bedroom, that things can happen, sexually, between a man and a woman that's going to create memory problems? I have a problem with that.

KAYE: As the week closed, the defense's direction seemed clear. Travis Alexander forced Jodi Arias to kill him and then to forget most of what happened.


KAYE: For 18 days, Jodi Arias was on the stand recalling a strange mix of strange details and large lapses of memory. One thing is known for sure: Travis Alexander's life ended with a gunshot and nearly 30 stab wounds. Will hers end with the death penalty? Much more on the trial ahead on "AC 360" -- Anderson.