PHOENIX (Reuters) - An Arizona judge is expected to determine on Monday whether Jodi Arias, who was convicted in 2013 of killing her ex-boyfriend, will spend the rest of her life in prison or possibly be eligible for parole right after 25 years.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens is set to decide the fate of the former California waitress soon after a second jury last month failed to attain a unanimous verdict on irrespective of whether she should really be executed for the 2008 murder of Travis Alexander.
Stephens declared a mistrial on March 5 when a lone female juror refused to vote for the death penalty all through 5 days of deliberations.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys are expected to make arguments one particular final time in a case that initial grabbed the nation’s interest with its live-streamed court proceedings of lurid testimony and graphic images.
Prosecutors, legally barred from making however a different try to get a jury to agree to the death penalty, are hoping to at least make certain Arias can never be paroled.
"It’s going to be closure for the Alexander loved ones and the public who are so invested in this case following all these years," said Jen Wood, a journalist and blogger who has covered the trial from the begin. "Now it’s finally ending."
Arias, 34, was convicted in May perhaps 2013 of killing 30-year-old Alexander at his Phoenix-region residence some five years earlier.
He was identified dead in the shower in June 2008, obtaining been stabbed far more than 20 occasions, his throat cut nearly from ear to ear, and he had been shot in the face.
Arias was arrested at her grandparents’ residence in Northern California a month later for a killing that prosecutors maintained was made in a jealous rage. Defense attorneys said she acted in self-defense.
The jury that convicted her agreed she was eligible for the death penalty, but deadlocked on her sentence. A second panel spent 5 months hearing the case devoid of being capable to reach a consensus.
A number of of the jurors have stated they program to attend Monday’s hearing, a proceeding that is anticipated to once more include things like statements from the victim’s household. Arias also may possibly speak in a bid for a lighter sentence.
Arias, who testified for 18 days during her trial and parts of two days for the duration of her sentencing retrial, declined to make a final-minute plea to the jury in February.
(Reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix Editing by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Christian Plumb)