Arias Jury Having Trouble With Unanimous Decision

Oh no. After only 3 hours of deliberating over life and death for Jodi Arias, the jury has sent Judge Stephens a note that they were unable to reach a unanimous decision.  Judge Stephens spoke to the jury in court and encouraged them to continue to forge ahead, and if they have any questions on the law she encouraged them to ask her.

I'm surprised that after such a short time, they are seemingly deadlocked!  I don't know how unusual this is for a jury, but I'd imagine it's a difficult decision for each of them.  If they are unable to reach an unanimous verdict, a mistrial will be declared for this phase of the trial - they would then potentially enpanel a new jury to handle the sentencing phase. The new jury would have to accept the guilty verdict, complete with aggravators. The decision would be life or death.  How long would this process take, if they had to choose a new jury? Given the pace of the current trial, this could potentially drag out for some time - also the media coverage around the case may require them to go to another county to find jurors who haven't been saturated with news coverage on this case!  Is this part of Arias' media ploy? Is she trying to reach the next group of potential jurors?  Having listened to some of her interviews from last night, it seems clear to me that she does not believe she will receive a death sentence.

Arias was described by one reporter as a "diva" - calling the shots on what they could ask her and how she should be photographed. She insisted on the chains and jail stripes not be in the shot!  She did not want to be taped fussing over her hair, her makeup had to be perfect. Can you believe this woman? Who does she think she is?  What she said was shocking as well.  If you've seen GMA's interview between Ryan Owens and Jodi Arias, she was outright defiant. He asked her some blunt questions. He asked her why she didn't apologize to the Alexander family, Arias insisted she did apologize. Owens pressed her, "you didn't use those words".  She said that she felt the words "I'm sorry" would have been meaningless to them. Owens talked about Arias' change of heart regarding the death penalty - he asked her "why don't you give this family some closure, you know they want you dead".  Arias fell back on her family, saying killing her would only cause them pain and she said she doesn't believe in capital punishment!  Guess she doesn't believe in it, when she's facing it!

Ryan Owens asked Arias "are you ever going to tell the truth about what happened in that bathroom?"  Arias said she had told the truth, and then said "I didn't know you were a hater when you asked for this interview"!  She's using her jodiisinnocent website language, "haters".  After hearing two of her interviews, I was shocked that she seems completely unaware of how negatively people view her, that she is one of the most hated women in America! Instead, she talked about the outpouring of love and support she has received from people who want to help and support her.  UURRGGHH!!
I don't know about you all, but after watching these interviews and hearing her speech yesterday, I don't know how much more of the Jodi Arias show that we can handle - and imagine how horrible this is for the Alexander's siblings. They must cringe each and every time they see her smug mug on the television, claiming to be a "Survivor" and wanting to live so she can further the cause! Give me a break!

Let's pray that we have a positive outcome people.  We can't take another 6 months of Jodi Arias! I'm posting a link to an interesting article about the jury deliberations in the sentencing phase of Wendi Andriano trial.  It was very much a split decision, and it took them more than 4 days to reach an unanimous verdict - it wasn't easy. It took time. This gives me hope! On their 1st vote, there were 3 for the death penalty, 4 were for a life sentence and the remaining jurors were undecided.  The next vote they got to 11-1 for death, but they were on the verge of being deadlocked with one senior citizen holdout who was against the death penalty.  In the end, after weighing the mitigating factors versus the brutality of killing her husband (and her childrens father) - the mitigating factors just were not enough and they sentenced her to death.  Interesting to read how they struggled with the decision.  Here's the link:

http://www.nlada.org/DMS/Documents/1106668066.47/0124deathjurors24.html


Let's hope this jury can render a verdict and justice will finally be served in this case!