Jodi Arias has sought the spotlight at every turn, granting national television interviews in the months after her arrest, another on the day of her conviction, and about a half dozen the day jurors began deliberating whether she should live or die for her crimes.
Now facing a retrial to determine her sentence, Arias’ lawyers are asking a judge to bar live TV coverage inside the courtroom, an irony not lost on prosecutors and a lawyer representing CNN.
“She has voluntarily thrust herself into the vortex of this public controversy,” the news network’s attorney, David Bodney, told the judge at a hearing Friday. “It is unfair to deprive the public … because someone can’t control her own speech.”
Arias was convicted of first-degree murder May 8 in the 2008 stabbing and shooting death of boyfriend Travis Alexander in his suburban Phoenix home. The same jury failed to reach a decision on whether she should get the death penalty, setting the stage for a second penalty phase.
Arias’ attorneys are arguing that the same intense publicity that enveloped her trial will no doubt come in the second penalty phase as well, hindering her ability to get a fair trial. They also are seeking to have the new jury sequestered, citing thousands of television news shows and newspaper articles about Arias throughout her roughly five-month trial, as well as a Lifetime movie about the case that attorneys said attracted 3.1 million viewers.
In addition, Arias’ lawyers want the retrial moved out of the Phoenix metropolitan area because of excessive publicity, and they want the judge to compel all jurors eventually seated to reveal their Twitter user names so the accounts can be monitored to ensure jurors aren’t communicating about the case.
Arias,33, has operated a Twitter account, even throughout the trial, using a third party to post comments on her behalf as she remains jailed. As of Friday, she had more than 78,000 followers.
In one recent motion, prosecutors shot back, noting that the defense efforts fail to acknowledge Arias’ “own role in creating publicity about the trial.”
“She cannot create what she now considers a problem and then expect the court to change its procedure to solve the problem,” the motion read.
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