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Nancy Grace

Jodi Arias Trial Notes Week 6

Aired February 08, 2013 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JODI ARIAS, CHARGED WITH MURDER: I was in my church clothes. He was in his church clothes.

I could feel an erection.

Those are pictures of Travis`s erection.

-- began to have anal sex with me.

I kind of felt like -- like a prostitute.

The first night, it was the grinding and the next night was oral sex.

I felt a little bit used.

I kind of felt like -- like a prostitute.

Kind of felt like a used piece of toilet paper.

(INAUDIBLE) Stop, stop, stop. And he stopped.

It became too painful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The vow of chastity.

ARIAS: No premarital sex. Vaginal sex was off limits, and everything else was more or less OK.

It was a little confusing, the sex.

Sex is sex.

He sort of had, like, the Bill Clinton version.

Oral and anal sex were also sex to me, but not for him.

He finished by (EXPLETIVE DELETED) on my back.

-- called me skank.

-- called me Pollyanna...

-- porn star...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY GRACE, HOST: All of us have watched Jodi Arias on the stand under oath, the entire week, hours and hours of Jodi Arias testifying. She might as well have written "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens, which starts with "I was born," because that`s where we start with Jodi Arias.

She detailed everything from her life before she was 7 years old to her mother spanking her with a wooden spoon to the first time she rode a ferris wheel or some amusement park ride with a boy. I guess she was 14 years old. We go through every boyfriend she`s ever had, what was wrong with them, what they did wrong to her ad nauseam.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIAS: I see that period of my life as probably one of the best times in my life. He treated me very well. He was very kind. He was very respectful. He was very spiritual. When I first met him, he -- I was a little bit leery of some of the things he was into. I saw some books on witchcraft, and I thought, Uh. but he explained to me that he was just seeking, that he had gone to church most of his life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: What jumps out at me the most regarding Jodi Arias`s testimony is her demeanor in front of the jury.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIAS: There were a few things that happened right before we moved. A bunch of friends and I one night decided -- like, the last night I was there, we tried to sneak out of the house and hang out. And my parents woke up and found out, so when I came back, my dad asked where I had been.

And I was -- I had fallen asleep. He had woke me up around 6:00. And so when I -- I sat up and I was disoriented because I had been sleeping, so I didn`t give him a satisfactory answer. So he hit me across the face. And I fell back down, and then he sat me back up and asked me again, and I didn`t give him a satisfactory answer, so he hit me across the face again and I fell down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: She is striving to paint the picture of being meek, mild, shy, demure, soft-spoken. Frankly, she`s doing a very good job of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 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 could describe it as betrayed and confused. And as I got a little bit older, it would just really make me mad because I just -- I didn`t get why -- I don`t know. I understood that I was being punished, but I would just be mad at her a lot over that because it hurt.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because you still loved her.

ARIAS: Yes, I loved my mom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even though she was still beating you, you still loved her.

ARIAS: Yes. It put a strain on our relationship, but I still loved her, of course.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m sorry, I didn`t hear the last part.

ARIAS: I still loved her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: If I had not seen her in her other interviews...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you kill Travis Alexander?

ARIAS: I absolutely did not kill Travis Alexander. I had nothing to do with his murder. I didn`t harm him in any way.

I witnessed Travis being attacked by two other individuals.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who?

ARIAS: I don`t know who they were. I couldn`t pick them out in a police lineup.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So what happened?

ARIAS: They came into his home and attacked us both.

I`m not proud that I just left my friend there to be slaughtered at the hands of two other people. I`m not proud of that at all.

I know that I`m innocent. God knows I`m innocent. Travis knows I`m innocent.

No jury is going to convict me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why not?

ARIAS: Because I`m innocent. And you can mark my words on that one, no jury will convict me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: If I did not know of her life before this murder, I might fall for it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The first -- the first week the missionaries came, they invited me to church that following Sunday. Someone was giving a talk, and what that person said was very impactful. It was an acceptance and a tolerance of all faiths in the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: She`s very, very convincing. It`s also a conundrum, a mystery, as to why the prosecution is not objecting to this monologue that she is presenting as kind of a stream of consciousness on the stand. And it`s totally inadmissible.

Another facet of Jodi Arias`s testimony, of course, is that the large bulk of it dealt with sex.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIAS: We were in the bedroom. We were not on the bed, but we were standing next to it. And we were kissing. And 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. 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. I was face down. My head was turned to the side. His hands were wandering, and he lifted up my skirt and -- and he pulled down my underwear, and he was pressing against me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you mean, pressing against you?

ARIAS: His whole body.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did he have an erection?

ARIAS: I could feel an erection. He unzipped his pants and -- I guess he pulled them down. I didn`t see. But he -- he began to have anal sex with me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: I spoke with many of Travis Alexander`s friends. And they universally and uniformly said that she projected herself in a very provocative and sexual manner to the extent that the wives of Travis Alexander`s friends did not want her around. They perceived that she was hitting on their husbands. From her testimony, she paints the same picture of herself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: While you were at this convention, did you ever meet an individual by the name of Travis Alexander?

ARIAS: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Describe for us where you were and what was going on when you met Travis Alexander.

ARIAS: We were finishing up dinner, paid our check, and we left -- we didn`t leave the Rain Forest Cafe. We sort of stayed in this kind of lobby area. I don`t know how else -- we were right outside the entrance, still indoors.

And there`s just tons of people everywhere and a lot of them are business associates, so I`m just -- I`m staying close to Michelle. She`s the only person I really know. And I`m meeting other people that are on my team, and she introduces me to people that are in my up (ph) line and things like that, and there was just a crowd of people everywhere.

And out of the corner of my eye, I saw somebody walking toward me, kind of fast-paced. And I noticed it was a guy, and I thought -- I thought he was going somewhere because he looked like he had a purpose. So I stepped out of the way because I thought he need to walk past me, but he stopped right in front of me and stuck his hand out and introduced himself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: Now, the testimony is geared at making Travis Alexander look like a big a-hole. There`s really no other way to put it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIAS: He began to perform oral sex on me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And was this comfortable? You mentioned earlier that you had a certain level of discomfort with this -- the being naked. Were you uncomfortable while this oral sex was going on?

ARIAS: I was -- I was uncomfortable. It was dark and the lights were off, so I think that might have made it a little bit more -- I mean, a little more tolerable. But it was -- I don`t know. He -- he knew what he was doing, for sure, but it was just -- felt like too much, too soon. And I mean, I couldn`t exactly rewind at that point, you know?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why not? Did you -- did you voice your displeasure with the events?

ARIAS: No, I can`t say that it was displeasure, but it was uncomfortable. Does that make sense?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, let me rephrase my question, then. Did you voice your discomfort to him?

ARIAS: No. I didn`t want to give him that impression.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: She describes how he is very cold to her after sex encounters, that he won`t kiss her after she gives him oral sex, that he just drives off after an oral sex encounter at a parking lot near a Starbucks. I mean, it just -- everything to paint him as callous, insensitive, unfeeling, boorish, using her for sex.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIAS: I don`t recall feeling really bad, maybe just a little deflated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: But there`s a flip side to that coin. Think about it. She says, quote, "I felt like a piece of used toilet paper," quote.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIAS: Shortly after he left, I felt -- I didn`t feel very good. I kind of felt like a used piece of toilet paper. I didn`t continue feeling that way. Just shortly thereafter for a little while I did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: "I felt like a prostitute."

ARIAS: I felt a little bit used. But I knew I had gone there on my own willingly.

He gets a hotel room. I show up. We hang out. We have sex. He`s not really there presently. Like, he`s not mentally present. I`m getting a lot of attention but only while we`re engaging in sexual activity, and then we check out and he takes off. And I kind of felt like -- like a prostitute, sort of.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: That adds fuel to the fire the prosecution is building, the story of revenge, of anger, of a simmering anger that started that day in the parking lot near Starbucks when she performed oral sex on him at his request, and he refused to kiss her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ARIAS: He wouldn`t -- he refused to kiss me afterward because he said it was gross. I guess maybe that`s because I was just performing oral sex, but that`s what he said. And so he kissed me on the cheek and left.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Every time, he pretended they weren`t dating in front of other people.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you were in front of the roommates, did he hold hands with you, put his arm around you, anything of that nature?

ARIAS: No. We stayed in the bedroom a lot. But when we hung out downstairs, if the roommates were there, we were just regular, like, friends.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Every time he said a mocking comment or an insult or a belittlement...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIAS: We were on the phone, actually, when he said that. We were talking, and then he began to have a conversation with somebody else, so I waited. And then he apologized and said, Josh just got home. I said, Tell him I said hi. Jodi says hi.

And I could hear a muffled response in the background. It sounded friendly but Travis said, He said you`re a skank. So I knew it came from Travis, not Josh. And then he said, I`m just kidding.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: That anger grew and the fire went from red to blue to white hot. That may very well be the prosecution`s strategy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Be so kind as to take a look at those. Do you recognize those?

ARIAS: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are those pictures of?

ARIAS: Those are pictures of Travis`s erection.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And when did you -- or how did you come into possession of these photos?

ARIAS: They were sent to me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How?

ARIAS: Via his phone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Via text message or picture message?

ARIAS: Picture message.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: It caused quite a stir when Arias first took the witness stand to testify in her own defense. I notice that she most often approaches the stand, she ascends and descends the stand, when the jury is not there.

I think that that is two -- for a reason twofold. One, she`s wearing a stun belt, and that may be more pronounced or more easily spotted if she`s standing up.

Also, if she stands up, they`ll see how big she really is, as opposed to having her chair screwed down and adjusted to make her much shorter than her female defense lawyer that she is sitting beside, so they could actually gauge how big she is by looking at her standing up. I hope the prosecution asks her to stand.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why didn`t you tell him no?

ARIAS: Eventually, I did. I probably would have just let him continue, but it was -- became too painful. Because I knew that that was what he had been wanting for a while. And I just -- I trusted him. I had a lot of trust, and he -- I just went with what he was -- with his agenda, I guess I could say.

I don`t think it went on too long, not several minutes, maybe a few. I mean, I wasn`t looking forward to it, but definitely pain -- I had to. I had to have him stop. Otherwise, I probably would have continued.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jodi Arias grew up in northern California, but was living in Palm Desert when she met Travis Alexander in September 2006 at a Las Vegas conference. Travis was living here, in Mesa, Arizona. He was an up-and-coming motivational speaker and a salesman for pre-paid legal insurance.

ARIAS: At the time, I shook his hand. He said, Hi, I`m Travis. I said, Hi, I`m Jodi. And his name was just another of many names that I had to remember. He made it a point to keep walking next to me and keep me engaged in conversation. And we just -- you know, by the time we made it around to the big gold line in the front of the lobby, we just -- we had discovered a couple of common interests and that sort of thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Jodi Arias describes how she felt, which is also inadmissible. But it plays a role here. The defense is trying to show that she felt used and mistreated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Were you holding hands? Did you have your arm around each other? Was that different than most of the other times?

ARIAS: Inside the motel room, definitely. Inside the truck stop -- There`s -- the restaurant adjoins this mini-mart, and he -- he grabbed my butt there. There were some men standing by and he did that right in front of them. And other than that, I think -- he wasn`t too affectionate at Sizzler (ph). I don`t really remember. But he was very affectionate inside the motel room while we were being physical.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: That does not go towards self-defense. That goes toward anger and revenge. Now, if she felt in fear for her life or that she had been beaten, that`s a whole different animal. That would go towards self- defense.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At this point in time, you had engaged in several, maybe half dozen -- I mean, not quite a half dozen -- instances of sexual contact with Mr. Alexander, right?

ARIAS: Yes. Well, how many did you say?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, around a half dozen, give or take, probably a few less.

ARIAS: Something close to that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. And he doesn`t want anyone, seemingly, to know that you have any sort of relationship in December of 2006. So my question to you then is, how did that make you feel?

ARIAS: I didn`t give it too much thought. It didn`t make me feel good, but it didn`t make me upset. It just sort of -- it`s something I kept ignoring and putting out of my mind and just -- ignoring.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. So you weren`t mad at him?

ARIAS: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you ever think at this point in time, I`m done with this guy?

ARIAS: Maybe not in the context that I think you`re putting it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Well, what context was it? I mean, at this point in time, you didn`t say, Gee whiz, we`re doing all this activity, he doesn`t even want to hold my hand in public, it`s time to end this?

ARIAS: It bothered me a little bit. But we talked about our -- the status of our relationship the next day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And based on that conversation -- you used the word "status." What was the status of your relationship, based on this conversation? To your understanding, what was the status?

ARIAS: After talking, I was encouraged to date other people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: But again, I think that she is trying to engender empathy amongst the female jurors, for every female that has ever felt misused by a guy, which is probably every woman on this earth at one time or another feels neglected or misused or taken for granted. They`re trying to tap into those feelings by the female jurors. That`s what they`re trying to do.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you kill Travis Alexander on June 4th, 2008?

ARIAS: Yes, I did.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You said that no jury would convict you, something to that effect. Do you remember saying that? Remember saying that?

ARIAS: Yes, I did say that. At the time, I had plans to commit suicide.

The simple answer is that he attacked me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Well, there was certainly a sensation in the courtroom this week when Jodi Arias described her baptism, her Mormon baptism, but not for the reasons that you may think. Although she describes a peaceful feeling descending upon her as she emerged from the water -- I assume it was a full immersion baptism -- she was baptized in the Mormon church by her lover, Travis Alexander.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIAS: You walk up, and Travis held his hand up and said some kind of invocation or prayer or blessing. I don`t know what it`s called. He made a declaration, so to speak, and then I was dipped into the water and came back up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And how did it feel for you to be baptized? Were you elated? Did you feel very spiritual? Can you describe that feeling?

ARIAS: It was a very peaceful feeling.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: They zoomed straight home and immediately engaged in anal sex still wearing their church baptismal clothes. Now, that`s certainly -- that certainly conjures up a mental image. I`m not quite sure where the defense is going with that, other than to magnify her feelings, Jodi Arias`s feelings of being used.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Had you ever learned about what we`re calling the vow of chastity?

ARIAS: It was mentioned.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At any point in time?

ARIAS: It was mentioned to me. Not in detail.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What was your understanding of that vow?

ARIAS: According to the missionaries, they were -- they sort of glossed over it. They didn`t really gloss over it...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Objection, (INAUDIBLE) what her understanding was.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What was your understanding of what the vow meant, what it prohibited?

ARIAS: No premarital sex. My understanding was that it meant that vaginal sex was off limits, and everything else was more or less OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And who gave you that understanding?

ARIAS: Travis did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: The jury must be reminded in cross-exam that regardless of how she says today she feels, she was the one that drove 1,000 miles to be with Travis Alexander. She was the one that stalked him. She was the one that slashed his tires twice. She was the one that slashed the tires of his then girlfriend he started dating. She was the one that broke into his social media, his e-mail accounts. She was the one that broke into had his bank accounts. She pursued him.

So whatever feeling she had, she must have liked it.

JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL, HOST, "ISSUES WITH JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL": What sticks out to me most is that Jodi Arias seems to have control of the courtroom, and indeed, the case, as she`s taken the witness stand. And she`s really, I think, tried to put the jurors in her shoes, or what she claims is her shoes, sort of this innocent, naive thing being groomed into becoming some kind of sex slave under the guise of religion. It`s definitely a motive, but is it self-defense?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Were you in love with him in February 2007?

ARIAS: I might have been, but I don`t recall being in love-in love. We -- I recall having feelings for him, but I don`t know that I could say in love yet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: In court this week, the defense introduced images that they claim are Travis Alexander`s penis, that he had taken that photo and sent it, texted it to Jodi Arias. I`m not really sure the point of that, I assume to make Travis Alexander out to be some sort of a deviant.

But remember, all we have is Jodi Arias`s word that that is how she received the photo. And I don`t think that there`s going to be a photographic lineup for identification purposes. Long story short, we have to accept her word that Travis Alexander sent her this photo. And again, if anything, if I were the state, I would argue that it made Arias feel angry and used.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So he sent you two photos that day?

ARIAS: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.

ARIAS: Consecutively.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ms. Arias, when he did that, was he also requesting that you reciprocate with any photos?

ARIAS: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you reciprocate with photos?

ARIAS: No, not that day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why not?

ARIAS: I was at a restaurant and -- I don`t know how to really explain it without saying...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, did you want to reciprocate?

ARIAS: Not -- no, I didn`t. But I knew he wanted to, so I was a little bit conflicted. But I said no.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How did he react to your refusal to send him a picture?

ARIAS: He -- he felt it should be fair, kind of like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELEZ-MITCHELL: I`m shocked at how she has free run to tell her entire life story and go into all sorts of mundane details, what an ex- boyfriend wore for Halloween. I mean, this is outrageous!

Why is this happening? I`ll tell you why, because it`s a death penalty case, and that means that this judge wants to give her every opportunity to tell her story. And I think that, ultimately, may be the prosecution`s undoing.

GRACE: The defense, I believe, at this juncture, is succeeding in making Travis Alexander look like the bad guy. But I have a firm belief that on cross-examination, the full story is going to be told. And that full story will include the fact that Jodi Arias was a willing and eager participant in every one of these sex acts.

In fact, she egged Travis Alexander on. She would go to no lengths -- to all lengths to be with him, traveling great distances in order to be with him, even though he made it very clear they were not going to marry.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIAS: The simple answer is that he attacked me, and I defended myself.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Arias looked right at jurors as she told her story, the same jury that has watched her lie to police over and over.

ARIAS: The truth is I did not hurt Travis.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The prosecution is hoping the jury will not believe a word out of her mouth. They say Arias stalked Travis Alexander and then planned the brutal killing of the 30-year-old Mormon businessman.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Early on in Arias`s testimony, she described her childhood. And during that time she described, with her mother sitting stoically in the courtroom, looking on, that her mother would spank her with a wooden spoon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You were just now telling us that your mother carried a spoon with her. What did she do with that spoon?

ARIAS: It was a wooden kitchen spoon that she would keep in her purse. And if we were misbehaving, my brother and I -- this is before Angela and Joseph were born, although it continued through that point. If we were misbehaving, she would use it on us. Sometimes she would pull the car over, and you know -- if we were just being brats or something.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you mean by use it on you?

ARIAS: She would hit us with it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did she hit you hard?

ARIAS: It felt pretty hard, yes. It left welts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It left welts on your body?

ARIAS: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: That her father would spank her, that he used a belt on certain occasions, that he never left a welt on her, then on some occasions, he pushed her, she was pushed into a door jamb, she claims she lost consciousness. She also said that on one occasion where she stayed out basically the whole night, he slapped her in the face twice.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You told us that your dad hit you with the belt.

ARIAS: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After age 7.

ARIAS: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did he leave welts?

ARIAS: He didn`t leave welts as often as my mom. She also used a belt. My dad was very intimidating, so I don`t think he needed to hit us quite as hard to get the point across.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did the beatings from your mother and father -- did they continue?

ARIAS: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did they increase in nature?

ARIAS: They tended to -- they began to increase, I`d say, all the way through my teenage years. Once I became a teenager, my dad would get rougher and rougher.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: The point of this is to establish, or the defense hopes it will establish, that she was used to or conditioned to being physically abused, and that when Travis Alexander made a move toward her the day of his murder, she assumed she had to act in self-defense because she was conditioned that way.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Jodi Arias is teeing up the ball, and then a domestic violence expert will take the stand and weave it all together. Yes, she was abused by her parents when she was a kid. She confuses abuse with love.

Then she gets in the clutches of this sexual deviant, Travis Alexander, and he sexually abuses her and controls her to the point where she loses her will, she loses her capacity to say no. And all of this becomes battered women`s syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder, and that kind of messes with her head when he gets angry at her after she drops the camera.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Remember what I told you about the camera?

ARIAS: Uh-huh.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That camera was damaged. Someone put it in the washing machine, ran it through a wash cycle with some clothes of Travis`s. But the card was intact. Remember when I told you that card was destroyed?

ARIAS: Uh-huh.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I didn`t want to tell you the truth because I wanted to make sure those photos were accurate. And we can pull deleted photos. I don`t care if you deleted them six months ago.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was he angry that you didn`t respond to his call or weren`t there to answer his phone call?

ARIAS: He wasn`t angry, just inquisitive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. And that inquisition, if you will, led to you describing the fact that you were with Mr. Dixon (ph).

ARIAS: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And how did that sit with Travis?

ARIAS: He -- it wasn`t warmly received. He didn`t appear to get angry. But he -- I could tell he was upset in his -- the way he was -- in his tone. His mood changed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Other than abuse as a child, the defense brought up one boyfriend that put her in a stranglehold, a chokehold. Other than that, we have heard no more. She moved out of her home with her parents at about age 17, so it`s been since that time that she had any physical abuse, if you believe what she said. I don`t know that that`s going to translate into believing Alexander was going to beat her.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: We`ve seen a lot of themes this week from the defense of Jodi Arias, the, He did this, he did that. And basically, she went through every boyfriend she`s ever had since about age 14 to describe what was wrong with them and what they did to hurt her and how awful they all were.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What about the way he treated you at this convention, this kind of -- well, what about this disparity between the affectionate behavior you saw when you were going through Missouri and the behavior during the convention?

How did that sudden change to being -- just going from girlfriend, someone he`s intimate with at night in the hotel room, to just being one of his buddies at the convention?

ARIAS: How did that...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, how did that make you feel?

ARIAS: I didn`t actually overanalyze it because this was a business convention. Nevertheless, there were couples that were friendly outside of the business sessions. There was a lot of personal time and hanging out and partying.

So I saw other couples being affectionate. I don`t mean making out, just sitting next to each other, holding hands. Travis and I didn`t do that. So it hurt my feelings a little bit. It was very mild in comparison to the way he was actually acting with another woman.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: She seemed to suggest that it was abusive that her parents did not share her enthusiasm for art.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As it relates to your parents, how was your interest in art received? Did they encourage that? How was it received by your parents?

ARIAS: They didn`t discourage me by any means, but they were lukewarm, I`d say. You know, it was, like, Oh, that`s nice. They weren`t really moved by it, I don`t think. I was getting a lot of praise from my classmates and my art teacher and other people, but I didn`t really get that from them. They were just a little bit indifferent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: It`s just basically been a hodgepodge of Poor, pitiful me, the whole week.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: The defense is having Jodi tell her whole sordid tale of woe story. And then they`re going to bring in the psychiatrists and the domestic violence expert to put it in a package and wrap it up with a little bow and say, A-ha, this explains her state of mind when Travis Alexander lunged at her.

This explains why she felt the need to stab him so many times and to slit his throat from ear to ear, that she just exploded, but she was trying to save her own life, this was all done in self-defense. Will the jury buy it? Who the heck knows.

GRACE: I don`t know that any of the jurors are actually falling for it, if they are going to buy Jodi Arias hook, line and sinker. I find that hard to believe.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIAS: I kind of said through clenched teeth, Stop, stop stop, and he stopped. So I think he got the impression that it was not pleasurable at that point, but I never said anything about it after that of a negative nature.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you never advised him that you felt like, as I think you said, a used piece of toilet paper. You never told him that?

ARIAS: No. I wouldn`t have told him that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You would not have? Is that what you said?

ARIAS: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why not?

ARIAS: Because I don`t think that would have made him feel very good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Many people are surprised that Arias has been on the stand for this long. I`m not surprised at all. This is her close-up.

Jodi Arias broke down and cried at the sight of a dog, a pet dog, that was shown in the courtroom. But yet when she took the stand and said that she killed Travis Alexander, she shed not a tear.

Now, I`m not a shrink, but I do know this. That`s not good for the defense. I think the defense has done everything in their power to make Jodi Arias look unattractive. In tot mom Casey Anthony, they tried to make the defendant look like a librarian. Here they seem to have tried to transform Jodi Arias into an ugly pre-teen. They`ve done a very good job at that.

The defense strategy in not ending their case with Jodi Arias as the last witness is out of necessity. They want to bring on an expert in the battered women defense. They can`t do that until they lay the appropriate legal, factual foundation.

I mean, they could bring in an expert on aerodynamics or an astronaut for all -- if these were not the rules of evidence. But there`s no facts to support such an expert. The law is very clear. For an expert to come in and hypothesize, theorize on their opinions regarding the case, it must be rooted in facts in that case.

So what they`re trying to do is have Jodi Arias lay the foundation regarding self-defense for then the expert, LaViolette, to take the stand and convince the jury.

If Jodi Arias is convicted of murder one, she`ll have to retake the stand in order to save her own skin on death penalty phase because I find it to be a very unflattering and self-serving picture that she has painted of herself on direct examination. And she has shown absolutely zero remorse for the 29 stab wounds she inflicted on Travis Alexander.

END