As Jodi Arias appeared for her 19th and last day on the stand Wednesday, prosecuting attorney Juan Martinez quickly lost his patience, attacking her earlier testimony in the trial as "impossible."
A photographer from California, Arias is charged with the the grisly first-degree murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in June 2008, when she allegedly stabbed the 30-year-old man 27 times, shot him in the face twice, slit his throat and left his bloodied corpse crumpled over in the bathroom shower of his apartment. Arias' fate depends on whether the jury believes she killed Alexander in self-defense, as she contends, or was actually a jilted lover exacting jealous revenge, as the prosecution argues.
After a week of over 200 skeptical questions from the jury, lawyer for the prosecution Martinez resumed his cross examination of Arias, focusing on the day Alexander died. Seeking to underline the implausibility of her version of Alexander's death, Martinez showed the the court room two photographs taken from inside Alexander's apartment the day he was killed on June 4, 2008. Martinez said that the first image was of Alexander still alive in the shower. The second, captured a mere 62 seconds later, showed Alexander covered in blood splayed out on the bathroom tile with Arias' foot close to his head, he said.
Evidence emerged earlier in the trial that showed Arias killed Alexander while she was photographing him nude in the shower. While taking the photos, Arias says she accidentally dropped Alexander's camera, he became enraged, slammed her into the floor, and the next thing she knew she was fighting for her life. The images found on Alexander's camera were time stamped, police said, so the photographs may be a key piece of evidence in determining the veracity of Arias' account of events. According to USA Today, the last image of Alexander alive shows him sitting in the shower stall, peering up at the camera. The next photo is a blurred shot of the ceiling, suggesting this is when Arias dropped the camera. Then, just one minute later, the camera unintentionally captured a shot of Alexander flat on his back with a bloody neck.
"Your scenario is impossible," Martinez hammered, according to CBS News.
"You drop the camera ... you are body-slammed, you get away, you go down the hallway, you go in the closet, you get the gun, you go into the bathroom ... You shoot him, he goes down and then, after you're able to get away, you go get the knife and you end up at the end of the hallway -- all of this in 62 seconds?" said Martinez.
"No, that's not what I'm saying ... after the gun went off ... it started to get more confusing at that point," Arias responded.
"You didn't have the knife in your hand when you shot him. So that means, if you didn't have the knife in your hand, you had to go get it from somewhere, right?" asked Martinez.
"I don't know," said Arias.
Arias has tried to explain away many of the inconsistencies in her stories by claiming her memory was foggy the day Alexander died. Arias has wavered back-and-forth between providing surprisingly acute details surrounding the murder to claiming she has little to no memory of certain pieces of the case, such as the actual act of killing Alexander, saying her memory of the fateful day has "huge gaps," according to The Tri-City Herald.
Arias has already admitted to lying about Alexander's death to just about everyone. She first claimed she was never at Alexander's home the day he was killed, then when DNA evidence proved she was lying she said masked intruders killed him, and finally, years later she backtracked to admit she killed the victim, but now claims it was in self-defense, saying he attacked her in the shower, forcing her to fight for her life. She claims she lied so often because she was "ashamed" she killed Alexander in self-defense and because she was afraid of revealing the details of their sexual relationship.
Martinez grew increasingly frustrated with Arias' cryptic, vague answers Wednesday, almost losing it when she evaded answering his questions about her height compared to the shelves in Alexander's walk-in closet, where she has claimed she got the gun to shoot Alexander.
"I'm not asking you to stand in the closet, I'm asking you how tall you are," Martinez prodded.
Martinez next drew attention to the build of the shelves in the closet, noting they were simple, weak shelves held up by nothing but tiny pegs. He said the shelves were so flimsy they would have collapsed under Arias' weight if she had attempted to use one as a step in order to reach the gun on the top shelf as she has claimed throughout the trial.
"Wouldn't that shelf have tipped over?" asked Martinez.
The defense immediately objected to the question, which the Judge sustained, so Arias didn't have to provide an answer.
Arias has testified that after Alexander attacked her, she ran into his closet because she knew he kept a gun in there on a top shelf. Authorities have said they don't believe Alexander owned a firearm, and no one has testified in court to support Arias' story that Alexander kept a gun in the closet, according to The Herald. Arias' own grandparents had a .25 caliber handgun stolen from their home in northern California just one week prior to Alexander's death - the same caliber used in the killing. Prosecuting lawyer Martinez has repeatedly noted the entire idea that Alexander owned a gun in the first place was suspect.
The rest of Wednesday focused on even more questions from the jury, specifically asking about Arias' behavior the day Alexander was killed.
"If you still felt threatened after shooting Travis, why didn't you just shoot him again rather than stab him?" asked Judge Sherry Stephens for the jury.
"I know that I dropped the gun when he hit me ... I don't remember picking up the knife," Arias claimed.
After an almost unheard of amount of time on the witness stand, Arias will finally step down Thursday to make way for at least two "expert witnesses" for the defense who are said to be authorities on domestic abuse and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The trial resumes Thursday at 12:30 p.m. EST.
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