Thread: DP ? - is lethal injection inhumane ?

Still Troubled By That “Botched” Execution? Well, Here’s What That Killer Did …

Botched” Execution Is Reigniting the Death Penalty Debate! Critics of the practice are outraged that it took Oklahoma officials over 30 minutes to kill Clayton Lockett. In fact, they’ve called this incident “inhumane” and “cruel”.

And while the execution of Clayton Lockett may have not gone on as planned, it’s important to remember why Lockett was being executed in the first place!

On Wednesday’s show, Tom detailed how Lockett brutally ended the life of 19-year-old Stephanie Nieman. LISTEN below to this killer’s “inhumane” and “cruel” crimes and let us know if you’re still rethinking your views on the death penalty: http://radio.foxnews.com/2014/04/30/...at-killer-did/


Botched Oklahoma execution: Did anyone remember Clayton Lockett's victim?
One person who will not weigh in on the merits of Clayton Lockett’s execution is Stephanie Neiman.
Clayton Lockett died Tuesday night. The State of Oklahoma executed him. Something happened in the process of executing Mr. Lockett.

It did not go as planned.

Witnesses say he writhed and shook on the table. Twenty minutes after the lethal injection had been administered, Mr. Lockett died of a heart attack.

Immediately, the online and on television commentariat began morally preening over the state executing Clayton Lockett.

Liberals and even some conservatives were outraged.

Liberals are again calling for the end of all executions. They do not want Oklahoma to execute its next murderer on death row.

Much was tweeted and much will be written and said today about the savagery of executions. Some will declare all executions “cruel and unusual,” thereby suggesting they are unconstitutional — never mind the long history of executions in this country.

One person who will not weigh in on the merits of Clayton Lockett’s execution is Stephanie Neiman. Clayton Lockett tried to rob a house Miss Neiman was at. She tried to fight him off. He and his accomplices overwhelmed her. They beat her, bound her with duct tape, taped her mouth shut, shot her, then buried her alive. Many of those outraged at how Mr. Lockett’s execution played out will, hopefully, pause to reflect on exactly why the state chose to execute him.

Sadly, Stephanie Neiman, is unavailable for comment on the situation.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/...ockett-victim/

Lockett was sentenced to death for the brutal murder of Stephanie Nieman when she and a friend walked in on him during a raid on a house

Clayton Lockett, whose execution went wrong last night, was sentenced to death following the shocking murder of Stephanie Nieman, 19.

She was kidnapped, shot twice and buried alive in 1999 a month after she graduated from high school.

Lockett was involved in a botched raid on a house with two other men belonging to Bobby Bornt when Miss Neiman and another 19-year-old woman walked in.

Reports from the time said that Mr Bornt owed Lockett money and that he was tied up and beaten during the ordeal.

Miss Neiman's friend was dragged into the house and hit in the face with a shotgun.

Under duress, the friend then called Miss Neiman into the home and she was also hit in the face with the gun.

Her friend was raped by all three men before they were taken to a rural part of Kay County, Oklahoma

Lockett told them that he was going to kill them all but shot Miss Neiman twice when she refused to give her keys and pickup's alarm code.

When she was shot dead, she was stood in a shallow grave that had been dug by one of Lockett's accomplices, Shawn Mathis. He told Lockett that Miss Neiman was still alive, but Lockett ordered Mathis to bury her.

According to Tulsa World, Bornt wrote a letter that said: "Clayton being put to death by lethal injection is almost too easy of a way to die after what he did to us. ... He will just be strapped to the table and will go to sleep and his heart will stop beating."

Her parents wrote an impact statement jurors in which they praised her for not backing down against Locket. "Right is right and wrong is wrong. Maybe that's what Clayton was so scared of, because Stephanie did stand up for her rights," they wrote. "She did not blink an eye at him. We raised her to work hard for what she got."

Miss Neimen's friend and Mr Bornt were both later driven back to his house.

Lockett was convicted of murder, rape, kidnapping, assault and battery, burglary, and robbery.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-n...#ixzz30WSvugD5

Sorry - I won't waste a tear on the criminal or the execution. He CHOOSE to commit crimes of violence on people who did nothing to deserve the treatment they suffered. Lockett earned his fate.

Networks Outraged Over Murderer's Execution; No Pity for Victims
By Kristine Marsh | May 1, 2014

Who’s the victim here: A man who beat, sodomized, shot and buried alive a 19-year-old girl or the deceased girl? What about her family?

To judge by ABC, NBC and CBS, the victim is Clayton Lockett, who brutally killed Stephanie Neiman, kidnapped three more people and committed multiple other crimes, because his execution was botched. The lethal injection drug cocktail administered by the State of Oklahoma didn’t kill him immediately but took 40 minutes to do so.

Non of the networks spoke with Neiman’s family or Lockett’s other victims, but instead interviewed anti-death penalty activists and even Lockett’s attorney.

NBC was the worst of the three networks, featuring a parade of capital punishment opponents, from a death row inmate’s lawyer to a liberal college law professor, while showing images of anti-death penalty protesters.

On the “Today” show April 30, Savannah Guthrie called the case “disturbing” and Correspondent Janet Shamlian reported on the “horrifying” eye-witness reports. In the same segment, anti-death penalty activist Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center declared the execution, “cruel,” “inhumane,” and “certainly not up to our standards of decency in this country.”

Anchor Brian Williams introduced the “grisly” case on “Nightly News” later that day, as “raising new questions about the death penalty.” Justice Correspondent Pete Williams continued the segment by only giving airtime to Lockett’s sympathizers.

Williams dutifully noted that “Some legal scholars say Oklahoma’s botched execution amounted to cruel and unusual punishment,” before turning to American University Law Professor Ira Robbins. “What we have here is scientific experimentation on human subjects,” Robbins said.

Williams also interviewed Madeline Cohen, defense lawyer for Charles Warner, whose execution was scheduled for later the same night but was postponed after Lockett’s ordeal.

“We need to know that the drugs will work like they’re supposed to,” Cohen said, “so that, our clients will not be subjected to a prolonged and torturous death.”

Cohen’s client was convicted in 1999 of raping and murdering an 11-month-old child. While five of the broadcasts mentioned Warner’s execution was delayed, they only referred to him as “an inmate," not specifying his crime.

Only one broadcast even mentioned the victim’s families opinions on the case. On “Good Morning America” April 30, a statement from Neiman's family was read at the very end of the segment.

Four broadcasts in two days hyped how this case was going to change public opinion on the morality of the death penalty. “Good Morning America” anchor Lara Spencer said on April 30 that the next story was “fueling new debate over the death penalty: a lethal injection went horribly wrong and was compared to torture.” Later that day on “ABC World News” Diane Sawyer told viewers about “The grim moment that turned up the volume in the national debate on the death penalty. An execution raising new questions about ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’”

According to The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/p...e-first-place/ Lockett – then already an ex-con – not only shot and buried Stephanie Neiman, but participated in beating and sexually assaulting her beforehand. Three other people were kidnapped that night as well and witnessed the attacks against Neiman, though their lives were spared. At his 1999 trial he was found guilty of “Conspiracy, first-degree burglary, three counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, three counts of forcible oral sodomy, four counts of first-degree rape, four counts of kidnapping and two counts of robbery by force and fear.”

That is the real cruel and unusual behavior the media should be talking about.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kristin...#ixzz30iMDvw7g

Obama Says The Execution of a Black Man Who Shot and Buried White Teenage Girl Alive is Racist and “Deeply Troubling”?

A foreign reporter asked Obama about the execution of Clayton Lockett who shot a teenage girl, laughed about it and buried her alive. The reporter compared America to Iran, Saudi Arabia and China. Instead of disagreeing with him or at least taking issue with such a description, Obama agreed with him.

After conceding that the death penalty might be appropriate in a very “terrible” crime such as “mass killing” or “the killings of children”, Obama went on a rant about the death penalty.

“The application of the death penalty in this country, we have seen significant problems — racial bias, uneven application of the death penalty, you know, situations in which there were individuals on death row who later on were discovered to have been innocent because of exculpatory evidence. And all these, I think, do raise significant questions about how the death penalty is being applied. And this situation in Oklahoma I think just highlights some of the significant problems there.”

Obama doesn’t directly state that Oklahoma’s execution of Clayton Lockett was racist, but he implies it by saying that it highlights these problems.

“So I’ll be discussing with Eric Holder and others, you know — you know, to get me an analysis of what steps have been taken, not just in this particular instance, but more broadly in this area. I think we do have to, as a society, ask ourselves some difficult and profound questions around these issues.”

That last part is ObamaSpeak for “I’m going to unilaterally enforce my way of doing things without regard to the law and you should think deeply about why I’m right.”

Remember that is the monster that Barack Hussein Obama is empathizing with.

The men beat her and used duct tape to bind her hands and cover her mouth. The men had also beaten and kidnapped Neiman’s friend along with Bobby Bornt, who lived in the residence, and Bornt’s 9-month-old baby.

Lockett later told police “he decided to kill Stephanie because she would not agree to keep quiet,” court records state.

Neiman was forced to watch as Lockett’s accomplice, Shawn Mathis, spent 20 minutes digging a shallow grave in a ditch beside the road. Her friends saw Neiman standing in the ditch and heard a single shot. Lockett returned to the truck because the gun had jammed. He later said he could hear Neiman pleading, “Oh God, please, please” as he fixed the shotgun.

The men could be heard “laughing about how tough Stephanie was” before Lockett shot Neiman a second time. “He ordered Mathis to bury her, despite the fact that Mathis informed him Stephanie was still alive.”

Stephanie was guilty of not only being murdered, but of being the wrong race to be worthy of Obama’s empathy.

Unlike Clayton Lockett. Another one of Obama’s many hypothetical sons.

http://thepcmdgazette.com/news/obama...ive-is-racist/

I've been seeing pictures of Clayton Locket and hearing protests about his "botched" execution all day.
So in honor of his victim, 19 yr old Stephanie Nieman,
I am posting this picture to protest the "botched" end of HER life.

FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) — A condemned Arizona inmate gasped and snorted for more than an hour and a half during his execution Wednesday before he died in an episode sure to add to the scrutiny surrounding the death penalty in the U.S.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne's office said Joseph Rudolph Wood was pronounced dead at 3:49 p.m., one hour and 57 minutes after the execution started.

Wood's lawyers had filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court while the execution was underway, demanding that it be stopped. The appeal said Wood was "gasping and snorting for more than an hour."

Word that Justice Anthony Kennedy denied the appeal came about a half hour after Wood's death.

Wood, 55, gasped more than 600 times before he died. Defense lawyer Dale Baich called it a botched execution that should have taken 10 minutes.

Family members of the victims said they had no problems with the way the execution was carried out. "This man conducted a horrific murder and you guys are going, let's worry about the drugs," said Richard Brown. "Why didn't they give him a bullet, why didn't we give him Drano?"

Wood looked at the family members as he delivered his final words, saying he was thankful for Jesus Christ as his savior. At one point, he smiled at them, which angered the family. "I take comfort knowing today my pain stops, and I said a prayer that on this or any other day you may find peace in all of your hearts and may God forgive you all," Wood said.

The case has highlighted scrutiny surrounding lethal injections after two controversial executions, including that of an Ohio inmate in January who snorted and gasped during the 26 minutes it took him to die. In Oklahoma, an inmate died of a heart attack minutes after prison officials halted his execution because the drugs weren't being administered properly.

Arizona uses the same drugs — the sedative midazolam and painkiller hydromorphone — that were used in the Ohio execution. A different drug combination was used in the Oklahoma case.

States have refused to reveal details such as which pharmacies are supplying lethal injection drugs and who is administering them, because of concerns over harassment.

Woods filed several appeals that were denied by the U.S. Supreme Court, including one that said his First Amendment rights were violated when the state refused to reveal details such as the supplier of the drugs.

The Arizona Supreme Court also delayed the execution Wednesday morning to consider a last-minute appeal about whether Wood received inadequate legal representation at his sentencing. About an hour later, the state's high court allowed the execution to proceed.

Wood argued he has a First Amendment right to details about the state's method for lethal injections, the qualifications of the executioner and who makes the drugs. Such demands for greater transparency have become a new legal tactic in death penalty cases.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had put the execution on hold, saying the state must reveal the information. But the Supreme Court has not been receptive to the tactic, ruling against death penalty lawyers on the argument each time it has been before justices.

Wood's execution was Arizona's third since October and the state's 36th since 1992.

He was convicted in the 1989 shooting deaths of Debbie Dietz, 29, and Gene Dietz, 55, at an auto repair shop in Tucson. Wood and Dietz had a tumultuous relationship during which he repeatedly assaulted her. Dietz tried to end their relationship and got an order of protection against Wood.

On the day of the shooting, Wood went to the auto shop and waited for Dietz's father, who disapproved of his daughter's relationship with Wood, to get off the phone. Once the father hung up, Wood pulled out a revolver, shot him in the chest and then smiled.

Wood then turned his attention toward Debra Dietz, who was trying to telephone for help. Wood grabbed her by the neck and put his gun to her chest. She pleaded with him to spare her life. An employee heard Wood say, "I told you I was going to do it, I have to kill you." He then called her an expletive and fired two shots in her chest.

http://news.yahoo.com/arizona-inmate...230855668.html


INMATE 086279 - WOOD, JOSEPH R.

Wood and his 29-year-old ex-girlfriend, Debbie Dietz, had been involved in a turbulent relationship for 5 years, which had been marred by numerous breakups and several domestic violent incidents. Debbie was working at a local body shop owned by her family. On August 7, 1989, Wood walked into the shop and shot Gene Dietz, age 55, in the chest with a .38 caliber revolver, killing him. Gene Dietz's 70-year-old brother was present and tried to stop Wood, but Wood pushed him away and proceeded into another section of the body shop. Wood went up to Debbie, placed her in some type of hold, and shot her once in the abdomen and once in the chest, killing her. Wood then fled the building. Two police officers approached Wood and ordered him to drop his weapon. After Wood placed the weapon on the ground, he reached down and picked it up, and pointed it at the officers. The officers fired, striking Wood several times. Wood was transported to a local hospital where he underwent extensive surgery.

PROCEEDINGS
Presiding Judge: Hon. G. Thomas Meehan
Prosecutor: Thomas Zawada
Defense Counsel: Lamar Couser
Start of Trial: February 19, 1991
Verdict: February 25, 1991
Sentencing: July 2, 1991

Aggravating Circumstances
Grave risk of death to others
Multiple homicides

PUBLISHED OPINIONS State v. Wood, 180 Ariz. 53, 881 P.2d 1158 (1994).

Crime committed in 1989 ... sentence carried out in 2014 ... twent-five YEARS ??

Lisa Ann Coleman put to death with lethal injection for starving 9-year-old boy
September 18, 2014

Lisa Ann Coleman took her last breath inside a Texas penitentiary after her death sentence was carried out at 6:24 p.m. local time. Coleman was found guilty of starving her girlfriend’s son to death after the nine-year-old boy’s corpse was found on July 26, 2004, according to News Max on Sept. 18.

Both Coleman and the boy’s mother were charged with capital murder after Davontae Marcel Williams was found starved and beaten to death. The coroner reported 250 scars on the boy’s body from injuries and cigarette burns.

His dead body weighed 35-pounds, which is half the average weight for a boy that age. The official cause of death for the boy was malnutrition and pneumonia, according to the Texas Tribune today.

Williams' received a life sentence after pleading guilty to all the charges, but Coleman was sentenced to death. Williams had prior cases of mistreating her children and the kids were taken away from her.

She was given back custody of her kids with the stipulation that she stay away from Coleman. Williams dodged the Child Welfare Service Department by moving around after she got custody of her children.

Coleman offered a few last words as she prepared to die in front of five of her own family members and friends who came to witness her death. No one came to represent the victim. "I just want to tell my family I love them, my son, I love him," Coleman said, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which is reported in The Texas Tribune. "God is good . . . I’m done."

The 38-year-old was administered Pentobarbital, a lethal drug used for carrying out the death sentence. She died on the state’s Huntsville Unit. Coleman’s death makes the sixth female put to death by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice since Texas reinstated the death penalty.

http://www.examiner.com/article/lisa...9-year-old-boy

Nine year old boy dies July 26, 2004 ... sentence carried out 09/18/2014

Missouri Execution Stayed After 11th-Hour US Supreme Court Intervention
Wednesday, 29 Oct 2014 11:08 AM

A Missouri execution was stayed late Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court determined that a man convicted of killing a woman and her two children had ineffective legal counsel.

Mark Christeson, 35, was scheduled to die by injection at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday at the state prison in Bonne Terre before the late stay of execution was issued, according to The Associated Press. Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman Mike O'Connell said it wasn't clear what will happen next for Christeson. "This is something that will be taken up in court," O'Connell said.

Jennifer Merrigan, one of Christeson's attorneys, declined comment.

The appeal to the Supreme Court raised several concerns about legal counsel Christeson has received over the years, including the failure of some of his attorneys to meet a 2005 deadline to file for an appeal hearing before a federal court. It is uncommon for someone to be executed without a federal court appeal hearing.

The high court denied a second appeal challenging the state's planned use of a made-to-order execution drug produced by an unidentified compounding pharmacy.

Christeson would have been the ninth man executed in Missouri this year, matching an all-time high for the state set in 1999. Another execution is scheduled for Nov. 19 when Leon Taylor is set to die for killing an Independence, Missouri, gas station attendant in 1994.

In Maries County, the rural south-central Missouri county where the crime occurred, there is little argument with the death sentence, prosecutor Terry Daley Schwartze said. "No matter how anybody feels about the death penalty, you can't find a person around here who doesn't feel it's the right result for this case," Schwartze said. "It's so very awful."

When he was 18, Christeson and his 17-year-old cousin, Jesse Carter, came up with a plan to run away from the home outside Vichy where they were living with a relative. On Feb. 1, 1998, Christeson and Carter took shotguns and went to a home about a half-mile away where Susan Brouk, 36, lived with her 12-year-old daughter, Adrian, and 9-year-old son, Kyle. They planned to steal Brouk's Ford Bronco, Schwartze said.

The cousins tied the hands of the children with shoelaces. Christeson forced Brouk into a bedroom and raped her. When they went back into the living room, Adrian recognized Carter and said his name. "We've got to get rid of 'em," Christeson told Carter.

Court records show that Christeson and Carter forced Brouk and the children into her Bronco and took electronics and other items. They drove to a pond.

After kicking Brouk in the ribs, Christeson cut her throat, then cut Kyle's throat and held him under the water until he drowned. Carter held Adrian while Christeson pressed on her throat until she suffocated. Carter pushed her body into the pond. With Brouk struggling to stay alive, the men tossed her into the pond, where she drowned.

Brouk's sisters discovered a few days later that Brouk and the children were missing. A Missouri State Highway Patrol helicopter spotted one of the bodies in the pond, leading to a search that found all three.

Meanwhile, Christeson and Carter drove to California, selling Brouk's household items along the way. A detective in Riverside County, California, recognized Christeson and Carter from photos police had circulated, and the men were arrested eight days after the killings.

Carter was sentenced to life in prison without parole after agreeing to testify against Christeson.

http://www.Newsmax.com/TheWire/misso...#ixzz3HaTNSOFt

Sixteen years after the brutal rape and murder of a woman, her 12 year old daughter and nine year old son.... he has been in jail longer then the kids had been alive. The evidence is pretty plain ...

The Murder of Travis Alexander

Travis Victor Alexander was born on July 28, 1977, in Riverside, California. After his father's death in July 1997, Alexander and his seven siblings were taken in by their paternal grandmother, Norma Jean Preston Alexander Sarvey (1932–2012), who eventually introduced them to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Alexander was a salesman for PPL - Prepaid Legal Services (later renamed LegalShield), a legal services company using multi-level marketing. He also worked as a motivational speaker for PPL.

Jodi Ann Arias was born on July 9, 1980, in Salinas, California. She and Alexander met in September 2006 at a Prepaid Legal Services conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. On November 26, 2006, Arias was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Alexander. Alexander and Arias began dating in February 2007. After the two broke up in June 2007, Arias moved to Mesa, Arizona. In April 2008, she moved to Yreka, California, and lived with her grandparents.

§Death

The killing of Travis Alexander occurred on June 4, 2008. On June 9, 2008, Alexander's body was discovered by his friends in a shower at his home in Mesa, Arizona. Alexander had sustained 27 to 29 stab wounds, and had his throat slit and suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the head.

Medical Examiner Kevin Horn testified that Alexander's jugular vein, common carotid artery, and trachea had been slashed and that Alexander had defensive wounds on his hands. Horn further testified that Alexander "may have" been dead at the time the gunshot was inflicted, and that the back wounds were shallow. Alexander's death was ruled a homicide. He was buried at the Olivewood Cemetery in Riverside, California.

§Discovery and investigation

On May 28, 2008, a burglary occurred at the residence of Arias' grandparents, with whom she was living. Among the missing objects was a .25-caliber gun, which was never recovered. (This is significant as a spent .25 caliber round was later found near Travis Alexander's body at the murder scene.)

On June 2, Arias rented a car in Redding, California, approximately 100 miles (160 km) south of her home. Arias told the rental company staff that she would only be driving the car locally, but when Arias returned the car on June 7, it had been driven about 2,800 miles (4,500 km). The car was missing its floor mats and had red stains on its front and rear seats. The car was cleaned before police could examine it.

On June 5, Arias called Alexander several times and left several voicemail messages for him. She also accessed Alexander's voice mail system.

Alexander missed an important conference call on the evening of June 4. On June 9, having been unable to reach Alexander, a concerned group of his friends went to his home. His roommates initially said he was out of town. After finding a key to Alexander's master bedroom, his friends entered the room and found large pools of blood in the hallway to the master bathroom, where his body was discovered in the shower. In the 9-1-1 call made to authorities (not heard by the jury), Alexander's friends mentioned an ex-girlfriend, Arias, who Alexander had said was stalking him, accessing his Facebook account, and slashing tires.

Alexander was scheduled to leave on June 10, 2008, for a work-related trip to Cancún, Mexico. In early 2008, Alexander told his company that Arias would be joining him. In April, Alexander asked to change his travel companion to another female friend.

While searching Alexander's home, police found Alexander's recently purchased digital camera damaged in the washing machine. Police were able to recover deleted images showing Arias and Alexander in sexually suggestive poses, taken at approximately 1:40 p.m. on June 4. The final photo of Alexander alive was taken at 5:29 p.m. that day. Alexander was in the shower when the photo was taken. Photos taken moments later show an individual believed to be Alexander "profusely bleeding" on the bathroom floor. A bloody palm print was discovered along the wall in the bathroom hallway; it contained DNA from both Arias and Alexander.

On July 9, 2008, Arias was indicted by a grand jury for the first-degree murder of Alexander. She was arrested at her home on July 15 and extradited to Arizona on September 5. Arias pleaded not guilty on September 11. Arias gave several different accounts about her involvement in Alexander's death. She originally told police that she had not been in Mesa on the day of the murder and claimed that she last saw Alexander in April 2008. Arias later told police that two intruders had broken into Alexander's home, murdering him and attacking her. Two years after her arrest, Arias told police that she killed Alexander in self-defense, claiming that she had been a victim of domestic violence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Travis_Alexander

Jodi Arias escapes death penalty after Arizona jury deadlocks
Reuters - By David Schwartz - 2 hrs ago

An Arizona jury failed to reach a verdict on Thursday in the sentencing retrial of Jodi Arias after a lone juror refused to back the death penalty, a development that spared the former waitress from execution for murdering her former boyfriend.

It was the second time a jury has been unable to decide whether the 34-year-old Arias, convicted of murder in 2013, should be executed for the 2008 killing of Travis Alexander. Under Arizona law, she can no longer be sentenced to death.

"We are hung and additional time will not change this," the foreman of the jury of eight women and four men wrote in a note read by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens, who swiftly declared a mistrial, drawing sobs from Alexander's relatives.

The judge now has the task of deciding Arias' punishment, and can sentence her either to spend the rest of her life in prison or to give her the possibility of parole after 25 years. The next hearing is set for April 13.

"The real justice will be in the afterlife, when Jodi burns in hell," Alexander's sister, Tanisha Sorenson, tearfully told reporters outside the court.

County Attorney Bill Montgomery said the jury vote was 11-1 in favor of the death penalty, and jurors confirmed one woman had been the lone holdout.

Alexander, 30, was found dead in a shower in his Phoenix-area home in 2008. He had been stabbed more than 20 times, his throat was cut almost from ear to ear, and he had been shot in the face. Prosecutors say Arias killed him in a jealous rage. She says she acted in self-defense.

Defense attorney Kirk Nurmi had shown jurors photographs of Arias in her youth and pleaded with them at closing arguments to spare her life, describing her as a remorseful and mentally ill woman who had been abused since childhood. He said no verdict could have soothed the anguish over Alexander's death.

"I don't think today's victory will repair any sadness or change anything. But we hope it can begin the closure process for all those who are affected by that tragedy," Nurmi said.

The prosecution had shown jurors a photo of Alexander with his neck slashed, portrayed Arias as cold and calculating, and said there was nothing to stop her receiving the death penalty.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/...d=ansnewsreu11

Key facts and questions about the Jodi Arias murder case
March 05, 2015 - ·Associated Press

PHOENIX – Jodi Arias was spared the death penalty on Thursday after a jury for a second time couldn't decide on her punishment. It was the latest court development in a legal saga that has dragged on for nearly seven years and had no shortage of eye-catching moments.

The case started with the gruesome killing of Arias' lover in 2008, continued with a series of bizarre post-arrest interviews by Arias and became a full-blown sensation during a more than four-month trial.

The most recent phase of the case — the trial to determine whether Arias gets life in prison or death — has played out more quietly. The judge barred live coverage of the proceedings, and the testimony focused primarily expert-driven testimony.

Here are some key facts in the case:

WHO IS JODI ARIAS?

Arias bounced around a series of waitress jobs on the West Coast and dabbled in photography through her teenage years and early 20s before she met Travis Alexander at a conference in Las Vegas in 2006. They quickly developed a connection and began dating. Arias later moved to Arizona to be closer to Alexander.

THE RELATIONSHIP

Arias and Alexander had a stormy relationship in the nearly two years they knew each other. Arias moved to Arizona to be closer to Alexander and even became a member of the Mormon church. Alexander was Mormon.

She also became increasingly jealous as Alexander wanted to see other people. The testimony at Arias' murder trial included examples of how she snooped on Alexander's email and even sneaked through the doggie door of his home to spy on him.

THE CRIME

Arias stabbed and slashed Alexander nearly 30 times, slit his throat so deeply that she nearly decapitated him, and shot him in the forehead. She left his body in his shower at his suburban Phoenix home where friends found him about five days later.

She initially denied having anything to do with the killing. She later admitted that she killed Alexander but claimed it was self-defense after he attacked her. Prosecutors said it was premeditated murder carried out in a jealous rage after he wanted to end their affair and planned a trip to Mexico with another woman.

THE TRIAL

Her murder trial began in January 2013 and lasted about five months, featuring 18 days of testimony in which Arias described for jurors an abusive childhood, cheating boyfriends, dead-end jobs, a twisted sexual relationship with Alexander, and her contention that he was physically abusive. Her first trial drew a global following and inspired spectators to wait in line in the middle of the night to get a coveted seat in the courtroom. This time around, the judge has ruled that cameras can record the proceedings, but nothing can be broadcast until after the verdict.

The day she was convicted of murder, Arias gave a jailhouse interview with a local Fox reporter in which she said she'd rather have the death penalty. "I believe death is the ultimate freedom," she said. The same jury that convicted her then had to decide whether Arias should get life in prison or death. They deadlocked, creating the need for a second penalty trial.

SENTENCING RETRAIL

Four-hundred people were called as prospective jurors last year to decide punishment for Arias. Many were cut after they said they either made up their minds about the case or knew too much to be impartial. Some jurors cited their objection to the death penalty.

A jury was seated in October, but the retrial received less attention after Judge Sherry Stephens banned news organizations from carrying live broadcasts of the case. The judge in October also took the rare step of booting the public and media from the courtroom so a secret witness could testify in private. Media organizations went to court and halted the testimony as it was underway. The witness was later revealed to be Arias, who suddenly felt uncomfortable in the spotlight.

NEXT STEPS

With the second jury unable to reach a decision on Arias' punishment, the case is no longer eligible for the death penalty. A judge will now sentence Arias on April 13 to either life in prison or a life term with the possibility of release after 25 years.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/03/05...s-murder-case/