Arias Trial Jury Foreman Recalls the Emotional Turmoil of Working on the Case

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The trial has been a media favorite: despite initially saying that home invaders killed her ex-boyfriend, Jodi Arias later admitted that she stabbed him 29 times in the back and torso and shot him in the head. The trial spoke of sex and used graphic autopsy photos. The man, Travis Alexander, was also Mormon, and had Arias baptized in the Mormon faith in November of 2006, a ceremony after which they had anal sex, Arias claimed. Relatives claimed she was mentally unstable.

Well, what’s not to like? Sex, religion, murder, madness. But its been a lot to take, the jury said, who were hung on sentencing the 32-year-old defendant.

  

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“It was a gut-wrenching thing we had to go through, and everybody had to make their own decision,” said juror foreman William Zervakos to ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

He claimed hearing the relatives of the ex-boyfriend was the hard part. “Until you’re face to face with people that have gone through something like that, it’s something that you really can’t put into words. I’m 6 feet away from somebody talking about a horrendous loss, and if you can’t feel that, then you have no emotion, no soul. And yet we couldn’t allow ourselves to be emotional on the stand.

“We couldn’t allow ourselves to show emotion, although I’m sure some came through, and I’m very, very proud of my peers and my jurors that were with us because they did a fantastic job of holding it together.”

Perhaps the hardest part was deliberating for 13 hours, only to vote 8-4 on the death penalty. In many states a hung jury would mean no death penalty, but in Arizona, that means they need to retry the death penalty, and she can till get it. Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said that the prosecutors “will proceed with the intent to retry the penalty phase.”

“We appreciate the jury’s work in the guilt and aggravation phases of the trial, and now we will assess, based upon available information, what the next steps will be.”