State, Defense Trade Porn Accusations in Arias Sentencing Phase

MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz.—As the sentencing phase of the Jodi Arias trial winds slowly to a conclusion, both sides continue to hurl accusations at one another regarding "thousands of pornography site hits" that were allegedly found on the computer belonging to Travis Alexander, for whose murder Arias has already been convicted. In an attempt to resolve the porn question, arguments will be heard today "whether the court should drop all charges or at least the intent to seek the death penalty in the Jodi Arias case." As AVN reported earlier this month, "Lawyers for convicted murderer Jodi Arias filed a motion ... that seeks to have all charges against the 34-year-old dropped because of the alleged deletion by the state of thousands of files containing pornography." The defense had argued in its motion seeking either to have the death penalty taken off the table or an outright reversal of Arias' conviction, that the deleted files supported their claim Arias had caught Travis Alexander in front of his laptop masturbating to an image of a child, a claim the state had successfully convinced the jury was a lie. On the immediate heels of that filing, the state countered, according to USA Today, that "the time of deletion was when Arias' original legal team, Maria Schaffer and Greg Parzych, were examining the evidence. [Prosecutor Juan Martinez] posited that if there was any porn on the computer, it had been deposited there by computer virus, and if it had been deleted, it must have been deleted by Schaffer and Parzych." That counter-accusation was likewise met with an immediate and angry denial by Schaffer, who said "they had only gone to get an overview of the evidence, that they were watched the whole time by Martinez and Mesa Police Det. Esteban Flores, the case agent on the Arias case. Schaffer said that Flores plugged in the computer and turned it on, not them." But the porn issue is now further complicated by claims made by Martinez that "he had been given a copy, not of Alexander's computer hard drive, but a hard drive from 'an individual named Tony (who) has nothing to do with this case.'" Philly.com notes, "The wrong drive was apparently sent by the technician or his company. The proper one was sent after Martinez filed his motion." But according to defense attorney Jennifer Willmott, "'Tony' was a technician charged with making the copy of the original hard drive onto a different brand computer for the prosecution." Willmot also wrote in her motion refuting Martinez' claims, "A disturbing pattern of damaged and missing evidence is emerging after a recent review of multiple items that have been held in state custody over the past 6 years." Of course, porn is just one element in a murder case and trial that has seemed to have it all, and which still continues to produce, as it reportedly did today, "sparks" in the courtroom.