Updated 01:10 PM EDT, Thu, Mar 28, 2024

Jodi Arias Trial News Update: Legal Experts Debate Arias Retrial Verdict [Videos]

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In the lead-up to the second phase of the Jodi Arias murder trial this September, a number of legal experts are weighing in on the possibility that the convicted murderer could one day be free or sentenced to death.

Last May, a jury found Arias guilty of first-degree murder in the ghastly death of her former lover Travis Alexander in his Phoenix home in 2008. However, the jurors failed to reach a unanimous decision on her sentencing. As a result, a retrial is set for Sept. 8 to determine whether she should be sentenced to death, life in prison or life with a chance of release after serving 25 years, reports Reuters. However, if the jury deadlocks again, then the death penalty will be completely off the table and Judge Sherry Stephens will decide whether to give Arias life in prison with or without parole.

According to Monica Lindstrom, co-host of "The Agenda" and legal expert on "Mac & Gaydos" on News/Talk 92.3 KTAR, Judge Stephens would probably choose life in prison without the possibility of parole since she "sat through the entire trial, she heard all the gruesome details, and there's really not a whole lot of mitigating evidence for Jodi so I don't think she'll be getting out," reports KTAR.

Other experts say the defense team will be at a disadvantage in the upcoming penalty trial. Mark O'Mara, the attorney who defended George Zimmerman, told HLN-TV that Arias has a lot stacked against her and that it appears that she planned the murder.

"There's really a lot against her, the fact that she tried to ingratiate herself to the jury and that didn't work is really going to hurt, on the other hand the defense has to focus on this lady being out of touch with reality, some mental health mitigation, which is what we call in the business trying to get away from the death penalty by showing that there's things about Jodi Arias that you should sort of forgive her for, sympathize with her a little bit," O'Mara said. "But that whole trial was nothing but a disaster and a train wreck for Jodi Arias, the way she presented herself it's going to be hard to get around."

O'Mara added that having a new jury will also work against the defense.

"Problem that we have with this new jury, they only get the overview of the case. Unfortunately, if there was going to be success for the defense, it was going having Jodi Arias on the stand for so long that you sort of got to like her or got to realize that she was a little bit nutty," he said.

He added that the new jurors are "not going to have the emotionalism attached to it. I think it's going to work against Jodi Arias."

Likewise, legal analyst and radio host Eboni Williams pointed out that the prosecution has a strong case to push capital punishment on the former California waitress.

"Now they have to even more so harp on the egregious nature of what Jodi Arias did to this young man. And if I'm the prosecutor in this case, that's exactly what I'm going to do, I'm going to lay it out step by step how gruesome and inhumane Jodi Arias' actions were, thereby making the only reasonable sentence appropriate the death penalty," said Williams on HLN.

Williams went on to say that "the prosecutor has to show Jodi as not out of touch or suffering some mental health defect, but instead manipulative and show intent and some negative connotation behind her behavior's."

Medical examiners found that Arias stabbed her ex-boyfriend 27 times, primarily in the back and in the torso and the heart. She also slit Alexander's throat from ear to ear, nearly decapitating him, and shot him in the face, before she dragged his bloodied corpse to the shower where she left him crumpled over. In total the killing was done in a little less than two minutes.

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