Jodi Arias shot Travis Alexander, her lover, right in the head, after stabbing him almost 30 times and slitting his throat. A Maricopa County Superior Court found her guilty of first-degree murder on May 8th last year.
At the suggestion of the prosecutor, Arias was found to having committed the murder in a very cruelly brutal manner, which qualified her for the death penalty.
On the exact same day that Arias was convicted, another murderer, Crisantos Moroyoqui-Yocupicio, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder after killing an associate in the Mexican drug cartel and cutting his head off. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge only sentenced him to 14 years in prison.
One month later, Douglas Ray George, beat and stabbed his girlfriend to death and left her body, naked, on the street. George was also allowed to plead guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to only 16 years in prison as the prosecutors said it was not clear whether or not the crime was premeditated.
Sadly, no plea was allowed for Jodi Arias. She went to her trial and was convicted of first-degree murder. However, the jury was not able to arrive at a unanimous decision on a life or death sentence. It is because of this that a new trial will begin this week, with a new set of jurors to come up with an answer to that dilemma.
The death penalty is a sentence given to criminals who committed the worst of the worst murders. It might be true that what Arias did to her lover was horrible, but so were the other murders. This was why many started to question why the others, such as George and Moroyoqui-Yocupicio, were not given the same sentence that Arias was sentenced with.
It is close to impossible to draw a clear line between murders that must be punished by death and those that should not. This was why, the US Supreme Court, in 1976, approved what is referred to as a "narrowing" system using statutory "aggravating factors" for distinguishing extraordinary murders from those that are considered relatively ordinary.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
