Jodi Arias sentence: Natural life, no chance of release

Jodi Arias surprised the court at her sentencing hearing Monday when she admitted for the first time that she "remembered the night I put the knife in Travis' throat."

During her first trial, she insisted that she was in a fog and didn't remember anything after she shot Travis Alexander, who she claimed was charging at her in a rage. She slit his throat, she said Monday, because he was still attacking her.

But it was no surprise that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens sentenced Arias to natural life in prison, meaning she will have no possibility of release.

The murder was savage, and Stephens said she felt Arias had planned it out. It was cruel, the judge said, and a jury had found it so. Furthermore, she said, it had caused financial and emotional hardship for Alexander's family.

So ended 2 1/2 years of speculation, anger, titillation, harassment, spectacle and social-media hysteria since the first of Arias' trials began in January 2013.

The prosecution wanted death.

But two consecutive juries were unable to reach a unanimous death verdict; in the second trial, it came down to a single vote for life.

Stephens could have sentenced Arias to life in prison with possibility of release after 25 years.

Instead, she imposed the harsher of the two options available to her.

"I think that the possibility of release would have been appropriate," said Jennifer Willmott, one of Arias' defense attorneys.

Willmott said that appeals would be filed on Arias' behalf, though neither she nor Arias' lead attorney, Kirk Nurmi, would be filing them.

Alexanders wanted death

Monday's hearing was emotional; neither side would let go of its stance.

Arias and her family insisted she killed in self-defense. And all through both trials, Arias' defense attorneys painted Alexander as physically, emotionally and sexually abusive.

"I guess the one thing we forgot to teach her was how to walk away from an abusive relationship," said her mother, Sandy Allen-Arias.

But Travis Alexander's sisters said they knew from the beginning that Arias was the killer.

"Stop murdering my brother again and again by smearing his name," sister Tanisha Sorenson said.

And sister Samantha Alexander added, "The justice system has failed us over and over. ... It disgusts me how many rights she has."

Samantha Alexander also said that the family would have been in favor of offering Arias a plea to natural life in prison, — if she would waive her appeals.

It was not an option for Arias.

Her attorneys made a long record of allegations of prosecutorial misconduct over the course of both trials which will certainly resurface as appeals.

The prosecution vigorously pursued the death penalty.

"The family of Travis Alexander hoped for a death sentence in this case," prosecutor Juan Martinez said.

"When they think of the stabbing, they feel the blade going into him," he continued. "They can hear his cries, they can hear him screaming. It rings in their ears."

60 cases highlighted

Willmott presented to the court a list of 60 first-degree murder cases that she felt were as bad or worse than the Arias case.

The attorney pointed out that they all ended in sentences of life with possibility of release or had been pleaded down to offenses with lesser sentences.

Many of those killers had prior records, Willmott told Stephens. Arias did not.

"For two minutes of her life, she did something reprehensible," Willmott said.

"Sometimes equity is not what victims want it to be," she said.

Arias had already addressed the court, dressed in jailhouse stripes.

"I just want to respond to some things said earlier," Arias began.

She would have settled out of trial, Arias said, but the prosecution was unyielding.

"Death would bring me untold peace and freedom," she said. "For years that's what I wanted."

She claimed she told the truth on the witness stand — even though she admitted she remembered slitting Alexander's throat.

The shot, incidentally, came first, she said, and not last as prosecutor Martinez claimed in trial — though for the first four years of the case, even Martinez said Arias shot Alexander before she stabbed him.

And finally, Arias said, "I wish there was something I could do to take it back."

Arias refused to talk to The Arizona Republic after the sentencing, concerned that what she would say might affect the impression of her potential cellmates in state prison.

Willmott said that Arias was upbeat about going to prison, expecting to have a less restrictive environment than she has in Maricopa County jails.

Is the drama over?

It has taken nearly seven years to get to this point.

Alexander, 30, was found dead in the shower of his Mesa home in June 2008. He had been lying there for five days before his body was found with a bullet in his head, nearly 30 stab wounds and a slit throat.

Arias, now 34, was arrested a month later.

Her first trial was a circus, live-streamed across the world. Witnesses, attorneys and both families were harassed by an overzealous social-media audience.

PHOTOS OF ARIAS SENTENCING TRIAL

Sorenson said Monday that people taunt her by sending her photos of her brother's dead body.

The second trial for sentencing was not broadcast, but was reported live over social media. Trial groupies waited in line every day in the court corridor, hoping to get a seat in the courtroom.

And even after the trials, true-crime fanatics binge-watch the newly released videos of the court proceedings with the same rabidness as others watch serials like "Breaking Bad" and "House of Cards."

But the soap opera may not be over.

Besides appeals, there are lingering questions about the single holdout juror who saved Arias from death row and about how her name and the names of the other jurors — information usually shielded by law — were released to a hostile public.

The Maricopa County Attorney's Office is vague about whether an investigation is underway and by which agency, if any.

At the end of the hearing Monday, Sorenson shouted out "Burn in hell," as Arias left the courtroom.

Then the family of Travis Alexander slipped out a back door of the courthouse into a chauffeur-driven black SUV, some reporters said.