In a weird way, I kinda get what Nurmi is saying. Do I think JA deserved the DP? Yes. But what he's also asking is why not the mother of Jerica Hunter, who starved and murdered her? Why not also a man who stabbed his wife 27 times, admitted it, and then turned himself in? The man, Nurmi says, was charged with 2nd degree. The mother of the little girl, 1st degree. Is it because the media told us over and over again how amazing Travis Alexander was? And I'm sure he was a great guy. However, the job of a lawyer isn't to side with who's a good guy or not. It's to provide a defense. He even tells this in an example.
This book is a dying man, or a man who very well may be dying, that's trying to explain why he defended a monster. It was most likely traumatic for him, as well. I'm sorry that some people feel he's whining. Dude is probably spooked. Obviously, he couldn't get out of it. If he lied to a jury, then I'm sure JM would've charged him with perjury.
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The decision whether or not to ask for the DP seems arbitrary because if looked at nationally, it IS applied in a seemingly arbitrary fashion.
That's partially true because each state gets to decide which offenses are DP worthy, because some states are more pro-DP than others, etc. etc. etc.
Add in that the Supreme Court has ruled that equity in sentencing options isn't mandatory. In other words, Wilmott could have presented JSS with 20,000 cases in which other defendants convicted of similar or worse crimes received lesser sentences than LWOP and it still wouldn't matter. Arizona has explicitly rejected utilizing that standard. If Arizonians want equity in sentencing, they can lobby their state legislatures to rewrite the law.
Until then, it is what it is. State Attorneys get to decide which offenses are DP worthy and they don't need to compare offenses to decide. The idea that the State decided to go for the DP because they idolized the victim or demonized his killer or because JM wanted to be famous is absurd.
I think JM saw her very clearly from the very beginning. She is a cold blooded murderer who delighted in making her victim suffer before killing him 3 times over, after driving 1,000 miles of a premeditated murder route to get there. Ever since she's demonstrated utter contempt for LE and courts and absolutely zero remorse whatsoever. She's an incredibly dangerous psychopath who as likely as not was on her way to kill again when she was finally removed as a threat and caged.
In reality, even at trial's beginning this case was simply no big deal anywhere other than locally. The killer had sought and was gifted PR beforehand, but she was unremarkable and so was this murder, frankly.
The trial became a big deal for some months because of NURMI. His relentless sex sex sex sex drew in cable which increased their ratings which led to more coverage. Profits and purient interest drove all that, not intrinsic interest in Travis the person, much less in his killer.
Nurmi needs to get a grip. He wasn't involved in the trial of our lifetime, or even a decade, or even of that year. Obviously felt that way to him, but in real life 97% of "The Trial Watchers" didn't even pay attention to round 2. Travis wasn't a fictional love-struck character in a grade B tragic farce, much less in a great Shakespearean tragedy, and the killer was just an unstable, delusional, malicious psychopath thinly camoflagued as an unemployed high school drop out waitress with many delusions.
The process wasn't fixed, there were no conspiracies, and Nurmi simply got thumped daily and overall by a vastly superior trial attorney in JM. Big whoopy- e-doo.
