http://politics.kfyi.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=118695&article=11339052
County Attorney: Arias Retrial is On Track
But several factors could make it unnecessary
(May 30, 2013)
(Ted Houston, KFYI News) The do-over of the penalty phase of the Jodi Arias murder trial is moving forward, according to Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery.
He told reporters on Thursday, "We're preparing for a retrial," which is currently scheduled to begin in mid-July.
However, he says there are several things that could make a retrial unnecessary.
"Prosecutors always have an ethical obligation to take into consideration anything that might be proposed by the defendant or their counsel," Montgomery says.
Then there's the issue of how a retrial would affect the victim's family in this case, the family of murder victim Travis Alexander. "Victims have a constitutional right to confer with the prosecutor prior to disposition of the case," he says. "They also have a constitutional right to be treated with fairness, respect, and dignity. So victim input is very important to me." The Alexander family could ask, for example, that prosecutors be satisfied with a sentence of life in prison so as to avoid putting them through all the gruesome testimony all over again.
Montgomery notes that while the original penalty phase where jurors deadlocked 8-to-4 in favor of the death penalty only lasted a couple of weeks, a retrial would likely last much longer.