I went to bed last night thinking about what I would do if I were on the jury and woke up still thinking about it and I came to the conclusion that it's the slit throat that will unanimously get JA convicted of 1st Degree Murder.
If I were in the room, what I would suggest to my fellow jurors is this, lets start with the presumption that every single thing JA and her team of psychologists have told us is the absolute truth, every last bit of it, regardless of any other evidence. JA was a battered woman, her self-esteem was low, Travis was a deviant, and the result of her killing him has caused her PTSD. Lets assume she is absolutely truthful that he kept a gun in his closet, that he threatened her that day and she feared for her life, she ran for the gun terrified of this man, pointed it at him, didn't know it was loaded and shot and it went off and hit him in the head and he lunged at her. Her fog rolls in here, but lets imagine the chaotic scenario that could have happened next that Mr. Nurmi laid out for us.
He's still alive and able to attack her, gunshot wound and all, he still has the strength to physically confront her in a total rage, she fears for her life and grabs the knife off the counter and just starts stabbing wildly and blindly. One of those stab wounds pierces his heart. In your deepest imagination, put yourself in that position, a gunshot wound to the head, a heart that is pierced, two major organs that essentially give you all life are damaged and bleeding. What is your automatic response to pain or even a cut? To put your hands on the pain/wound to apply pressure and try to relieve the pain or stop the bleeding. He's bleeding out from his head, he's bleeding out from his heart. Where are his hands? Even if I can somehow convince myself that he's not got his hands covering both major wounds and is still trying to attack her, at the very least, there is so much blood loss happening that he is disoriented, coughing out blood and weakening rapidly, any cyborg attempt to still hurt JA has got to be utterly compromised. There is no human way for him to be strong enough to still be a threat to her life. He is, at the very least, on his knees. She is blind with rage after all the abuse she feels she's suffered (though apparently did not feel abused until several years later when ALV has reluctantly dragged it out of her) and fears for her life and looking at him on his knees, she must know she can get away at this point, that he is wounded enough that he is no longer a threat to her safety.
And this is where she makes the choice to slit his throat, to make sure he is dead for once and for all. And it's that choice, that 1-10 seconds, whatever it may have been where she can assess what has happened, what is happening, what the state of him is, which is clearly from behind, thus not making him a threat to her, the heat of passion dulled ever so slightly, the clear and present danger and fear of it, lulled ever so slightly and lifts his head, slicing a clean wound from ear to ear. That is an absolutely premeditated choice.
Then I would suggest to the other jurors that if you can get premeditation from even the worst imaginable scenario where Travis is everything the defense has made him out to be and more and was the sole aggressor in that confrontation, then lets consider the severity of what has happened as measured by our common sense and what we heard on the stand and what we would do in any of these scenarios and find that there is literally no way around the notion of premeditation, whether she planned it weeks before or made the choice in seconds and the choice should be clear.
(For the record, of course, I do not believe one word out of JA or her defense's mouths with regards to what actually happened or who Travis truly was and was merely trying to imagine how I would lay out how all roads lead back to the throat slitting, ultimately, no matter what took place first gunshot or stabbing and no matter whose version is more accurate.)