exhibited by the trial management skills of this judge, combined with the the excess of testimony concerning the victim rather than the defendant, may have tended to skew the perception of the jury here as to what the actual issues were. I have a legal background and I found it incredibly difficult to reconcile the fact that this was supposed to be a trial about whether there was sufficient mitigation to spare the life of the defendant with the actual proceedings which focused on proctorial misconduct, *advertiser censored*/child *advertiser censored*/computer evidence and the psychological "experts" who focused on the psychological makeup and tendencies of the victim rather than on the defendant. I really believe a different judge may have made a difference. This should never have taken this long. The scope of evidence and testimony should have been limited. To allow the focus of so much of the mitigation testimony to be on the victim presented a false picture of what the proceeding was about and what mitigation is. But how would the jury know? If 90% of the testimony is about the victim why should they be thinking about heinous the crime was and how the defendant lacked mitigation.
Defense experts should not have been attempting to "diagnose" the victim which is the reality of what they were doing despite their claims otherwise and despite the fact that I doubt the standards of their profession would have allowed such a diagnosis on a deceased person via selected e-mails sent by a victim to the person who murdered him. I know for sure victims rights were not advanced by this process. And the guarantees of due process for the defendant are not a license to "convict" a murder victim on charges never leveled against him. All along Nurmi's strategy was to wear down the jury, to drag this out so that any serious urgency was negated and to confuse the jury with regard to who was on trial for what. And this judge let him win time and time again. He is simply getting the mistrial and thus life sentence he has bargained for all along one way or another. And I do totally blame this judge.
I am not one who thinks JSS is taken in by Jodi or has any sympathy for her at all. She acknowledged as much when she permitted the absurd secret testimony but noted that Jodi was being manipulative. Yet she allowed herself to be manipulated. Over and over. I think she lacks confidence in her decisions. My experience with tough NY judges was that they never lived in fear of appeal. They made what they felt were the correct decisions and let appeals lie in the future. They had no qualms about time limits and holding both sides to schedules. Once the DT sensed JSS's uncertainly they took full advantage. She has aided and abetted their strategy.
Personally, I don't care what sentence Jodi gets. Either way her goose is cooked. All I cared about was the 1st degree conviction. But I felt the victim's family deserved to get the DP they wanted. This whole process has been absurd-this murder occurred in June 2008 people! That family has gone through way too much. I agree with KCL and others that victims rights needs some work in AZ if this trial is an example.
