and so far the media had not run to court challening her. I don't see a judge making a "calling" your bluff call. I don't know her normal trial behavior enough to truly make an informed opinion as to why her rulings are what they are. But the kind of decision made here, to completely close the court and allow secret testimony from a secret witness is pretty much without positive precedent in jurisdictions I'm familiar with and AZL didn't note anything that made AZ more amenable to this type of decision.
It almost seems like she is unable to maintain objectivity and evaluate attorney requests (motions). Which is weird. Litigation goes on constantly and lawyers and judges learn to shrug off criticism and threats of appeals, mistrials etc. and go about their job. But she seems fairly cowed by the DT. I mean Nurmi is always crying the sky is falling, this will cause a mistrial, Jodi's constitutional rights are being violated, etc. NO matter how mundane the issue, he's making it out to be the worst thing ever. I feel like maybe she falls for it. It's a DP case. Maybe she has truly lost sight of what actually consists a "fair" trial for constitutional purposes and buys into DT hype.
But Juan clearly said what was going on today in his comment (helpfully transcribed by daisyd):
The thing that should not be lost in this argument of whether or not we should proceed in this sort of star chamber approach to things is the victims rights.
He clearly knows "secret" witnesses are unconstitutional. But I'm not sure he even cares anymore-he wants to get this trial done for the family. So, not so much that he doesn't care about unconstitutional rulings, but he's got the lay of the land in dealing with JS and he will work around it. He won't be deterred from his primary mission, getting this completed, which is the exact opposite of Nurmi's primary mission, i.e. mucking up the proceedings and getting a mistrial.
That isn't to say everything Nurmi SAID is wrong. It's true that if the victim's rights under the AZ constitution and statutes are in conflict with the due process rights of the defendant, the defendants rights prevail. But that general statement is, IMO, far removed from anything going on here. Any such conflict, first, should be argued in the open. The burden is on the one seeking an extraordinary remedy to demonstrate the compelling reason for such. The most we can tell, since so much is conducted in secret, is that Nurimi is arguing that they need to present a secret witness with secret testimony in order to ensure due process for JA. But what is this based on? No one associated with the trial has been physically attacked. So, it must be based on the fact that basically everyone pretty much hates a heinous murderer who trashed her victim and made us look at giant blowups of her girly parts. JA is the cause of most of the hate directed at her and, by association, to those that would support what she did or said. She chose to go on the stand in public and lie for 18 days. That can make people really hate ya and witnesses that try and bolster you. And then she got convicted. There is no constitutional right for a convicted murderer to be insulated from public hatred.
There have been many hated killers over the years. The fact that people can blog and twitter has not changed this. It just gives people on all sides of an issue more opportunity to make their views public. That so many people dislike a convicted first degree murderer does not affect her right or ability to put on mitigation witnesses. If witnesses choose to not want to be publicly associated with her, so what? You have no right to be supplied with mitigation. If mitigation exists you can present it. You can subpoena a witness who must testify truthfully. The system is, or should I say was, the same for everyone.
Here, the constitutional right of the Victim is clear:
The Victims Bill of Rights, Article II, § 2.1 of the Arizona Constitution, states:
Section 2.1. (A) To preserve and protect victims rights to justice and due process, a victim of crime has a right:...
10. To a speedy trial or disposition and prompt and final conclusion of the case after the conviction and sentence.
You can certainly argue that right has alreayd been denied by all the machinations by the DT to delay, prolong and stop, via a mis-trial, this trial.
I do kind of hope that the Appeals CT ends up ruling on the substantive issue of whether there can be secret testimony. Maybe that will jolt JS into stiffening her spine a bit and getting and keeping this trial on track.
IMO
She could not have known in advance that the media would appeal this. So I dont agree that JSS had some planning for this at all. It was just a really bad decision because she is way way way too worried about possible appeals when she has the laws on her side.
She needs to just rely on the law she is trained on and make sound decisions fair to both parties, not just defense.
Nurmi said he is planning on appealing anyway. Its going to happen no matter what she does. She needs to quit worrrying about it and making decisions out of fear.
