Jodi Arias will return to the courtroom today as a hearing to determine whether she will face the death penalty begins. The same jury that convicted Arias of murdering her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander will decide her fate.
The prosecution will need to prove to the jury that one aggravating factor of the crime was especially cruel, heinous, or depraved in order to warrant the death penalty, according to ABC News. A verdict could come as soon as later today. Watch video here.
Arias was recently moved back into the Phoenix jail where she has spent the majority of the last five years. Previously she had been on suicide watch at a psychiatric ward after comments she made shortly after her conviction.
"I said years ago that I would rather get death than life and that is still true today," Arias said.
Chris Hughes, a friend of Alexander's, believes that Arias doesn't truly want the death penalty. Instead he thinks that she made the statement as a way to manipulate the jury.
"I think Jodi's request for the death penalty is Jodi doing what she does; lying and manipulating," Hughes told The Huffington Post. "Jodi is scared to die. She has been threatening to kill herself since high school. She has had access to guns and knives (and) she is still here. If Jodie wanted to be dead, she would be."
Another friend of Alexander's, Dave Hall, shared Hall's opinion, according to The Huffington Post.
"I think Jodi Arias loves herself too much to actually want that," Hall said.
Dr. Kevin Horn, the examiner who performed the autopsy on Alexander, suggests that the presence of defensive wounds on Alexander show that there was a struggle and that Alexander did not die quickly.
"If you have injuries to the backs of the forearms or to the palms or backs of hands, it's consistent with someone either trying to grab the knife or fend off wounds, fend off injury," Horn testified during the trial.
If an aggravating factor is not proven by the prosecution, the death penalty cannot be sought and the judge will decide a sentence within a month or two.
Anna Sigga Nicolazzi, a prosecutor who has been following the case, told ABC News that the defense will have a very hard time proving that the death penalty is unwarranted in this case.
"The defense is going to try and show that the manner in which she caused Travis Alexander's death was not particularly cruel," Nicolazzi said. "He may well have died quickly so he didn't suffer any incredible mental anguish, but I think that is going to be an incredibly hard sell."
* Arias one step closer to the death penalty? Click here to read the story.
