Police Protecting Holdout Juror in Jodi Arias Case

Name surfaces on social media after hung jury
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 7, 2015 9:06 AM CST
Police Protecting Holdout Juror in Jodi Arias Case
Jodi Arias, right, listens during her sentencing retrial, Thursday, March 5, 2015, in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix.   (AP Photo/The Arizona Republic, Tom Tingle, Pool)

The woman responsible for keeping Jodi Arias alive is officially known as juror No. 17, but authorities say that her identity has been revealed online. As a result, police are protecting her for the time being, reports the AP. Her 11 fellow jurors all voted in favor of the death penalty for Arias, convicted in the brutal murder of her boyfriend, but the woman refused to budge from her preference for a life sentence. The hung jury means that Arias won't get the death penalty. Court records show that the holdout juror is a Hispanic woman in her 30s who grew up with domestic violence and was abused by her ex-husband, reports azcentral.

"Clearly this is a person with a strong personality, perhaps a person with an agenda," says the president of a jury-consulting company. Two other notable developments:

  • One juror says the holdout claimed to have seen a Lifetime movie about the case, which prompted other jurors to ask the judge to remove her. That never happened.
  • The woman's ex-husband is a convicted felon, and the lead prosecutor in the Arias case, Juan Martinez, handled two previous cases against him, reports ABC15. It's not clear whether the juror disclosed that connection.
(More Jodi Arias stories.)

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