Murder suspect Jodi Arias wrapped up her 18th (or 19th, by some accounts) day on the stand this week with trial watchers wondering whether her lengthy testimony helped or hurt her. We’re still predicting the jury will hand Arias a death sentence, for reasons that will be explained below. See…
Debra Milke, on Death Row since her 1990 conviction for conspiring to have her 4-year-old son killed in 1989, won’t be released from prison anytime soon. The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Milke’s conviction yesterday, raising the possibility that she could be set free in 30 days. But…
Do your own freakin’ work, Renee! We’re speaking of “S. Renee Greene,” one of the citizen-journalists who publishes articles on Examiner.com — and who ripped off portions of the Jodi Arias feature article published in Phoenix New Times this week. Greene, through her writer’s account with Examiner.com, published her own…
Prosecutor Juan Martinez rapid-fires questions to murder defendant Jodi Arias, bouncing through timelines, appearing to want to confuse and scold as much as to elicit useful information. Arias sometimes gets confused and upset. She admits she can’t keep her stories straight. She intermittently breaks down sobbing, especially when forced to…
Assuming Michael Anthony Beltran doesn’t have three hands, he’s received a little help from authorities to make sure his mugshot came out right. Beltran was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of driving with a suspended or revoked license, a misdemeanor, and booked into the Maricopa County Jail, records show. We…
Max Wilson, one of five members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, announced today that he will retired and step down from his post on March 11 due to health concerns. The real-estate developer was appointed to his seat representing the west Valley in 2002 and won his third…
Something’s wrong with Jodi Arias, that much anyone can tell. Her lack of emotion combined with the brutality of her crime — stabbing, slashing and shooting her victim — have led some to call her a sociopath, or psychopath. Not that most people could give a medical definition of the…
The Jodi Arias trial took another turn for the nutty today with a “meltdown” by prosecutor Juan Martinez and, to some extent, the justice system. Arias, who claims she shot, stabbed and nearly decapitated her ex-boyfriend in self-defense, said in her third day of being cross-examined that Martinez was making…
It’s 1:30 p.m., and Monday’s lunch recess has just ended. Jodi Arias has re-taken the witness stand and casts a mellow gaze toward the defense side of the courtroom as she waits for the jury to file in. The afternoon session begins with a long attorney sidebar at the bench…
Afternoon recess is over. It’s 1:38 p.m. Prosecutor Martinez begins by asking about her journal entries. Her entry indicates that “Lonnie” was baptized on a Thursday night, as referenced in her previous testimony. The entry goes on to say she went to Travis’ house for the night, “where we explored…
Gavin MacFarlane, the Scottsdale man who shot and killed two people at a strip club in December of 2010, won’t get the death penalty after being found mentally incompetent. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens raised MacFarlane’s bond from $2 million to a cash bond of $5 million following…
Portions of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s 10,000-page sex-crimes internal investigation are now available online following a New Times records request. When the massive report was released to the news media and public on February 8, the agency at first refused New Times’ request to put it on a CD…
It’s about 1:30 p.m., and the afternoon recess in the Jodi Arias trial has ended. Arias is back on the stand, having testified this morning about how she shot Travis Alexander on June 4, 2008, then drove to Utah to meet a guy she liked. She spent a few hours…
We’re live-blogging this morning from the Jodi Arias trial. Be sure to check back frequently for updates. The testimony is beginning right now as her attorney, Kirk Nurmi asks for Jodi to tell what happens when she gets in the shower. This follows yesterday’s testimony, in which she described showing…
Bill Stokely of Flagstaff has agreed to forfeit his helicopter and not fly or own aircraft for two years in a deal that’ll keep him out of prison for changing his chopper’s tail number. Stokely will also give up a claim to his Robinson R44 chopper, which was seized more…
Timothy Abrahamson, the former Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputy accused of driving to North Dakota in September and assaulting his wife’s ex-lover, faces a March 12 trial date in Fargo. Abrahamson, who played a key role in some of the discredited anti-corruption investigations conducted by Sheriff Arpaio’s office, has pleaded not…
If you’re a close observer of the Maricopa County sheriff like we are, check out this hour-long video (in three parts) from his testimony in last year’s Joel Fox termination appeal proceedings. Arpaio squirms a little, appears to feign ignorance and mixes up his stories as he answers questions from…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio admitted in 2011 he was “duped” by his top aides. He admitted in an embarrassing news conference the same year that he’d “made mistakes” in dealing with his former chief deputy, Dave Hendershott, whom he fired after evidence of corruption and mismanagement in his office…
Sean Stephenson was born with a rare disease that makes bones brittle and confines him to a wheelchair. He wasn’t expected to survive after birth and suffered more than 200 broken bones by age 18. But he survived — and thrived. He’s a therapist, author and motivational speaker from Chicago…
The fatal shooting of a lawyer and a businessman on January 30 just outside a Central Phoenix office building would have been bigger news on any other day. But it happened to occur at the exact time that Mark Kelly, husband of former Arizona Congresswoman and mass-shooting victim Gabrielle Giffords,…
Bryan Teague of Peoria, the suspect in a 5,220-acre wildland fire east of the Valley in August, has been thrown in prison several times for his persistent drinking and driving since 2000. Being a prohibited possessor, he wasn’t allowed to own or carry a firearm when he wandered around 29th…
Police officials have Christopher Dorner, the alleged murderer and former Los Angeles police officer, in a gunfight right now in the Big Bear area of California. Just a few minutes ago, the action-packed audio feed included CBS correspondent Carter Evans saying by phone that he was “in the middle of…
