Toobin: Arias witness looked awful
Jeffrey Toobin, Mark Geragos and David Swanson share their reactions to expert testimony given by a psychologist in the Jodi Arias trial who testified that Arias suffered dissociative amnesia.
Dr. Richard Samuels told the jurors that because of the trauma of killing Travis Alexander, Arias lost her memory. The theory supports her claims that she remembers shooting her ex-boyfriend in self-defense, but forgets stabbing him nearly 30 times.
The prosecutor tried to discredit Samuels by bringing up an ethics violation, saying the doctor treated Arias by buying her a self-help book, and by showing he used outdated information to conclude Arias had PTSD.
Toobin says he thought Samuels was an excellent witness on direct testimony, but the prosecution made him seem more like an advocate than an analyst. "PTSD is a big part of the defense here, and the fact that the analysis that led to that was while she was still lying about all this, I thought he looked pretty bad," says Toobin.
For more on the case, watch Psychologist says Arias has amnesia
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Post by: Anderson Cooper Filed under: Crime & Punishment • Jodi Arias |
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She did the crime. Now she should do the time.
Male or female...you still killed someone! Gender doesn't matter...you can overpower someone and kill them or you can plot against someone to kill them. Either way you did it..and you deserve to be under the jail.
What is most interesting to me about this case is how everyone understands how tremendously traumatising it is to have killed somone in the case of Pistorius and so feel so interested in not shoving what he has done down his throat, while they feel totally different about this girls killing her boyfriend. How many girls kill their boyfriends and how many men kill their girlfreinds? The numbers prove which sex we need to be down on in these cases, the sex that feels free-est about killing the other one. People want her to suffer, thinking about what she has done while they would like to save Pistorius from suffering too much. It is like racism, killing a white man is horrible while killing a slave was pretty much alright. It is counter intuitative, in theory men protect women, in fact they are more inclined to protect other men. The pope, the last one I think it was, said that women are different from men. People are different from each other but when believing in difference makes one more able to sypathise with people who you see as like you and less with those you see as different, then to talk too much about difference causes a lackof empathy between people or more empathy for one group than another and then there is something wrong with believing in difference. Then it is obvious that difference makes it hard to put yourself in the other persons shoes. Then it is, love the other as yourself but as she is different from me tha is an impossible exercise. rose macaskie madrid.