DESPERATE: Beau-slayer Jodi Arias yesterday shows Phoenix jurors a T-shirt she’d like to sell from jail to aid domestic-abuse victims. (
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Spare my life so I can sell my T-shirts and recycle trash!
That was Jodi Arias’s surreal plea to jurors yesterday in a pathetic bid to escape the death penalty for murdering her boyfriend.
The convicted killer said she considered suicide — and even “wrote a lot of goodbye letters” to loved ones — but changed her mind when she realized “there are things I can do to effect positive change” if given a life sentence behind bars.
“I’d like to implement a recycling program,” Arias, dressed all in black, said while reading to jurors from note paper. “Each week, huge loads of waste are hauled off to landfill. A substantial portion of it could be kept out of landfill and recycled instead.”
The 32-year-old former waitress also proudly showed jurors a white T-shirt bearing the word “Survivor.” Arias said she designed the shirt herself and hoped to sell more like it from behind bars to raise money for survivors of domestic abuse.
She also vowed to start a prison “book club or reading group,” and showed the jurors a photo of her donating her long black hair so it could be made into wigs for cancer victims.
She added that she plans to give away more hair if she gets a life sentence.
In her bizarre 19-minute pitch to jurors in a packed Phoenix courtroom:
* Arias stuck to her story that she killed 30-year-old Travis Alexander in self-defense.
“Before that day, I wouldn’t even want to harm a spider, “ she said.
“To this day, I can hardly believe I was capable of such violence.”
Alexander’s throat was slit, he was shot in the head, and was stabbed 27 times in his suburban Phoenix home in 2007.
* She admitted, “I got on TV and lied” after her May 8 conviction. “I lied about what I did and I lied about the nature of my relationship with Travis.”
She said she “lacked perspective” when she said she preferred death to spending the rest of her life behind bars.
“As I stand here now, I can’t in good conscience ask you to sentence me to death, because of them,” she said, pointing to her tearful family in court.
“Please don’t do this to them,” she added later.
* She was on the verge of tears several times, such as when she said she realized now that she’d never become a mother.
“Because of my own terrible choices, I have to lay that dream to rest,” she said.
Jurors closely watched Arias as she spoke. They sometimes turned to a large screen behind her where she had displayed photos of relatives, of a former boyfriend and of drawings she had made of family members, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley in a bid to become an artist.
“I’ll never create another oil painting,” she said regretfully.
Arias was the final witness in the five-month trial because her lawyers refused to present other mitigating testimony.
After Arias spoke, Judge Sherry Stephens told jurors they had the final say on whether she lives or dies.
“Your decision is not a recommendation,” she said.