The Arizona Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to hear an appeal on whether a judge improperly allowed prosecutors to seek a death sentence for Jodi Arias in the 2008 stabbing and shooting of her former boyfriend, AP reports.
Arias’ lawyers filed the mid-trial appeal with the state high court three months ago after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens denied a mistrial motion and a mid-level state court then refused to consider an appeal.
Arias’ lawyers say Stephens wrongly allowed a potential death sentence to be based on trial testimony that contradicted a police detective’s testimony during a 2009 hearing about how Travis Alexander was killed.
A jury in Phoenix convicted Arias on May 8 of first-degree murder, but jurors deadlocked May 23 on whether to impose a death sentence.
A new jury is to be impaneled in July to begin considering Arias’ sentence, a process that will require a mini-trial of sorts in the case that became a national spectacle because of its prurient aspects.
Arias, 32, testified she killed Alexander in self-defense at his home in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.
The appeal centered on prosecutor’s contention during the trial that Alexander, 30, was killed in a cruel manner because he suffered mentally and physically by being stabbed and slashed before being shot.
