Jodi Arias Trial: Cross Examination Reveals Cracks in Defendant's Story

Sitting for her ninth day of testimony on the stand, the prosecution's cross examination of Jodi Arias began to reveal subtle cracks in many of the defendant's stories surrounding the killing of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander. 

Prosecuting attorney Juan Martinez used phone records, text message records, and Arias' own diary to belie her claim that she once walked in on Alexander looking at pictures of nude boys, according to ABC News.

Arias has testified throughout the trial about her lover's supposed double life: a devout Mormon virgin on the surface, but a "sexually deviant" abusive control freak underneath. Among her other salacious accusations, she said she discovered Alexander pleasuring himself to photographs of naked young boys Jan. 22 2008. She was so upset after discovering Alexander in the act, she claimed, that she vomited in disgust, drove "aimlessly" in shock for hours, and refused to answer his many phone calls throughout the day. 

Arias' accusations of pedophilia are an integral piece of the defense's portrait of Alexander as a "sexual deviant." The defense has argued Alexander became increasingly hostile in the weeks leading up to his murder, and that he tried to control Arias in an equally violent and sadistic relationship, claiming he abused her and was "emotionally detached."

Attempting to contradict Arias' portrayal of Alexander, Martinez asked her to explain a diary entry from two days after the pedophilia incident allegedly took place.

"I haven't written because there has been nothing noteworthy to report," wrote Arias, according to The Huffington Post.

He then drew the court's attention to phone calls and text messages the pair exchanged the day Arias claimed she caught Alexander looking at the lurid pictures. He noted that the messages discussed the logistics of how the couple planned to trade cars that evening. He questioned why she was still communicating with him so cordially, and why she had never written about the pedophilia episode in her diary if she was as shocked as she claimed. Arias was unmoved, and stuck to her original story. 

Growing impatient, Martinez grilled Arias on the particulars of the timing and the order of events of that day, but Arias once again claimed her memory was spotty. 

"It seems you have problems with your memory. Is this a longstanding thing? Since you started testifying?" Martinez said.

"No it goes back farther than that. I don't know even know if I'd call it a problem," Arias responded.

"How far back does it go? You don't want to call them problems, are they issues? Can we call them issues? When did you start having them?" Martinez asked in rapid-fire. "You say you have memory problems, that it depends on the circumstance. Give me the factors that influence that."

"Usually when men like you or Travis are screaming at me," Arias snapped. "It affects my brain, it makes my brain scramble."

A photographer from California, Arias is charged with the the gruesome first-degree murder of her ex-boyfriend Alexander in his Arizona home in June 2008, in which she allegedly stabbed the then 30-year-old man 27 times, before slitting his throat and shooting him in the head. Arias has changed her story of Alexander's death several times already. After first claiming she was never at Alexander's home that day, she then said masked intruders were to blame for his death, and then eventually backtracked to say she killed the victim in self-defense when he attacked her in the shower, forcing her to fight for her life. Arias faces the death penalty if convicted, the Associated Press reported.

Martinez capped off Thursday's proceedings with potentially damning new evidence. He showed the court magazines he said Arias attempted to smuggle to a friend visiting her in jail in August 2011 with encoded messages written on the pages. When decoded, Arias allegedly wrote, "You f--ked up. What you told my attorney next day directly contradicts what I've been saying for over a year. Get down here ASAP and see me before you talk to them again and before you testify so we can fix this."