Jodi Arias Trial: Defendant Admits Lies, Maintains Innocence

As prosecutors continued to confront Jodi Arias Monday with her litany of lies surrounding the 2008 killing of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in his Arizona home, the defendant admitted to lying, but insisted she was innocent of first-degree murder.

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. 

"It's the truth. I'm innocent of that charge," Arias proclaimed to prosecutor Juan Martinez, ABC News reported.

Seeking to underline her lack of credibility, prosecuting attorney Martinez focused on the many outright lies and inconsistencies in Arias' version of events as he tried to establish a pattern of the defendant's habitual refusal to tell the truth. 

Arias has already admitted to lying to police, Alexander's family and friends, and others in the past about Alexander's death. At first, she first claimed she was never at Alexander's home the day he was killed, then she blamed masked intruders for his killing, and finally she backtracked to admit she killed the victim, but claimed it was in self-defense, as he attacked her in the shower, forcing her to fight for her life.

Martinez discussed these various lies as evidence that Arias knew she was guilty and was trying to cover her tracks to avoid prosecution.

She claims she lied because she was "ashamed" she killed Alexander in self-defense and because she was afraid of revealing the details of their kinky sexual relationship. 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. Alexander's friends claim that Arias was stalking him and was "possessive and jealous." The prosecution has alleged that the pair had become distant in the weeks before the killing, and Alexander was trying to get Arias to leave him alone.

To further illustrate the lies she told to avoid responsibility, Martinez played the court a video interview Arias did from jail with CBS's "48 Hours" in July 2008 where she discussed sending an 18-page letter to Alexander's family explaining how he was killed - a story she now admits was a lie.

"Travis' family deserves to know what happened," Arias said on the video, Associated Press reported.

"They did deserve to know what happened but did they deserve that lie?" Martinez snapped at Arias.

"I guess not," Arias responded.

Martinez countered that Arias wasted no time in trying evade authorities after Alexander's killing. He drew attention to her behavior in the hours following his death suggesting she was planning out her alibi "immediately" - calling Alexander's phone and leaving a message and then driving to visit a man in Utah for a romantic rendezvous. Arias even played the part of concerned friend days later when police found Alexander's body, calling authorities, friends, and even her Mormon bishop, as she tried to find out what police knew and whether "anybody was onto you," Martinez contended.

"Partially, yes," Arias conceded, but maintained her memory of that day is spotty. 

Arias tried to explain that many of the inconsistencies in her stories are due to her foggy memory of the day Alexander died. Arias has wavered back-and-forth between giving explicit details surrounding the murder to claiming she has little to no memory of certain aspects of the case, such as the actual act of killing Alexander, saying her memory of the fateful day has "huge gaps," according to The Tri-City Herald.

"My mind wasn't right during all that period," Arias claimed. "It's like I wasn't accepting it in my mind... because I never killed anyone before," she said.

Arias faces the death penalty if convicted, the Associated Press reported.