Death penalty defendant Jodi Arias is looking to fire her main defense attorney Kirk Nurmi. In May, Arias was convicted of the 2008 first degree murder of her former boyfriend Travis Alexander. Arias has yet to be sentenced and is facing either life in prison or the death penalty. The jury that convicted Arias could not decide if she deserved to be put to death for her crime. Arias' sentencing hearing was rescheduled a number of times, but no new hearing has been announced.
Last week Jodi Arias sent out a 12-page handwritten letter saying she had not seen her lead defense council since May 23, the day when the jury announced they could not make a decision about the sentence. In the letter Arias sent along with her motion to fire Nurmi she said her lawyer has an "utter poverty of people skills and "has little to no tolerance for my emotional and psychological shortcomings." According to reports Arias tried to fire Nurmi once before in June, but the judge did not grant her request.
Arias writes that her lawyer "stopped treating me with respect long ago." Arias continued by offering an example of an argument she and Nurmi had during her trial. "In an unguarded moment in 2012, while expressing my discontent about his quality representation and lock of through investigation, I said 'I deserve an attorney who wants to fight for me,' to which he responded 'you're not entitled to that.'" Arias is scheduled to be in court again on November 1. There is no word on what form the next Arias hearing will take.
"Any chance at rebuilding trust has been compromised given that I know he doesn't like me and expressed exactly that to a jury who was tasked with deciding whether I live or die," Arias wrote. The jury was conflicted about sentencing Arias to death. Some believed Arias deserves to die for her crime while others felt uneasy about sentencing her to death. When Arias was first found guilty of killing Alexander she was hoping for the death penalty because she believed that death was the ultimate freedom. Arias would later change her mind and ask the jury for life in behalf of her grieving family.
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