Jodi Arias is innocent *Fall Tier Tournament- round 2*

REASONABLE DOUBT The recap of round 1 is that TNO5 agrees that he must prove that Jodi Arias was not acting in self defense beyond a reasonable doubt. He has accepted a higher standad of proof than would be expected of a typical debate. If you look at the evidence me and TNO5 brought to the table and consider that, no more no less, than you have to award me this win. If so much as a shred of doubt is in your mind saying that "maybe this was self defense", and that doubt is resonable then you must award me this win. THE SMOKING GUN There are a few spots in my opponent's case he perceives as strong, the gun being one of them. I don't have the same BOP as my opponent. Mine is much, much smaller. He has to prove beyond any reasonable doubt (no matter how small), that the gun was one belonging to Jodi Arias. I merely have to shed some doubt on that and show a plausible alternative. The swapped out bullets by them selves give pause to assuming the gun belonged to Jodi Arias. It's certainly reasonable to beleive that Travis Alexander possibly had an unregistered firearm. Lots of people do and owning an unregisered firearm isn't something that people go around bragging about. The person most intimate with you who is around your house all the time might know but not too many people outside of that circle. I can't believe my opponent thinks Jodi Arias is smart enough to swap out more powerful bullets for weaker ones but not smart enough to just buy an unregistered firearm instead of one the same caliber as what was stolen from her grandparent's. Oddly my opponent's case depends on Arias both being a genius and mentally retarded at the same time. DEFENSIVE WOUNDS Go back to round 2, and it's been elaborated on in further rounds. Every single wound has been explained by the scenario that I laid out which is certainly a reasonable scenario which would explain exactly what happened. I'm the only one that has given an explanation for the blood in and on the sink, which is from Travis checking out his gunshot wound. My opponent hasn't really shown how the scenario I laid isn't a correct accounting of the events and he has not laid out a better timeline than what I have developed. GENERAL RESPONSES "he asserts there is no logical reason for Arias to stab and then shoot Alexander, and that if she wanted to kill him, she could have done it in his sleep. Me and my opponent both agree Arias some form of mental illness, which renders the idea of her acting sanely moot, but I have also noted the two had a sado-masochistic relationship. " It's extremely disrespectful to call an abuse victim's relationship sado-masochistic. I guess that's a nice way of saying she wanted the abuse or "she was asking for it". I believe she had PTSD after experiencing this and other traumatic events caused by Travis Alexander. Suffering from PTSD doesn't mean she is incapable of having rational thoughts and neither is any other mental disorder you've mentioned. Just about everyone who sees a psychologist or psychiatrist is diagnosed with some mental disorder or another. Are you shy? That's social anxiety disorder. Do you get angry a lot? If so that is bipolar disorder. Are you sad? Well you got depression. I can go on and on about how therapists try to attatch a disease to every cocievable personality type but the point is there is a difference between a mental disorder and being incapable of rational thought and Arias is certainly capable of being rational. "It is very likely she could have felt a sort of sexual satisfaction in killing him personally. " Disgusting, unfounded and uncalled for. You're as bad as those perverted prosecuters who put her on the stand and got off on asking her a bunch of sexual questions. Those prosecuters should have been charged with sexual harrassment and contempt of court. " if Arias was merely acting in self-defense, why did she need to stab Alexander 30 times, slit his throat, and shoot him in the head? " Every wound has been explained in round 2 and elaborated on in subsequent rounds. The defensive scenario explains everything. "On the topic of photographs, my opponent has backtracked - he now says that "clearly after Travis started beating the crap out of Arias, a lot of photos were taken accidentally". In his opening argument, however, my opponent places the camera as the cause of the attack ("Jodi stunned by this accidentally drops Travis's camera. He yells at he "You F**king idiot", and body slams her to the tile. "). This reinforces my question - if Arias dropped the camera, how are all these pictures being taken? My opponent can't explain that. " Clearly while getting screamed at she'd be more careful and put the camera's string around her neck before being body slammed. Stopping in the middle of a life or death fight with a man twice her size and in decent shape isn't the time to be whipping the camera out and taking photos. No matter how this scenario played out the photos were clearly not taken on purpose. "People survive shot's to the head, they often times can move around and are fully conscious after shots to the head. It's no guarantee that the second it happens you'll die or be incapacitated". I'm not sure when my opponent went to medical school, but his claim here lies flat in the face of what Dr. Kevin Horn, who performed the autopsy, says" I probably should have provided some evidence for this but Dr. Horn had no ideal what affect the gunshot had on Travis Alexander, Everybody is different. We've all seen news stories of people surviving gunshot wounds to the head or people fighting off an attacker after getting shot. This type of event is unusual but it does occur and isn't so unlikely that Dr. Horn should have ruled it out immediately regardless of how much he was paid for being an expert witness. "On the issue of voicemails and the camera, my opponent only responds to the phone arguments. I extend my arguments on the voicemails. My opponent thinks it is absurd that Arias would have tried to delete the photos, as "Jodi Arias was a photographer and that she knew deleting the photos wouldn't erase them". I agree! That's why she threw the camera in the washer, to try and ruin it. " Like I said before she knew that deleting the photos wouldn't ruin them. She knew that washing the camera wouldn't destroy them. She knew that taking a hammer to the camera and beating the crap out of it wouldn't ruin the photos. She was a photographer she knew the only sure fire 100% way of getting rid of those photos would be to take the flash card out. Washing the camera was meant to just wash away all the pain and the horror she just experienced. It's also why she tried to wash Travis Alexander. Premeditation can't be shown by anything Arias done after the fact. Her thinking she looks guilty for just defending herself could factor into all those decisions. When you couple that with the PTSD you can see why her actions may have seemed a little off. "On the topic of PTSD, tries to counter how I showed that the PTSD diagnosis was in error by saying the doctor never admitted the diagnosis was wrong, just that he should have conducted another test. This is a red herring - if the doctor is confident in the PTSD claim, why would he acknowledge an error in not conducting another test? " He looked at all the same reports as the other psychologists and determined not only in his personal test but in theirs that PTSD could be concluded. Admitting you're not perfect in no way admits your conclusions are wrong or that the previous test isn't valid. Had he given her a 2nd test he may have had an easier time on the stand or faced less scrutiny. That's not to say that he disagrees with earlier conclusions but just that he should have did it as a formality to shut people up. This whole line of arguing is a red herring anyway. Whether or not she has PTSD or not doesn't matter. It explains her actions but her not having PTSD in no way means she is guilty of murder, but yes she does have it. You can't go through that type of experience without facing some sort of PTSD. Conclusion My opponent has failed to prove beyond every shred of doubt which would be reasonable that Jodi Arias did not act in self defense, and perhaps that is an impossible burden to meet and could be why most court systems make self defense type defenses carry the same burden as the prosecution. That type of argument is beyond the scope of the debate. My opponent is a competent debater and has agreed to prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt. I think even without that huge disadvantage I'd be winning this debate but this burden is something my opponent didn't come close to meeting.