Jordi Arias Case

Jordi Arias was accused of first-degree murder in the death of her former boyfriend. Prosecutors said that in the summer of 2008 after the couple had broken up, Arias stabbed her former boyfriend 27 times, slit his throat and shot him in the head as he showered. She pleaded not guilty to the crime and the jury was undecided over if she was a cold-blooded murderer or was a victim of domestic violence.

Both, ABC news and International Business Times, used the information of the case to display Arias as a victim of domestic violence. Whiteley states that women who commit violent crimes are often portrayed as people who have crossed the boundary of appropriate gender role expectations and did so of their own accord. Women who do so are demonized and they are at times depicted by the media in masculine terms, as it is the male who owns the rights to violence. Opposite to what Whiteley says, ABC news did a follow up story of the Arias case where Arias’ defense attorney revealed what the convicted killer is really like, stating that Arias was really very chatty and smiley, adjectives who tend to be related to feminine women.

On the other side, Arizona Central describes each of the steps that led to sentence Arias. On March 25, 2013 Arizona Central published an article explaining that a cross-examination expert diagnosed Arias with post-traumatic stress disorder. As Whiteley says, society’s explanation for a women committing a violence crime is “she kills because she is mad or mentally ill.” Arizona Central somehow seemed to support this idea.

According to the Huffington post she didn’t get away with death penalty because she was a woman, but because she was born white and the US justice system don’t give death penalties to white women. As Whiteley stated, the study of the media and the depiction of female offenders calls to their attention the bias towards white women and further details how this bias is situated within the media narratives.  If Arias would have been born black, it would have been a different story.

In my opinion, I believe society’s perception of women is wrong. Women, as men can also be cold-blooded murderers. They can stab, they can shoot, they can poison, just like men. What shocks me the most is that when a women commits a violent crime, the first thing that crosses our minds is “it was probably self defense” or “she was probably a victim of domestic violence”, instead of “this woman just killed someone”. If a man kills his partner, none of this thought come across our minds, the only thing we think is “this man just killed his wife”, and there is never room for “he was probably acting on self defense.