Jodi Arias jury foreman said Jodi Arias was “not Charles Manson” and it was unfair to expect the jurors, who were just ordinary citizens, to decide whether she lived or died.

The Jodi Arias jury foreman said that the decision was wrenching and that the jury would be haunted forever. The same jury that convicted Arias of first-degree murder in the death of Travis Alexander couldn't decide whether Arias should live or die after 13 hours of deliberations, forcing a mistrial of the penalty phase of the case that hypnotized America for months.

The 69-year-old Jodi Arias jury foreman, William Zervakos told the AP that "The system we think is flawed in that sense because this was not a case of a Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson. It was a brutal no-win situation. ... I think that's kind of unfair," the 69-year-old added. "We're not lawyers. We can't interpret the law. We're mere mortals. And I will tell you I've never felt more mere as a mortal than I felt for the last five months."

The foreman said the most difficult part of the trial was hearing directly from the victim’s famly. Travis Alexander’s brother and sister both broke down in tears as they described how the killing shattered their lives. Zervakos said "There was no sound in that jury room for a long time after that because you hurt so bad for these people. But that wasn't evidence. That's what made it so hard. ... This wasn't about them. This was a decision whether we're going to tell somebody they were going to be put to death or spend the rest of their life in prison."

The foreman said that the jurors also broke down in tears as they deliberated over whether to kill the young confessed murderer. She had no criminal history. Zervakos said "You've got Travis Alexander's family devastated, that he was killed, that he was brutally killed. You've got Jodi Arias' family sitting in there, both families sitting and seeing these humiliating images and listening to unbelievably lurid private details of their lives, and you've got a woman whose life is over, too. I mean, who's winning in this situation? And we were stuck in the middle."

Zervakos didn’t get into his own thoughts or the four women and eight men who had do decide how heinous a crime it took to rob someone of their life. Was Jodi Arias a killer or just an an average young woman struggling through life?

Zervakos said "You heard (prosecutor Juan) Martinez say she was only 27. ... She's old enough that she should have known better. I didn't look at it that way. I'm looking at 27 years of an absolutely normal everyday young woman that was living a life that was perfectly normal. Then something changed the trajectory of her life after meeting Travis Alexander, and it spiraled downhill from there."

Judge Sherry Stephens set a retrial date of July 18. There will be a conference on June 20 to determine how both sides want to proceed. Prosecutors can to take the death penalty option off the table and avoid a new penalty phase. If a second jury also cannot reach a unanimous decision, the judge would not have the option to sentence Arias to death.

by Tony Sokol