Crimewatchers gather round!
Who the hell is this woman with the bulldog underbite and the rooster hairdo? This, folks, is who the Jodi Arias defense chose as their “expert”, apparently based entirely on the title of her book. This is Alyce LaViolette aka the only person on earth who thinks Jodi Arias is telling the truth about anything. It’s true, Ms. Alyce finds NO evidence that the pathological liar was lying to her, and may or may not have realized mid-way through her cross-examination that she had been basing 99% of her findings on Jodi’s lies.
I have this lady pretty much figured out. She is an opinionated, blinkered narcissist who craves having control over the lives of other people and with no understanding of the concept of neutrality as a starting point. She is a dimly- educated bully, desperately seeking recognition as a seasoned “expert”. Her defensiveness is palpable. She is acutely ashamed of her lack of credentials. She received her Associate’s Degree in “physical education.” Alyce LaViolette wanted to be a gym teacher before switching to another “easy” path….Psychology – aka the last refuge of those who couldn’t get their real estate license. LaViolette – who surprised everyone when she mentioned she had children – and I say this after careful consideration – does not like the menfolk. From day one, she could not hide her snarling contempt for the diminutive prosecutor – even having the audacity to tell him that if he were a client of hers, she would put him in “time out! She is a blathering narcissist, a ‘hostile witness’, arguing very prosecution question. She addresses “Mr. Martinez” in a supercilious way, calling him out on the way in which he speaks to her, like she’s Princess Diana and not a witness in a murder case. She no doubt feels that Juan Martinez’s aggressive demeanor constitutes “domestic battery”.
Alyce LaViolette’s cagey, indirect responses to the prosecutor’s questions – which focus on her methods of diagnosing Arias as a victim of domestic abuse and demanding to know what caused her to assess Arias as believable – are borderline psychotic. She keeps insisting she is “looking for patterns of behavior” to not agree with the fact that every single other person has said Jodi was untruthful and manipulative. Surely she could have seen Jodi’s “patterns” of behavior in all the contradictory stories she told to come to the conclusion that Jodi is a liar? She simply cannot admit that she was bamboozled by Jodi Arias – that her whole evaluation is based on Jodi’s lies.
“I just look at it from a standpoint of domestic violence” means that she looks at whatever data she’s given by whoever hired her, doesn’t do any objective, independent research, then cherry-picks to see if she can find things people are reported to have said/done – by the stuff given to her by whoever hired her. She has literally no internal radar. Her pigheadedness and her inflated ego have her incapable of acknowledging her own bias.
She makes ceremony of having to fetch her glasses – I guess at $300 per hour it pays to stretch things out – and seems to feel a grand entitlement, flapping around that courtroom. She continually looks to the defense table looking for cues from the defense attorney. She loves to hear the sound of her own voice pontificating on this or that, about anything other than the answer to the question.When she feigns not understanding a simple, direct question, LaViolette appears dumb, not patiently wise. Being hedging, qualifying, and being obstinate belies an agenda. Every point the prosecutor tries to make with her is amplified by her belaboring of the point. her abject inability to answer simple and obvious questions with a yes or no, wasting time clarifying, detailing and defining each and every question before even answering makes her look like a charlatan. She has an alarmingly weak grasp of what constitutes evidence and a rotten internal lie detector.
LaViolette calls herself “old fashioned” and takes great offense to all the sexy stuff these young heterosexual folks are having. Specifically what Travis Alexander is having. LaViolette characterizes Alexander, by all accounts a decent man, as someone who “pushed sexual limits”, made “sexual innuendos”, was “attractive to women”, tried to “push PPL on women” for “credits”, was “good with women”, “irritated women”, knew “how to “play them” effectively – demonstrated by the way in which he would back off of ladies who wanted him to back off. He “insinuated himself into their lives”, was empathetic “on paper” and empathetic equals “insisting himself into peoples lives.” When asked by a juror is it is common for a battered woman to ‘snap” , she foes on to say that when battered women snap it is usually in a “self defense” situation. It is absolutely stunning that someone who takes such a cavalier attitude to facts, can have such huge influence on the lives of so many people in important matters of custody, restraining orders, etc.
Jodi Arias broke into the victim’s phone and emails, repeatedly drove to his house unannounced and peeped through his windows, slashed his tires, slashed his new girlfriends tires and GOD KNOW WHAT ELSE THAT WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT. But, Alyce LaViolette just “doesn’t see it “. She can not admit that what Jodi did was “stalking.” Why – you ask? Well, because, you know, Travis did not take out “restraining orders” and did not “behave” as if he was afraid of her, so her actions posed no viable threat. Whether or not he had the proper level of fear for Jodi Arias, the fact that HE WAS MURDERED BY HER might give weight to the claim that she WAS in fact stalking him but ANYONE’s definition. Travis Alexander told Jodi Arias that he thought she was evil, crazy… and the worst thing that had ever happened to him… days before she murdered him. He was through with her but she tried one last time to win him back through sex and not entirely surprisingly, he succumbed – Big whoop , but Ms. LaViolette can not accept this. Ultimately, Travis still wasn’t taking Jodi to CanCun. This was simply too much for Jodi Arias and she ambushed him in the shower. She has knives and a gun ready in case he would not change his mind about taking her to Cancun. The poor guy never stood a chance.
There has been much talk of LaViolette’s “Snow White Was a Battered Woman” lecture that is her signature piece. She has touted her stupid “speech” at Long Beach over the past TEN DAYS of her testimony. When questioned about it by the prosecutor, she insisted that everyone needs to see “the entire youtube video”, to understand what she was trying to say. And that stupid title? Well, she didn’t really mean to imply that Snow White was a battered woman, she just couldn’t resist because, well, it was just such a catchy title. She smiles smugly when discussing this tour de force video.
So I did it. I watched it. Folks, it is so much worse than any of us realized. I’ve been picturing the prosecution team watching this guffawing. First, it is so much crappier than I had envisioned. Second, she is wearing some sort of kooky Kabuki tunic. She has tragically terrible comic timing. She cracks a lot of jokes and does a painful and tragic arnold Schwarzenegger impression.
“FACT”: Peach happened because the Greeks had Gods AND Goddesses! Conclusion: a culture has gods AND goddesses, that means the society has “balance” between the genders. FACT: The “shift” in the world of male/female dynamics came, you know, with “archeology and whatever” and nomadic cultures you know. FACT: It was the MEN that were actually once the folks who stayed at home with kids, and the ladeez were the warriors! You know how she knows? EVIDENCE: Ladies had flatter chests, as we can see in ancient sculpture. Then, “gradually” cultures shifted to being based on domination, violence, hierarchy, private property, male domination & warlike culture. Laviolette bases her discussion of history “throughout the centuries” on “The Chalice & The Blade”.
She goes on to describe how before the revolution – but not after – women could own property, receive education and have male friends. (After the revolution, Martha Washington inherited all of George’s property) Also, after the revolution, women were “protected from the right to vote” (no mention of all the men ho couldn’t vote, like slaves or men who didn’t own land…),
Alyce tells us that the Old English common law concept of “Eminent Domain” is “a Man’s Home is his Castle”. She then explains that “Eminent Domain/Home is his Castle” “mitigates murder”, because, “What you do to offend that intimate partner can be used as a mitigating factor for killing that partner.” Confused yet? Well, to illustrate this, LaViolette misuses the egregious case of John Sweeney, the man who murdered Dominique Dunne (or, according to LaViolette “Wolfgang Puck’s protégée”). John Sweeney killed Dominique – a woman he had once dated – and he received a very short sentence, ERGO: Crime-of-Passion-Mitigation. However, Dominique was no longer Sweeney’s partner. Furthermore, the murder did not take place at his house. Lastly, the jury did not find it was a crime of passion. They found John Sweeney guilty of 2nd degree murder because the court suppressed his history of stalking and abusing Dominique as too prejudicial. John Sweeney was sentenced to a scanty 6 1/2 years for murdering Dominique and served about 3 years, an absolutely heinous miscarriage of justice that does nothing to demonstrate anything Alyce LaViolette was blabbering about.
Alyce talks idiotically about the laws “protecting women from education, voting, having males friends, etc..” Which she sums up as the idea that women had “brains the size of a peas” and men had brains that “filled up their whole heads”. She then describes Brain Fever – with dramatic arm movements – as something that heats up your uterus, flames shoot up your body and your brain explodes! HAHAHA! She is so funny! And the audience loves her! Oh and apparently in the 17th And 18th (?) centuries, women were “routinely” hung for witchcraft – there was in fact only one such episode in American history, in which menfolk were also killed. Oh, and there’s good evidence that politics and property disputes were at the root of the initial accusations in that whole mess. Then something about how pancake batter and soap ads ads were created to divide women. This woman is lousy with double standards: warriors are bad, unless they’re women, then they’re “strong”. She mocks women who want cosmetic procedures – “I am going to have my butt moved up to my cheeks!” hardyharhar. She thinks hurting men is funny, laughingly describing a South American petroglyph depicting a woman in labor who has tied strings tied around her male partner’s privates for her to pull on every time she has a contraction. Alyce proudly says she gives this to her men’s group as a lesson in “empathy”. She talks about “instructing” police departments about domestic violence in the 1970s – apparently her glory days (she drops in references to Gloria Steinam and Marlo Thomas and Free to be You and Me) – and how great it was back in those days when it was anarchy. These days, according to Alyce, domestic violence police procedures are too rigid, the police aren’t doing it the way she would do it. At some point, she sings as Snow White to huge laughter and applause and takes a tremendous bow, her voluminous tunic flapping.
But, the star witness for Jodi Arias’ defense team now seems to be on trial herself — in the court of public opinion, that is. I took a look at the reviews for her book – coincidentally coming out later this month – and it looks to me like Alyce LaViolette has successfully torpedoed her career. Outraged trial watchers are targeting the Amazon page for her book, “It Could Happen To Anyone: Why Battered Women Stay.” More than 500 scathing reviews have been posted for the book until Amazon took them down. Now the angry masses are going after her other books. Fun!