Jodi Arias was almost released from jail due to a "grave mistake" made by one of lead detectives who worked on her murder case.

Arias' defense attorney had requested a mistrial but was denied on Thursday, Jan. 10. Detective Esteban Flores admitted in court that he gave an inaccurate answer about the sequence of events when Arias' lover Travis Alexander was killed because he thought it "wasn't important at that time."

The scorned lover had shot Alexander in the face, stabbed at least 27 times, and his throat was slit from ear to ear.

Flores, a 19 year veteran of the Mesa Police Department in Mesa, Arizona was asked by Arias' defense attorney Kirk Nurmi if it is important to give accurate testimony, to which he replied, "Yes, of course," because there had been doubt in the order of how Arias' grisly murder was committed.

"It was not inaccurate, it was mistaken... I am not a doctor," Flores said in court on Thursday. "If I gave that testimony, it was a misunderstanding of what Dr. Horn told me."

He was referring to his statement at a hearing August 2009. Flores was asked which wound was inflicted first and he replied "gunshot."

"I had spoken to Dr. Horn the day before in a short conversation and discussed mainly what kind of pain the victim would have been through and if he suffered, and very briefly the sequencing," Flores told the court on Thursday. "The sequencing wasn't very important at that time."

Arias, 32, was arrested in 2008 for allegedly murdering her lover, Alexander, 30, a motivational speaker and legal-insurance salesman. Alexander was shot in the face, stabbed at least 27 times, and his throat was slit from ear to ear the day she went to visit Burns in Utah.

Although there will not be a mistrial, the detective's statements which are considered a "grave mistake" can still affect Arias' outcome in court later. If Arias is convicted of the horrific crime, she will likely be sentenced with the death penalty.

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Jodi Arias