Jodi Arias Trial News Update: Judge Denies Arias' Request to Fire Lead Defense Attorney Kirk Nurmi

It looks like convicted murderer Jodi Arias will have to stick with her estranged defense attorney after a Phoenix judge denied her request to fire him.

Judge Sherry Stephens of Maricopa County Superior Court rejected Arias' request to remove her lead attorney Kirk Nurmi from her case in a brief ruling issued on Friday, HLN-TV reports. The judge did not offer an explanation for why she denied Arias' motion.

Late last month, Arias filed the motion in a 12-page handwritten document that stated that Nurmi hasn't seen her since May 23, reports the Associated Press. That's the day that Phoenix jurors reached an impasse on whether to sentence her to death or to life in prison for the 2008 murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander.

Arias wrote that Nurmi has an "utter poverty of people skills" and "has little to no tolerance for my emotional and psychological shortcomings," USA Today reports. For instance, she stated that the defense dismissed her request to play a lurid recording of a phone call she had with Alexander in a closed courtroom with the jury rather than to the general public. She said she had an emotional reaction when the defense played the tape in open court.

Arias also claimed that she attempted to fire Nurmi in June, but Judge Stephens denied her request then, too.

The 33-year-old California native was convicted of first-degree murder on May 8 of Alexander in his suburban Phoenix, Ariz. home. Because the jury failed to reach a unanimous decision on her sentencing, a retrial will be held later this year to determine whether she should be sentenced to death, life in prison or life with a chance of release after serving 25 years.

Medical examiners found that she stabbed her ex 27 times, primarily in the back and in the torso and the heart. She also slit Alexander's throat from ear to ear, nearly decapitating him, and shot him in the face, before she dragged his bloodied corpse to the shower where she left him crumpled over. In total the killing was done in a little less than two minutes.