Why did the Zimmerman jury find him not guilty?
In watching the Rittenhouse trial, I have sometimes thought of George Zimmerman. The fact situation in Zimmerman’s case was hardly the same, but it was at least somewhat similar in that each defendant was in a generally protective mode, and each one shot and killed an assailant (or in Rittenhouse’s case, several assailants) who were unarmed but were hurting them and might be intent on killing them.
There were a lot of differences. For example, Rittenhouse was set on by a mob in a riot situation, and his encounters were very comprehensively recorded by video cameras. For Zimmerman this was not the case. Rittenhouse and all his victims were white, but somehow the left has made racial claims about him and his motives. Zimmerman was Hispanic (or part-Hispanic) and the man he killed was black.
Both defendants were widely defamed and lied about, both by the general left, the MSM, the prosecutors, and other public officials. Therefore both jury pools almost certainly were tainted and compromised by this negative propaganda against the defendants.
The Zimmerman trial occurred in Florida, however, a somewhat more conservative state than Wisconsin (although Kenosha, where Rittenhouse’s trial is occurring, is purple as far as I can tell). And Zimmerman was tried in 2013, which seems like ancient times compared to now, because the atmosphere of the country has changed so much in the eight years since then. In fact, Black Lives Matter was formed as a reaction to the Zimmerman case, and Black Lives Matter was certainly a big part of the riots that led to the situation Rittenhouse faced in Kenosha in August of 2020. So the two trials are linked in that way, as well.
Despite the widespread hatred of Zimmerman and belief that he had murdered Trayvon Martin, the facts that emerged in the trial were very different than the left and the MSM had portrayed. This was true despite the fact that most of the actual facts were easily discovered prior to that trial, if a person read sources on the right. The same is true of Rittenhouse; most of us were not surprised by the trial because we had learned the facts long ago. It’s people who relied on the MSM for their information who were surprised.
I had expected Zimmerman to be convicted because of the widespread defamation mounted against him. I was relieved at the verdict but I don’t recall too much about what was said about the process by which it occurred, so I looked it up just now and found out a few things.
The first – and I think this is important – is that in Florida juries are composed of six people rather than twelve. It seems to me that that would mean it’s easier to get a unanimous verdict. That goes both ways, of course, because either “not guilty” or “guilty” must both be unanimous (otherwise the jury is hung and the person can be retried if the prosecutor so desires). But it does explain, at least to me, how it might be that Zimmerman could be found not guilty, if only six people had to agree.
The deliberations took sixteen hours and the verdict was returned on the second day, however, because initially the jury was hung [emphasis mine]:
Two days following the conclusion of the trial, one of the jurors (Juror B37) spoke with Anderson Cooper of CNN about her experience as a member of the jury. She said that in an initial vote, three of the jurors had voted to find Zimmerman not guilty, but two had voted to find him guilty of manslaughter and one had voted to find him guilty of second-degree murder: “there was a couple of them in there that wanted to find him guilty of something and after hours and hours and hours of deliberating over the law, and reading it over and over and over again, we decided there’s just no way, other place to go.”…
Juror B37 told Cooper that she believed “It pretty much happened the way George said it happened.”…
Four of the other jurors released a statement saying that Juror B37’s views should not be regarded as representative of their views on the trial.
Juror B29, a 36-year-old Puerto Rican mother of eight children…was interviewed about the trial on July 25. She said, “George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can’t get away from God. And at the end of the day, he’s going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with.” She said that as the jury began deliberations, she wanted to convict Zimmerman of second-degree murder, and she held to her position that Zimmerman should be found guilty even after all the other jurors had decided to find him not guilty. However, she said that after nine hours of deliberations, she realized that there was not enough evidence to convict Zimmerman under Florida law: “As the law was read to me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can’t say he’s guilty….you can’t put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty.” The juror said that she felt like she owed Martin’s parents an apology because she felt she had let them down.
That gives us some insight into the winding ways in which juries arrive at decisions, even a jury so small as six people. Zimmerman’s future hung in the balance among people who strongly disagreed on his guilt vs. innocence (despite what I think was overwhelming evidence of his innocence). He was fortunate that Juror B29 actually understood – and applied – the doctrine of presumed innocence of the defendant and the prosecution’s burden of proof.
I fervently hope that sort of approach hasn’t fallen by the wayside in the eight intervening years. I fear it has.
I’m not without hope for Rittenhouse. Yes, Kenosha is a “purple” area politically, but this means blue-collar union rather than big-city white liberals. The five men on the jury may very well have firearms experience (hunting is big in Wisconsin) and so may some of the seven women.
you can’t put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty.
It’s not about what you feel, it’s about what you know to be true. In the case of Zimmerman, I’m not certain why this person “felt” that he was guilty. Perhaps she was imputing motivations to Zimmerman that were unprovable. Perhaps she imagined that Zimmerman decided he was going to kill Martin the second he laid eyes on him?
I had long discussions with partisan Democrats at the time at a site which was once called ‘League of Ordinary Gentlemen’ and is now called ‘Ordinary Times’ (though includes few if any posters who were working the site in 2013). Their treatment of Zimmerman was consistent with the following propositions:
1. Partisan Democrats think in templates, and do little inductive reasoning.
2. They’re natural haters. Keep in mind Zimmerman was an everyman – a multi-racial, lower middle-class mope with a wife and a mortgage. He’s had some involvement in civic voluntarism. His ‘criminal record’ was a misdemeanor assault charge over an altercation in a bar (when he’d stuck up for someone else).
3. They readily imputed thoughts and emotions to him there was no external evidence he’d ever entertained. (See above).
A. One in particular (a 2d grade teacher who signed himself ‘Kazzy’) twisted his head into a pretzel to explain away recorded crime scene evidence. Zimmerman was photographed covered in blood just after his altercation with Martin. Our brilliant 2d grade teacher surmised he must have been perched on a wall somewhere and fallen off; where this wall was in the housing development in question he never specifies. (This same goomba was known to contend in other threads that there was no correlation between racial category and a tendency to commit crimes).
B. And, again, they approached the incident with the assumption that Martin had a franchise to beat up people who annoyed him. (They were remarkably incurious as to why Martin would be so touchous about a stranger sitting in his pick up talking on a cell phone).
C. The same 2d grade teacher remarked above insisted it was only to be expected that Martin would want to prove himself by attacking Zimmerman (instead of, you know, just going indoors and forgetting about him). That there was zero evidence Zimmerman had ever challenged him or even had any idea where he was when young Martin elected to walk 75 yards down the back alley in order to attack GZ didn’t faze our brilliant 2d grade teacher.
When I participated in a jury, the initial vote was something like 8 guilty, 2 uncertain, and 2 not guilty. I was uncertain, but that was resolved by a jury question. The 2 not guilty had doubt, but admitted not reasonable doubt. They mostly had difficulty in sentencing the convicted to prison, which was something they should have admitted in voir dire. To be absolutely fair, much of the evidence was hearsay, which was part of my pause.
Unlike the Kenosha protesters, Trayvon Martin had, to the moment of confrontation, committed no crime and Zimmerman didn’t have a right to detain. Self defense became on option once Martin got the better of Zimmerman, was laying/sitting on Zimmerman preventing Zimmerman’s ability to retreat, and bashing Zimmerman’s head in. Had Trayvon just knocked Zimmerman to the ground then walked away; then I think Zimmerman would have been guilty. Zimmerman was a provocateur, but that doesn’t mean he has to let himself be killed and he couldn’t retreat.
I don’t remember the Zimmerman jury being personally threatened by the activist left. And too the prosecution, though rotten enough, wasn’t as over the top as the Rittenhouse ones were.
Unlike the Kenosha protesters, Trayvon Martin had, to the moment of confrontation, committed no crime and Zimmerman didn’t have a right to detain.
Doesn’t matter whether Zimmerman had the right to detain him or not. Zimmerman never attempted to do that and, while speaking to the non-emergency dispatcher, had lost sight of Martin and had no idea where he was. We can piece together the sequence of events. Martin, instead of simply going indoors, walked 75 yards back up the alley in question and attacked Zimmerman. We know to the second when he disappeared down the alley at a run because it is recorded on Zimmerman’s call to the dispatcher. We can estimate when he arrived at the back door of Brandi Green’s house (would have taken about 13 seconds, give or take, to run that distance, and an additional increment of time to turn and go in the door). We know that he could have (had he chosen to) been indoors before Zimmerman concluded his conversation with the dispatcher. We know just where he attacked Zimmerman because the crime scene photographers snapped a picture of Zimmerman’s dropped key chain.
This was what I meant by “rotten enough but it took me a bit to find a link.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/04/george-zimmerman-trayvon-martin-100-million-fraud-diamond-rachel/
And too the prosecution, though rotten enough, wasn’t as over the top as the Rittenhouse ones were.
Disagree. Jerilyn Merritt said in nearly 40 years of practicing criminal defense law, she had never encountered a character as unscrupulous as Bernardo de la Rionda.
Had Trayvon just knocked Zimmerman to the ground then walked away; then I think Zimmerman would have been guilty. Zimmerman was a provocateur, but that doesn’t mean he has to let himself be killed and he couldn’t retreat.
Zimmerman did nothing provocative and Martin would have been guilty of assault had he done what you describe. Again, what Zimmerman did do was park his truck, re-park his truck, call the non-emergency dispatcher to report a suspicious person, get out of his truck when subject ran out of eyeshot, walked along a walkway from one street to another (a walkway perpendicular to the alley down which Martin ran) while continuing to talk to said dispatcher, turned around when he reached the next street and walked back toward his truck. There is no reason to believe he was doing anything other than loitering around on said walkway waiting for the police to arrive.
“Disagree. Jerilyn Merritt said in nearly 40 years of practicing criminal defense law, she had never encountered a character as unscrupulous as Bernardo de la Rionda.”
Okay then I withdraw my statement. Scoundrels all. I hadn’t heard that Merritt comment.
Leland:
Apparently you have retained some of the mendacious leftist propaganda about the facts of the Zimmerman case. He was not a provocateur
I hadn’t heard that Merritt comment.
I think she said something more precise than what I reported, but it’s been eight years. IIRC, she said the testy back and forth between the judge and the defense counsel was par for the course in a criminal trial. What impressed her about de la Rionda, IIRC, was his continuous game of hide the ball with the evidence.
geoffb; Art Deco:
Do you recall this accusation about prosecutor misconduct in the Zimmerman trial? If true, it’s a lulu.
Also credit the defense team of O’Mara and West. They did a fine job of showing what an unsupportable case the state had.
I don’t remember the Zimmerman jury being personally threatened by the activist left. And too the prosecution, though rotten enough, wasn’t as over the top as the Rittenhouse ones were.
That case was when I discovered Conservative tree house. They had exhaustive details of every aspect of the case. I spent an entire day reading it. What has changed now is that juries are intimidated by the rioting. There was nothing like that, as I recall, with Zimmerman.
The precedent is the Chauvin trial. It was in Minneapolis and the jurors even spoke about having to go home after the verdict. Now, we have the Rittenhouse trial in the same city as the riots with lefty thugs in the courthouse. I was hoping the judge would dismiss the case. Outrageous behavior by Binger.
I remember the Zimmerman jury feeling very much worried about the threatening atmosphere outside the courthouse.
Humans are corrupt. I see it almost day. WHat hope do any of you have for God’s grace and justice?
Neo,
That was what I linked to above. But I don’t know the outcome of the lawsuit linked.
It appears Zimmerman dropped the suit against Crump and the family but the suit against Sen. Warren and Sec. Buttigieg uses the same basis.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/eric-zorn/ct-column-trayvon-zimmerman-anniversary-lawsuits-documentaries-zorn-20200222-kef4togy6va3blp23l37qu2knu-story.html
One thing from the Zimmerman/Martin case that struck me at the time was how often commenters on the case would say that he (Zimmerman) should have “…just taken his beating” and that he was a coward for not allowing Martin to hammer his head into a concrete sidewalk. Now we have a prosecutor in the Rittenhouse advancing the same idea: “Everyone takes a beating sometime.” I would really like to know when that lawyer last took a beating. And as someone in an earlier thread pointed out taking a beating from an enraged mob means that you will mostly likely end up dead or crippled.
John+
They have to say something. Everything else has been taken away by evidence.
I’d suspect most know better but I have acquaintances who would actually believe it, if it were said to them.
John F. MacMichael:
A mob can actually rip you limb from limb.
Some people live such protected lives they don’t realize things like that. Fortunately, I’ve lived a relatively protected life, but my head’s not stuck in the sand.
“Take a beating from a mob” – hmm, I wonder what Reginald Denny would have to say about that?
As for the jury voting based upon the fear of violence, maybe not even themselves, but for the community; well, my memory might be faulty as it seems to me that despite video evidence taken by the news helicopter of Reginald Denny’s attacker hitting him in the head with a brick the jury voted not guilty because, as one juror said afterwards “we didn’t want more violence in LA.” I believe the judge overruled the jury in that case.
Some jurors in Rittenhouse’s case might do the same, except they will find him guilty because they are afraid of more violence if they don’t.
The fear of violence will cause some to offer up someone else as a “sacrifice” for the better good. (mind you, we all know most won’t offer up themselves; but, will offer up others)
This verdict may be a sign of how far we have descended into anarchy in the last eight years. There was no huge threat of riots and violence if Z was found innocent, but look at what we have now.
Looking back at the Trayvon Martin case, and the Michael Brown case in 2014 (though that didn’t go to trial), you see a lot of hints of the attitudes towards self-defense and justified use of force that are now on full display in the Rittenhouse trial. The left has been working to undermine the basic concept that you have the right to shoot someone who’s trying to hurt or kill you.
“One thing from the Zimmerman/Martin case that struck me at the time was how often commenters on the case would say that he (Zimmerman) should have “…just taken his beating” and that he was a coward for not allowing Martin to hammer his head into a concrete sidewalk. Now we have a prosecutor in the Rittenhouse advancing the same idea: “Everyone takes a beating sometime.” I would really like to know when that lawyer last took a beating. And as someone in an earlier thread pointed out taking a beating from an enraged mob means that you will mostly likely end up dead or crippled.” Yep! What I don’t understand is whether this is all about an attack on gun rights or an even broader attack on the use of force to defend yourself generally. Why attack the right to self-defense, one of the most basic laws of nature? If you listen to enough anti-gun arguments you hear a lot of absurd things, like that it’s cowardly to fight someone with a gun and not your fist, that you should urinate on a potential rapist rather than shoot them, or that you should just keep a taser on your nightstand – anything to avoid conceding that there are situations where you might be justified in shooting someone. But in Europe, governments undermine their people’s rights to even use knives or pepperspray to defend themselves. Why? What’s the endgame? To make people totally dependent on the state for their safety?
” What’s the endgame?”
Fear, constant. Roy Batty explains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAzpa1x7jU
shadow @10:52 PM “What’s the endgame? To make people totally dependent on the state for their safety?” Bingo! After all if people are willing and able to defend themselves against criminals they might defend themselves against the Party/State.
Ymar,
None are without sin, which by the way includes you.
God doesn’t expect sinlessness from us. What he expects is admission of our sins, regret of our fallibility and trust in his mercy.
Charles,
“Some jurors in Rittenhouse’s case might do the same, except they will find him guilty because they are afraid of more violence if they don’t.”
If history teaches anything, it teaches that appeasement leads to worse outcomes.
“All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke
But those who vote guilty will not have done nothing. They will have assisted evil.