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George Zimmerman: half of jurors 'initially favoured conviction' George Zimmerman: half of jurors 'initially favoured conviction'
(about 2 hours later)
Three jurors in George Zimmerman's trial initially favoured convicting him of murder or manslaughter, but the six-woman jury ultimately voted to acquit him of the killing of an unarmed black teenager after more closely examining the law, according to a juror in the case. One of the six female jurors who acquitted the Florida neighbourhood watch leader George Zimmerman of murdering Trayvon Martin has revealed that three of the panel originally wanted to convict him.
Zimmerman, a former neighbourhood watch volunteer, was charged with second-degree murder over the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year, but the jury also was allowed to consider manslaughter. The middle-aged woman, who is white and has grown-up children, said she and her fellow jurors believed that Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old, threw the first punch in the fatal confrontation, leaving Zimmerman in fear of his life. That, she said, was the determining factor in why the three changed their minds.
The woman, known as Juror B37, told CNN there was an initial vote when the jury began deliberations on Friday. Three jurors – including B37 – were in favour of acquittal, two supported manslaughter and one backed second-degree murder. She said the jury started going through all the evidence, listening to tapes multiple times. The woman, with her face blacked out and identified only as juror B-37, insisted that justice had been served. "George Zimmerman is a man whose heart was in the right place, but just got displaced by the vandalism in the neighbourhood and wanting to catch these people so badly that he went above and beyond what he really should have done," she told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Monday night.
"That's why it took us so long," said B37, who said she had planned to write a book about the trial but later had a change of heart. "It just went terribly wrong," she said. "Things just got out of hand. I think he's guilty of not using good judgment."
When they started looking at the law, the person who initially wanted second-degree murder changed her vote to manslaughter, the juror said. Then they asked for clarification from the judge and went over it again and again. She said some jurors wanted to find Zimmerman guilty of something, but there was just no place to go based on the law. The panel deliberated for more than 16 hours before all of them accepted that Zimmerman acted in self-defence, she said. In their first poll, one juror thought he was guilty of second-degree murder and two of manslaughter.
B37 said jurors cried when they gave their final vote to the bailiff. "It was just so confusing what went with what and what we could apply to what," she said. "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 about the law and reading it over and over and over again, we decided there's just no way or other place to go.
"I want people to know that we put everything into everything to get this verdict," said the juror, whose face was concealed during the televised interview. "Because of the heat of the moment and stand your ground, he had a right to defend himself. If he felt threatened his life was going to be taken away from him or he's going to have bodily harm then he had a right. That's how we read the law, that's how we got to the point of everybody being not guilty."
The interview, with CNN's Anderson Cooper, came two days after the jury acquitted Zimmerman of second-degree murder over the shooting of Trayvon in a gated community in Sanford, Florida, where the teenager was visiting family. Trayvon was black, and Zimmerman, whose mother is Peruvian, identifies himself as Hispanic. While prosecutors accused Zimmerman of racially profiling Trayvon, Zimmerman maintained he acted in self-defence. She pointed to two pieces of evidence that were key to the case: the screams heard on a recording of a 911 call made by a resident of Sanford's Retreat at Twin Lakes gated community on 26 February last year, and the instructions of a police dispatcher whom Zimmerman called on a non-emergency line to report a "suspicious male".
Anger over Zimmerman's acquittal continued on Monday, with civil rights leaders saying protests would continue with vigils and rallies in 100 cities on Saturday in front of federal buildings. "It was George Zimmerman's. Because of the evidence that he had gotten beaten," she said when Cooper asked her whose voice the jury believed it was. She said the conflicting testimony of Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, and Gladys Zimmerman each claiming it was their son cancelled the other out.
In Los Angeles, several hundred mostly peaceful protesters gathered on Monday night at Leimert park, many of them chanting, praying and singing. But a group of about 100 people splintered off and began blocking traffic on nearby Crenshaw Boulevard, some of them jumping on cars and breaking windows. Several protesters ran into a Walmart store, where they knocked down displays before store security chased them out. The police dispatcher, she said, was also at fault. "[Zimmerman] shouldn't have gotten out of that car. The operator kind of egged him on. He should have said, 'Stay in your car,' not 'Can you see where he's gone?'."
The US justice department said it was looking into Trayvon's death to determine whether federal prosecutors would file criminal civil rights charges against Zimmerman, who is now a free man. His lawyer told ABC News that Zimmerman would get his gun back and intended to arm himself again. She insisted that the race of the two parties – Martin was black, Zimmerman of mixed white-Hispanic parentage – never came up in the jury room.
The attorney general, Eric Holder, on Monday called the killing of Trayvon a "tragic, unnecessary shooting", and said the justice department would follow "the facts and the law" as it reviewed evidence to see whether federal criminal charges were warranted. "The circumstances caused George to think he might be a robber or do something bad because of what had gone on," she said, referring to a recent series of burglaries in the development.
The key to filing civil rights charges against Zimmerman lies in whether evidence exists that he was motivated by racial animosity to kill Trayvon. Zimmerman's parents told ABC News that their son was not racist and they did not know if he would ever be able to return to a normal life. "If there was another person, Spanish, white, Asian, if they came in the same situation Trayvon was in, I think George would have reacted in the exact same way. We never had this discussion. I think he just profiled him because he was the neighbourhood watch, he profiled anyone who came in who did something strange."
The White House spokesman Jay Carney said it would be inappropriate for Barack Obama to involve himself in decisions by the justice department on whether to pursue civil rights charges against Zimmerman. Several other statements the juror made highlighted the difficulties of processing so much information to try to reach a verdict. She referred several times to a 911 call that she said Zimmerman made, even though his call was to a police non-emergency line.
The justice department opened an investigation into Trayvon's death last year but stepped aside to allow the state prosecution to proceed. She was confused when asked who she thought was the most credible witness. "The doctor, and I don't know his name," she replied. "He was awe-inspiring, the experience he had over in the war, I never thought somebody could recognise somebody's voice yelling, a terrible, terror voice." 
The February 2012 shooting drew international attention when Zimmerman was not arrested for weeks, and the case has continued to raise questions over race and self-defence gun laws. Cooper asked if she meant a friend of Zimmerman's, a man named John Donnelly who served as a combat medic in Vietnam and who testified that he recognised the defendant's voice on the tape. The juror, however, said no, she was referring instead to the "defence medical examiner". That witness, Dr Vincent DiMaio, gave evidence about Martin's gunshot wound, not the recording.
Jurors were told that Zimmerman was allowed to use deadly force when he shot the teenager not only if he actually faced death or bodily harm, but also if he merely thought he did. The woman concluded the interview in tears as she recounted the emotional toll of the experience. "It's just hard thinking that somebody lost their life and nothing else can be done about it," she said. "Both of them could have walked away, it just didn't happen. I feel sorry for them both.
Juror B37, the only juror to speak publicly about the case so far, said on Monday that the actions of Zimmerman and Trayvon both led to the teenager's fatal shooting, but that Zimmerman did not break the law. "I wanted people to know that we put everything into everything to get this verdict. We thought about it for hours and cried over it afterward."
While Zimmerman made some poor decisions leading up to the shooting, including leaving his car when police told him not to, Trayvon was not innocent either, the juror said.
"I think both were responsible for the situation they had gotten themselves into," said the juror. "I think they both could have walked away."
The juror said she did not think Trayvon's race was the reason that Zimmerman followed him on a dark, rainy night. She said she also believed Trayvon threw the first punch and that Zimmerman, whom she referred to as "George", had a right to defend himself.
"I have no doubt George feared for his life in the situation he was in at the time," the juror said.
The juror was not impressed by the testimony of Rachel Jeantel, who was talking to Trayvon on the phone moments before he was fatally shot by Zimmerman.
"I didn't think it was very credible, but I felt very sorry for her," the juror said. "She didn't want to be there."
Juror B37 told CNN that reaching a verdict was a difficult process. She said the jury's instructions from the judge were not immediately clear and the evidence was in no order whatsoever.
"We thought about it for hours and cried over it afterwards," she said. "I don't think any of us could ever do anything like that ever again."
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