May 12, 2016
George Zimmerman lacks even a shred of human decency. Today the killer listed the murder weapon on an internet gun auction site. The site has since removed the listing. Below is part of the killer's sickening ad.
"I am honored and humbled to announce the sale of an American firearm icon," the post said. "The firearm for sale is the firearm that was used to defend my life and end the brutal attack from Trayvon Martin on 2/26/2012."
George Zimmerman lacks even a shred of human decency. Today the killer listed the murder weapon on an internet gun auction site. The site has since removed the listing. Below is part of the killer's sickening ad.
"I am honored and humbled to announce the sale of an American firearm icon," the post said. "The firearm for sale is the firearm that was used to defend my life and end the brutal attack from Trayvon Martin on 2/26/2012."
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The Tragedy of Trayvon Martin
--an excerpt from "The Little Book of Lynching"
By Meg Langford
It was a story that gripped the nation. Or, as I have been forced to say too many times in this book, a story that gripped the people in the nation who care. A seventeen year old boy, Trayvon Martin, had gone to the store to buy some Arizona Ice Tea and Skittles. An overzealous neighborhood watch volunteer, now infamously known as George Zimmerman, didn’t like the looks of this kid. He called the cops. The cops told him to stay safely planted in his vehicle, and they would be there in a matter of minutes. George Zimmerman, not a man prone to following good advice, ignored the police and started following Trayvon.
What happened next is a matter of great debate, although we will prove in this chapter that, when it comes to George Zimmerman’s version of events, he is lying. He must be lying. To prove this point we will use the tools that we employ throughout this book: logic, forensic evidence, and the laws of physics. And of course, there are Zimmerman’s own words, which damn him for all time in the eyes of many enraged citizens, even if he was found Not Guilty by a jury. (We will touch on that as well.)
The single most important fact to come out of that night is that a seventeen year old unarmed black boy who was looking forward to having some snacks and playing video games with his friend ended up dead in the middle of a Florida condominium complex because a bully named George Zimmerman lacks self-control, reason, and compassion.
This is what we will undertake to prove in this chapter. Because if we do not, we have no doubt that George Zimmerman will come after us and sue us for everything we’ve got. Suing people is what George Zimmerman does, since apparently he is not interested in holding down a job to make a living.
THE LIES OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN
LIES ABOUT HIS PAST
George Zimmerman is a liar. It seems pathological with him. He lies so much that it would appear he can’t help but lie. Let’s go over the lies of George Zimmerman, as we ponder why the hell the jury chose to believe him, and not convict him of murder. It is worth noting that Zimmerman went into this confrontation with a documented record of acting like an irrational kook. Specifically, Zimmerman had called the local Emergency Response Services forty-six times with complaints, problems, and petite paranoias.
In fact, just for fun, let’s look at the complaint history that George Zimmerman had with the police, prior to the famous 911 call that he made about Trayvon Martin on that rainy February Florida night. For it is impossible to fully appreciate the kind of bizarre psychosis one is dealing with, in the person of George Zimmerman, until one has seen his call history, in his self-titled role as Community Watchman Extraordinaire.
(Any abbreviations or misspelling come directly from the police reports; read as [sic].)
General Terms:
TEL = non-911 police number (answered by 911 dispatcher)
BM = black male
LSW = last seen wearing
46. Feb. 26, 2012 – 7:20 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Repeats prior report
45. Feb. 26, 2012 (night of Martin shooting) – 7:11 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Black male “late teens lsw dark gray hoodie jeans or sweatpants walking around area” … “subj now running towards back entrance of complex”
44. Feb. 2, 2012 – 8:29 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: “BM lsw: black leather jacket, black hat, printed PJ pants, he keeps going to this” location
43. Jan. 29, 2012 – 5:38 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: Children “running and playing in the street”
42. Dec. 10, 2011 – 5:29 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: “At the club house” … “Male subject [arrived on scene] that thought he was employed by” Zimmerman … “Subj is expected to get paid for serving food.” … Zimmerman “said that he didn’t wish him to serve at the [event]” … Zimmerman “hired someone else, subj sounded upset and wants to get paid”\
41. Oct. 1, 2011 – 12:53 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Two black male suspects “20–30 YOA in [white] Chevy poss Impala at the gate of the community.” Zimmerman “does not recognize subjs or veh and is concerned due to recent” burglaries in the area
40. Sept. 23, 2011 – 11:08 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Neighbor/Suspicious activity
Report: Zimmerman reports “open garage door” … Describes “neighborhood watch mtg last night with Sgt Herx who [advised] to report anything [suspicious]” … Zimmerman “is part of neighborhood watch” and is concerned because of recent burglaries in the area
39. Aug. 6, 2011 – 10:20 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Two black males, one wearing a black tank top and black shorts, the second wearing a black t-shirt and jeans … “Subjs are in their teens”
38. Aug. 3, 2011 – 6:45 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Black male last seen wearing a white tank top and black shorts … Zimmerman “believes subject is involved in recent” burglaries in the neighborhood
37. May 27, 2011 – 9:18 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Alarm
Report: Zimmerman “has a self responding alarm that just notified him of” an alarm at this location
36. April 22, 2011 – 7:09 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Juvenile black male “apprx 7–9” years old, four feet tall “skinny build short blk hair” last seen wearing a blue t-shirt and blue shorts
35. March 18, 2011 – 9:26 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Animals
Report: Zimmerman requested an officer meet him regarding a pit bull in his garage
34. Nov. 26, 2010 – 2:54 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Alarm
Report: Zimmerman was out of town and a motion alarm he monitors himself went off
33. Nov. 8, 2010 – 6:54 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Maintenance
Report: Zimmerman reports “trash in roadway”
32. Oct. 2, 2010 – 1:55 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: Zimmerman reports “blue jeep grand Cherokee female driver yelling at elderly passengers … windows are tinted” … “the vehicle was rocking back and forth and he could hear the female yelling”
31. June 26, 2010 – 11:00 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Disturbance
Report: “Loud party … approx 50 subjs & blocking the street”
30. June 12, 2010 – 11:13 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Disturbance
Report: Subject “at the clubhouse & pool areas having a party”
29. April 28, 2010 – 9:02 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: “White older model four-door Buick or Oldsmobile” obstructing road
28. Feb. 27, 2010 – 4:46 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: “Residence w/a lot of [suspicious] activity” … “multiple vehs are constantly coming to the” location … “unk subs run out to the vehs and run back inside” … “the subjs are always outside w/the garage open” … “the subjs hang out towards the st all night//ongoing problem”
27. Jan. 12, 2010 – 10:25 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Neighbor
Report: Open garage door … Zimmerman says “this is very unlike his neighbor” … “there is a lot of electronics in the resd and posb in the garage”
26. Jan. 1, 2010 – 4:34 a.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Disturbance
Report: Zimmerman reports reckless driver in “purplish Ford Ranger single cab”
25. Nov. 3, 2009 – 5:04 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: White Ford F350 that was “cutting people off”
24. Nov. 21, 2009 – 2:26 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Unclear
23. Oct. 23, 2009 – 9:18 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Animals
Report: “Aggressive white and brown pitbull” sitting outside Zimmerman’s home
22. Sept. 22, 2009 – 6:00 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Disturbance
Report: “Yellow speed bike … was speeding and weaving in and out of traffic and doing wheelies”
21. Sept. 7, 2009 – 9:01 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Maintenance
Report: “Pot hole in the road” … “it is deep and can cause damage to vehicles”
20. Aug. 26, 2009 - 8:35 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: “Gold Caprice … male driving with no headlights … speeding”
19. Aug. 21, 2009 – 6:57 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Conflict
Report: “Landlord is trying to take [Zimmerman’s] money for rent … and home in foreclosure”
18. June 16, 2009 – 3:50 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: Persons in the pool area playing basketball, “jumpin over the fence going into pool area and trashin the bathroom”
17. June 10, 2009 – 1:55 a.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Alarm
Report: Fire alarm going off
16. May 4, 2009 – 4:07 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Reports a blue Audi A4
15. March 12, 2009 – 6:58 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Patrol
Report: Patrol request between March 13 and March 22
14. Jan. 5, 2009 – 10:53 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Alarm
Report: Fire alarm going off
13. Nov. 25, 2007 – 12:40 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: “Ex roommate is letting people that [Zimmerman] don’t like in the” house
12. Nov. 25, 2007 – 12:21 a.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Disturbance
Report: White male ex-roommate last seen wearing a red Florida State University shirt
11. Oct. 14, 2007 – 4:10 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Possible criminal mischief to the tire of Zimmerman’s black Dodge Durango
10. June 24, 2007 – 12:48 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: “By the pool”, two Hispanic males and one white male with “slim jim”
9. Nov. 4, 2006 – 2:37 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: A call regarding a “late model red” Toyota pickup “driving around the neighborhood and apt complex for the past 5 min”
8. Sept. 23, 2005 – 7:03 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Zimmerman’s “little sister just call him from above” his address and advises “there was a” suspicious person “at the front door”
7. Sept. 21, 2005 – 9:00 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Animals
Report: Reports a stray dog
6. April 27, 2005 – 12:40 a.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Neighbor
Report: Open garage door
5. March 17, 2005 – 7:21 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Maintenance
Report: Pothole “that is blocking the road”
4. Oct. 20, 2004 – 9:13 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Disturbance
Report: Drunk pedestrian walking in the road
3. Aug. 20, 2004 – 11:33 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Neighbor
Report: Reports an open garage door
2. Aug.12, 2004 – 10:03 a.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Repeats earlier report
1. Aug. 12, 2004 – 9:59 a.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Places a call reporting a male in a green Ford pickup
But now, let’s begin with the lies. Keep in mind that Zimmerman knew nothing about “Stand Your Ground” laws going into this tragic confrontation. I know this because that is what he told Sean Hannity during a July 18th, 2012 interview.
LIE NUMBER ONE. Oh wait. That is his first lie. George Zimmerman knew everything about “Stand Your Ground.” He knew damn well that he could kill the kid and have a good chance of getting away with it. How do we know that? One of Zimmerman’s Seminole County State college professors, Alexias Carter, who taught a criminal law course involving extensive Stand Your Ground laws where Zimmerman was a student in 2010, testified that he remembers Zimmerman for being one of his better students who got an A grade in the course. Apparently Zimmerman knew the Stand Your Ground law better than most others, perhaps well enough to try and get away with murder.
LIE NUMBER TWO. George Zimmerman’s next lie about his past. He tried to pass himself off to the policeman as a good guy, a choirboy, an upright citizen. After George Zimmerman was arrested that night for shooting Trayvon, the police asked him point blank if he had a record. Zimmerman said he did not. Liar. Liar. He had a record from 2005. There were two different incidents. Two different acts of violence:
— July 2005, Zimmerman was arrested and accused of resisting an officer with violence near the University of Central Florida campus after a scuffle with police. The charges were eventually dropped after Zimmerman entered an alcohol education program.
— August 2005, Zimmerman's former fiancé filed for a restraining order against him, alleging domestic violence. Zimmerman responded by requesting a restraining order against her. Both requests were granted. No criminal charges were filed.
If taken as individual events, we could minimize them—a harmless drunken brawl in the first place, a “he said she said” in the latter. Only one problem with that. In the years that would follow, George would build up quite a record for violence, particularly against women.
THE LIES OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN:
A DEADLY NIGHT
(Note: I could certainly understand if people who are deeply familiar with the case would feel that this list was not complete. There seems to be no end to George’s lies.)
LIE NUMBER THREE: The fatal clash of those two lives started with Trayvon Martin circling the vehicle of a passive, frightened George Zimmerman, who was minding his own business, just sitting in his car. Imagine how terrifying this would be--a swarthy faced, hooded man, circling your car. We know this happened because George Zimmerman told the police that’s what happened. Later that night. And he made sure that the news outlets all knew, because this made Trayvon look like one bad dude. who needed to be shot. Except one problem. In his initial call to police (not 911, but non-emergency, since he was already getting a reputation with the police for being a crackpot, having called forty-six times before with some perceived threat or nuisance), George Zimmerman did not mention this. Again, George Zimmerman did not bother to mention, during the prolonged six minute conversation he initially had with the police (a call which recounts in excoriating detail every single thing George sees Trayvon doing), that even as George was talking to the police, Trayvon was circling his car for a good portion of the conversation. Keep in mind that the first part of the conversation took place while George was sitting in the car. Eerie black man circling your car as you talk, but you don’t bring that up. Lie. Lie, lie, lie.
LIE NUMBER FOUR: The entire strength of Zimmerman’s Stand Your Ground defense is predicated upon the legal lynchpin that Trayvon attacked him. If he was stalking Trayvon, everything would fall apart. That is why the “T” version of the story is so important to Zimmerman. But like everything else about the murder, it does not hold up to scrutiny. The “T” version of the murder has been written about at length; there are many analyses of it on the web. Essentially, it goes like this.
a.) Zimmerman was just innocently sitting in his car when Trayvon popped up in his neighborhood, acting suspiciously. Suspicious apparently, because he was black, and wearing a hoodie. (And of course, a crazed and dangerous Trayvon started circling George’s car.)
b.) Although he was expressly told by the police not to, George got out of the car to follow Trayvon and then, when Trayvon disappeared, George continued walking down the sidewalk to get to the front of some of the townhouses, ostensibly so he could have a street name to give to the officers—or so that’s what George told police. Try not to laugh at the fact that George Zimmerman was a big neighborhood watch guy in his townhouse development of three streets, but he did not know the names of those streets.
c.) While George Zimmerman was “innocently” returning to his car, Trayvon leapt out of bushes and attacked; a fight ensued which led to Trayvon’s death.
THE “T”: According to Zimmerman, his car was parked at one end of “The T”. (Think two cement sidewalks intersecting in the shape of a “T”.) The sidewalk that George stepped onto, out of his parked car, constitutes the top bar or line of “The T”. Zimmerman continued on the sidewalk, which would be him going from the left of that horizontal bar to the far right of that horizontal bar, which constitutes the top of “The T”. Try to picture it: only if Trayvon attacked him along that path, going from the left to the right of “The T”, does the crucial “Stand Your Ground”—which might be all that stands between Zimmerman and a murder conviction—have any credibility. As soon as George steps off of the top of “The T”, he is no longer the victim. George Zimmerman becomes the aggressor.
He is actively pursuing Trayvon Martin.
But here is the great problem, one that strangely enough was never made into enough of an issue during trial. The deadly fight did not take place anywhere along George Zimmerman’s walking path, from the car to the place where he could get an address; i.e, traversing the top of “The T” from left to right. The fight took place forty feet down the sidewalk. Forty feet from the intersection of “The T”. Not only was that where Trayvon’s body was found, but also the detritus of the death: cellphone, flashlight, etcetera. George Zimmerman wants it both ways, which in his case coalesces into a lie: he tells investigators that at the intersection of “The T”, Trayvon sucker punched him in the nose, and knocked him down. But then, when talking to the police investigators and realizing that the location of Trayvon’s body makes this fairy tale impossible, George invents a lame story about staggering around for yards and yards down the leg of “The T”, presumably as the hyper aggressive Trayvon just stops attacking him for a moment, and idly watches? Bull. Lies.
Here it is recounted by Susan Simpson, Associate at the Volkov Law Group and graduate of George Washington University Law. Ms. Simpson tracked all pertinent documents, videos, and the trial in excoriating detail:
“Zimmerman’s initial police statements and interviews are all clear, direct, and consistent with one another. Zimmerman states, in three separate statements given in the days following the shooting, that after Trayvon punched him in the nose he “immediately” “fell backwards.” Those statements were Zimmerman’s 2/26 written statement, (“the suspect punched me in the face. I fell backwards onto my back. The suspect got on top of me”), the 2/26 Singleton interview (“And he punched me in the nose. At that point I fell down.”; “I fell to the ground when he punched me the first time.”; “As soon as he punched me, I fell backwards, um, into the grass”; “He punched me in the face and I fell backwards”), and the 2/27 Serino interview (Zimmerman: “… And then he punched me in the face.” Serino: “Oh, so he said, OK, you have a problem now. OK, he punched and you fell?” Zimmerman: “Yes, sir.”; “He punched me in the face and I fell backwards.”).
On the afternoon of February 27, after the interview that occurred that morning, Zimmerman then performed a walkthrough with police. During that walkthrough, Zimmerman started to describe the altercation with Trayvon in the same way as in his first three statements. Zimmerman describes that he was on the west prong of the “T” junction, walking west towards his car, having hung up with the non-emergency number approximately 1.5 minutes prior. Zimmerman then describes that Trayvon was to the south of him, and walking north along the path towards the junction, towards Zimmerman.
Also of interest is the fact that this description directly contradicts Zimmerman’s prior claims that “[Trayvon] jumped out from the bushes.” There are no bushes Trayvon could have come out from, and Zimmerman never mentions the bushes again. But there is a bigger inconsistency with Zimmerman’s statement: as seen in the walkthrough video, Zimmerman’s claim that he “fell backwards” after Trayvon “sucker punched him” cannot be true. This is where Zimmerman claims to have been standing when he was punched and fell backwards: There’s a problem here. Trayvon’s body was found 40 feet south of where Zimmerman is standing in this screenshot – and in front of him, not behind him.
Note: There are those who might argue that Zimmerman’s defense team did not technically argue “Stand Your Ground” as a defense, but it was clear that the general philosophy was operative throughout the trial. With or without a formal declaration of “Stand Your Ground”, jurors were constantly being presented with information, and being asked to consider whether or not George Zimmerman was victim or aggressor. Even more significantly, jurors admitted to considering the Stand Your Ground verdict during deliberations. Therefore, it was crucial to the defense that this business about Zimmerman not moving off the top part of “The T” be believable.
LIE NUMBER FIVE: Trayvon Martin “leapt out of the bushes’ to attack George. This business of how Trayvon “leapt out of the bushes” is just one of many different versions of what happened that night, versions that Zimmerman told to assorted parties. In one version, Trayvon surprised him by leaping out of the bushes and knocking him down, but not, apparently, before George staggered about forty feet. In another version, George turned around and Trayvon was walking towards him on the sidewalk. I have all the respect in the world for PTSD, but these are two wildly different versions. But what is the main reason we know that both versions—the leaping from shrubbery, and Trayvon striding forward to sucker punch poor George—are complete lies? Because Trayvon was on the phone the entire time. Objective, verifiable phone records confirm this; the conversation started when Trayvon left the 7-11 to buy the now famous tea and skittles, and the call connection continued even after the confrontation, as the person on the other end of the phone with Trayvon testified to hearing conversation between GZ and TM.
And here is how we know George is lying: Nobody, nobody ever in the entire history of robberies, hold-ups, muggings, or other thuggery has just been chatting it up with their girlfriend on the cellphone until the very millisecond that they attack somebody. That’s just not how attacks work. That is, in a word, stupid. But perhaps George thinks we are as stupid as he is.
It is also worth noting that screams heard on the 911 call constitute more damaging inconsistencies. Zimmerman wants the world to believe that the screams for help on the 911 call are his voice. Yet, when he was questioned by Detective Serino, George Zimmerman told a different story. Detective Serino asks him if the screams on the 911 tape were his voice…stating “the screams are yours right?” Zimmerman responded “they don’t sound like me”. And witness Jane Surdyka, who lived in a nearby townhouse, testified that she heard the screams of a boy screaming for help immediately before the shot occurred.
THE LIES OF ZIMMERMAN:
DNA DOES NOT LIE
For the record, I believe that George Zimmerman faked or exacerbated his injuries. Let’s take a close look at the facts. These forensic details will not only pick apart Zimmerman’s claims about the injuries he supposedly sustained, but also his claims about how the fight went down that fateful night:
ZIMMERMAN LIE NUMBER SIX: TRAYVON WAS GRABBING ZIMMERMAN’S SKULL AND BANGING IT ON THE HARD CEMENT PAVEMENT. Let’s look at Zimmerman’s own words, when he was being interviewed by a detective the next day. : “And then’s when he grabbed me, oh I tried to sit up and that’s when he grabbed me by the head and tried to slam my head down … my head was on the cement and he just kept slamming and slamming…I tried to squirm again because all I could think about was when he was hitting my head against it, it felt like my head was going to explode and I thought I was going to lose consciousness.”
How do we know that this was a lie? Several pieces of irrefutable evidence point to this. Firstly, there was absolutely none of George Zimmerman’s DNA found on Trayvon’s hands or under his fingernails. Zimmerman sported a shaved head, and in order for Trayvon to get a grip on GZ’s head, he would surely have to get some microscopic bit of Zimmerman’s DNA on himself: blood, skin, something. According to GZ, Trayvon managed to slam Zimmerman’s head against the cement over, and over, and over again, bloodying his skull. He would describe it later to Sean Hannity as happening a couple of dozen times. Just imagine the scene that George describes (and trust me, this will take some imagination): Trayvon Martin uses both hands to slam George Zimmerman’s skull into the pavement, and at the same time, according to George, Trayvon’s third hand is clamped over George’s mouth, while Trayvon’s fourth hand presses on Zimmerman’s nose, as he continues to beat George with his fifth and sixth hands, while pinning the gallant watchman’s body to the ground with hands seven and eight.
Yet throughout this brutal octo-assault, absolutely not one tiny bit of skin, not a drop of blood, not one trace of DNA, (except for a single drop of blood found on Trayvon’s shirt hem), was transferred from George to Trayvon. The autopsy also states that none of Zimmerman's DNA is under Martin's nails, which dispels Zimmerman's claim that Trayvon Martin grabbed his bald head with such a tight grip that he slammed Zimmerman's head onto the sidewalk over a dozen times. (“Exhibit ME-2, fingernail scrapings from Trayvon, only showed the presence of blood from his right hand. No DNA results foreign to Trayvon Benjamin Martin ...were found.... Translation: Zimmerman’s blood isn’t present.” From an article by Jonathan Capehart, “George Zimmerman’s bloody mess” Washington Post 9/28/2012)
Another way we know it was a lie--that Trayvon supposedly slammed his head into the sidewalk again, and again and again--is that medical experts don’t believe Zimmerman’s story. In the words of Deborah Moore, a nurse with over two decades in a Level 1 Trauma Center, “His head does not resemble a crushed watermelon, by no means. He would have had contusions, lacerations, not to mention blood splatter on his clothes and the sidewalk.”
The following transcripts are taken directly from the trial:
PROSECUTOR: Are the injuries to the back of the head consistent with having been repeatedly slammed into a concrete surface?
DR. VALERIE ROAD: No.
PROSECUTOR: Why not?
DR. VALERIE ROAD: Because if you look at the injuries are so minor that to me the word slammed implies great force and this, the resultant injuries are not great force.
The fact that the police and the prosecutors did not make a gigantic deal of this is unbelievable, and unconscionable.
Which leads me to the next lie.
ZIMMERMAN LIE NUMBER SEVEN: ZIMMERMAN CLAIMED THAT WHEN TRAYVON PUNCHED HIM, HE BROKE HIS NOSE. Zimmerman told detectives that Martin punched him in the nose so hard that he "fell to the ground when he punched me the first time" and that he was "punched in the nose 25 to 30 times." Looking at the picture of Zimmerman’s nose, with no blood at all coming from the nostrils, it is easy to figure out why Detective Serino told Zimmerman right to his face that "the 25 to 30 punches" he claimed he took from Trayvon Martin "were not consistent with Zimmerman's injuries." (Or lack thereof.) Zimmerman was lying about this, pure and simple.
First, Zimmerman refused to go to the ER or get any kind of hospitalization on the night of the incident. It seems implausible that he would make a hue and cry about these terrible injuries, but would turn down immediate medical treatment—holding off, cleverly enough, until he could conveniently go to his family doctor—or as it turned out, “physician’s assistant”. As one nurse put it, “broken noses bleed like a stuck pig.” Zimmerman’s nose didn’t bleed much at all. If you look at the pictures of Zimmerman’s “bloody nose”, taken by Officer Wagner when he arrived on scene, it looks like no other bloody nose you’ve ever seen. The bleeding seems to be from the philtrum of the nose, and the blood seems as though it might have been daubed on him, or applied. There is almost no blood flowing from the inside of the nostrils, and anybody who knows anything about broken noses will tell you that blood would have been flowing directly from his nostrils. And, as so many have pointed out, there appears to be not one drop of blood on George’s jacket or t-shirt, when we see him emerge from the police cruiser at the station, and when his clothes are photographed by forensic photographers.
Even more revelatory are the pictures of Zimmerman’s nose taken later at the station, after he has been cleaned up. Where, we must ask, are the beginnings of the two black eyes, which would clearly accompany a broken nose, if you had been punched “25-30 times”? But Zimmerman’s nose looks perfect. Not broken. There is no more swelling on the right-side bridge of Zimmerman's nose forty-five minutes after Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. I think it's pretty clear that the only part of Zimmerman's nose that is bleeding is the very tip of his nose. Except for one thing, you can see two pinholes on the tip of Zimmerman's nose, which is exactly the location of the bleeding shown in the pictures taken by Officer Wagner on scene, right after the shooting. What kind of punch to the nose causes two tiny pinholes, and nothing else? It is also worth noting that neither pictures taken of GZ the next day, nor for the rest of that week, showed anything resembling black eyes or a broken nose.
But let’s get clarification from a medical professional, someone who does this all the time. (Although I am guessing that for many of you, your own experience with bloody noses has made it clear that the pictures of George Zimmerman, both before and after his nose was cleaned up, show no evidence of a broken nose, no true bloody nose, and no black eyes.) To prove that Zimmerman lied about being "told" by the EMS that he had a broken nose, the EMS report does not state he has a broken nose. The EMS report simply says his nose is “tender” and "the mucous membrane is normal". It is important to emphasize that the EMS wrote that, regarding Zimmerman's nose: "mucous membrane is normal". He observed that there was “no blood and no swelling” of the mucous membranes that line the sinus cavities. Dear readers, this fact alone should have warranted a national headline, and this alone should have swayed the jury: nobody can get punched in the nose so hard that they allegedly go from standing to flat on their back, then get punched, allegedly, 25-30 times, have blood on their face from an alleged bloody nose, and then have a professional trained EMT say “mucous membrane is normal”. And let’s face it. If Trayvon did not attack George Zimmerman, then Zimmerman had no business pulling his weapon. Much less murdering the kid.
Zimmerman also lied to his Family Physician’s Assistant, because the EMS never stated that Zimmerman had a broken nose. Zimmerman was forced by his employer to get medical clearance before he could return to work. Zimmerman went to see his family Physician’s Assistant, Lindzee E. Folgate, about nine hours after he was released from the Sanford Police Department, about sixteen hours after he killed Trayvon Martin. His family Physician’s Assistant took Zimmerman's word for it, when Zimmerman falsely claimed he was "told" by EMS he had a broken nose. But Ms. Folgate did not take x-rays to independently verify. (Why not?) The Physician’s Assistant wrote "We discussed it was likely broken." The Physician’s Assistant also wrote Zimmerman "refuses to be seen an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat doctor)" and they discussed the "risks" of him not being seen by an ENT. Gosh, after all that alleged pummeling to his nose and head, why would Zimmerman refuse to go see an ENT? Who knows? Note also, on page 3 of Zimmerman's Family Physician’s Report, the Physician’s Assistant did not note any dried blood in the nostrils (nares) and wrote "does not appear to have septal deviation". To date, George Zimmerman has not released any x-rays showing that he had a broken nose, nor has any licensed medical doctor ever diagnosed Zimmerman with a broken nose. And Zimmerman has never released a medical report from an Ear Nose and Throat Doctor. And again, if GZ was not punched 25-30 times … if, in fact, he was not even punched once, then he had no business killing a child.
TRAYVON’S TRUTH: Contrary to what some people would have you think, The Dead can speak. Trayvon can tell the truth. I have saved what I believe to be the most damning evidence against the whole “25-30 times” story for last: Trayvon had absolutely none of Zimmerman’s blood on his hands. Work with me, people. Trayvon supposedly hit Zimmerman “25-30 times”, leaving Zimmerman with “a bloody nose.” Yet there is none of Zimmerman’s blood on Trayvon’s hands. The autopsy report on Trayvon Martin did not mention any blood or dirt on Martin's fists. Seriously? Most of us have seen the bloody nose picture of George; how the hell could Trayvon have done that without getting a drop of blood on his hands, on his knuckles? I have been over it a thousand times in my mind. How can Zimmerman be anything but a homicidal liar? And just to gild the lily, there was none of Zimmerman’s blood on Trayvon’s clothing, either (except for the aforementioned tiny drop at the very hem of Trayvon’s shirt). Trayvon’s tragic and infamous hoodie had NONE of Zimmerman’s blood on it? How could that be, with Zimmerman claiming that Trayvon was attacking and that he, Zimmerman, was experiencing multiple injuries? “Exhibit ME-12,” Trayvon’s hoodie, had no traces of Zimmerman’s blood on it.
“No DNA results foreign to Trayvon Benjamin Martin....” (Jonathan Capehart “George Zimmerman’s bloody mess” Washington Post 9/28/2012)
Another interesting factoid that came out of GZ’s medical report: According to the family physician’s assistant report, prior to the shooting Zimmerman had been prescribed Adderall and Temazepam, medications that can cause side effects such as agitation and mood swings. Nobody is alleging that these medications caused George Zimmerman to kill Trayvon Martin, but it is interesting that the police didn’t bother to test GZ for drugs, which is a violation of their own prescribed procedure. And certainly, abusing these drugs and overdosing on them can cause exactly the kind of behavior that might have led George Zimmerman to stalk and kill Trayvon.
ZIMMERMAN LIE NUMBER EIGHT: ZIMMERMAN WAS ON THE GROUND AND TRAYVON WAS ON TOP OF HIM, beating his head mercilessly. Oh George. No he wasn’t. Trayvon wasn’t. We have all bled at one time or another in our lives, and everybody in the world knows that blood flows in the direction of gravity. Just look at the direction that the blood is flowing in the wounds that poor George sustained. (Or GOOGLE IMAGES GEORGE ZIMMERMAN’S BLOOD INJURIES) George tried to look so pitiful in the pictures. But we can all see from the pictures of the back of George’s head, there is no way that George Zimmerman was injured while on his back, his skull being smashed against the pavement—but then the blood flows against the direction of gravity? If George was on his back, the blood would be flowing away from his face, converging towards the very back of his head. Big problem, George: the picture shows dried blood flowing from the back of your skull, towards the front of your skull.
And that is only one reason we know that Zimmerman lied about Trayvon smashing his head against the pavement over and over again. Here is another shocker, a damning detail: none of Zimmerman’s blood was found on the pavement that it was slammed into so many times, the very pavement that supposedly caused Zimmerman to bleed. The medical technician on site after the murder did a thorough analysis of the death scene, and found NO BLOOD BELONGING TO ZIMMERMAN on the sidewalk. Medical technicians now know how to find and analyze an amount of blood that is almost microscopic, and it is a pure defiance of the laws of science that, as George Zimmerman testified, the slamming of his head against the pavement would cause those injuries, yet there is not one drop of blood on said pavement.
Let’s add to this the fact that two of the four witnesses to the event said that Zimmerman—the man in the red jacket--was indeed on top.
And, as we have already observed, police station cameras show him apparently having no injuries or very minimal injuries, and a stunning lack of blood on his body or his clothing. Nor do the back of his clothes reflect a man who has been struggling on the pavement and grass.
ZIMMERMAN LIE NUMBER NINE: GEORGE TOLD HIS FRIEND MARK OSTERMAN—WHO HAD HIMSELF BEEN A COP FOR OVER 20 YEARS—THAT HE WAS IN A DESPERATE STRUGGLE WITH TRAYVON FOR ZIMMERMAN'S GUN. Zimmerman never said this to police. But Osterman wrote in a book, and it was entered into evidence, that Zimmerman said, “somehow I broke his grip on the gun where the guy grabbed it between the rear site and the hammer. I got the gun in my hand, raised it towards the guy’s chest, and pulled the trigger.” How do we know George is lying? DNA evidence ruled out any real possibility that Trayvon ever touched Zimmerman's gun. The only DNA evidence on the gun's grip was that of George Zimmerman. None was Trayvon's. Zimmerman also claimed that Trayvon went for Zimmerman's holster. Anthony Gorgone, a DNA lab analyst for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, testified as an expert witness that “Zimmerman's holster tested positive for only Zimmerman's DNA.” And, of course, it is worth noting that once again, Zimmerman is telling wildly different versions to different people. And these versions were far too wildly different from one another to simply be explained away by stress, PTSD, or memory playing tricks. As some pundits have artfully pointed out, poor George had a lot to worry about, as the time after the crime crept by: there was what the person on the other end of Trayvon’s phone heard, what witnesses heard, what witnesses saw, what might have been recorded by 911 when witnesses were on the phone reporting a fight, what the evidence would show, what George Zimmerman needed to make people think happened, if he was going to walk away a free man …and then, of course, the thorny issue of what really happened that night.
ZIMMERMAN LIE NUMBER TEN: ZIMMERMAN, FLAT ON HIS BACK AND IN FEAR FOR HIS LIFE, GRABBED HIS OWN GUN AND SHOT TRAYVON, WHO WAS LOOMING OVER HIM. We devote the entire next few pages to experts who explain how this is basically physically impossible. But since we are now focused on blood and DNA evidence, let’s look at what kind of story the clothing tells:
I believe we have already established that Trayvon could not have been on top of Zimmerman. Nothing about that claim by Zimmerman makes sense: not the lack of any serious injuries to the back of GZ’s head, not the direction of the dried blood flow on Zimmerman, not the broken nose claim….there is no blood of Zimmerman’s on Trayvon’s hands, under his fingernails, and almost zero blood on his clothes (a tiny droplet), and absolutely no Zimmerman blood around Trayvon’s cuffs. This simply does not jive with having someone on top of you, beating your bloody nose “25-30” times and slamming your head against the pristine bloodless sidewalk a dozen times. But neither could Zimmerman have been on top of Trayvon during the shooting. Some have posited this, but I think that theory is impossible. Why? Ballistic evidence does not lie. This is part and parcel of the laws of physics. Forensic experts on every side of the issue observed that the bullet holes in the clothing do not line up with the bullet hole to Trayvon’s body. Quite simply, either Trayvon’s clothing was hanging loose from his body, because he was leaning over Zimmerman’s body—which the lack of exchanged blood evidence clearly disproves. OR, as some forensic experts suggest, Zimmerman might have been grabbing onto Trayvon’s clothing and pulling it away from his body.
TWO POSSIBLE THEORIES: George Zimmerman did indeed confront Trayvon. He was angry, sick of what he perceived as problems in his little neighborhood (as evidenced by his lengthy history of bizarre and petty calls). He had previously, and has since demonstrated his short fuse and violent temper. THEORY ONE: Zimmerman had a screaming Trayvon on the ground, and shot him from a standing position. Or THEORY TWO: As both men were standing, Zimmerman grabbed Trayvon and shot him in the chest. I know it may fly in the face of what you, the reader, might have envisioned up to this point. But ask yourself this—what other explanation can there be for facts such as the almost complete lack of Trayvon’s blood on Zimmerman’s person? Or the lack of Zimmerman’s “injury” blood on Trayvon? It explains why the gunshots through the clothing do no align with the shot to Trayvon’s heart. And unlike the tragedy in Ferguson, where fifteen witnesses testified that they saw Darren Wilson shooting at a fleeing Michael Brown, there were only two witnesses who “thought” they saw one man on top of another man—and Zimmerman, by his own admission, was straddling Trayvon, immediately after he was shot. That is what the witnesses were remembering.
THE LIES OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN
SHOOTING TRAYVON
We have looked at the DNA evidence. But now let’s look at the sheer physicality of the shooting. Could it have happened the way that Zimmerman said it did? Highly doubtful. Experts in both martial arts and gun training have gone to great lengths to demonstrate the impossibility of Zimmerman’s version of events. One of the clearest explanations, I believe, is offered by Mr. Thom Hartmann, in his blog article logorrheaically entitled “Zimmerman flat-out lied about the shooting event, but no one called him out on it,” published July 19th, 2014 on the author’s website, thomhartmann.com. In his explanation, Hartmann takes us through the “re-enactment” of the shooting that Zimmerman conducted with a police detective, the morning after it happened. Hartman quotes Zimmerman, describes for the reader exactly what Zimmerman is demonstrating to the detective, and then Hartmann will explain to us the real world impossibility of it:
ZIMMERMAN: I said “No, help me, I need help!” And I don’t know what they did, but that’s when my jacket moved up. I had my firearm on my right-hand side hip.
(Z places hand back on hip to show the location of his firearm and then slides his hand back up his rib cage again to demonstrate how firearm was exposed. Then he talks about Trayvon supposedly spotting the gun)
ZIMMERMAN: He saw it. I feel like he saw it…he looked at it, he said, “You’re going to die tonight motherfucker!” And he reached for it. He reached…like I felt his arm going down my side. I grabbed it!
(Z demonstrates how he trapped Martin's hand/lower arm under his own upper arm by tightly squeezing it to his side)
ZIMEMRMAN: And I just grabbed my firearm and shot him…somehow."
(While saying these last few lines, Zimmerman demonstrates his quick draw technique, but of course does so while standing, without a real firearm, and without a real live struggling person's hand/arm trapped beneath his own)
Consider this: In order to draw a gun on your dominant side, you must extend your arm (at the elbow) a significant distance behind your back, which is impossible to do while flat on your back on the ground. When presented with this argument, I have heard some claim that Zimmerman must have arched his back enough to give him room to extend his arm far enough backwards to reach his gun in this manner. However, this argument is unconvincing due to the fact that:
—According to Zimmerman, Martin was on top on him, and had him, more or less, pinned to the ground (i.e., “ground and pound”). At the very least, he was unable to get out from underneath Martin or throw him off. As Zimmerman's own MMA trainer testified, Zimmerman was “soft” and even after a year of regular training, only rated a 0.5 on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of fighting skills, but now he suddenly has the strength to lift up his body with an added 170 pounds on top of him. Really?
—Zimmerman never claims to, nor demonstrates, how he performed this maneuver (i.e., arch his back enough to reach his gun). He just pulled his gun out in a quick draw maneuver and shot Martin..."somehow".
Of course, it is also possible to draw a gun from your dominant side by extending your elbow straight out sideways from your rib cage. This is a much more awkward maneuver, but it can be done. However, there are some serious problems with this scenario as well.
In the police video Zimmerman demonstrates how he trapped Martin’s hand between his upper arm and rib cage by squeezing his own arm tightly to his side… If Zimmerman had extended his arm away from his body at his elbow, Martin’s trapped hand would have been instantly freed to grab the gun (and Martin was in a much better position to do so).
So exactly how did Zimmerman draw his gun and shoot Martin as he demonstrated in the police video?
Answer: He didn’t, as it was physically impossible for him to do so in the manner in which he described in the police video, or in any other reasonable scenario for that matter. (In other words, Zimmerman concocted the whole story in order to save his sorry ass.)
Conclusion: Zimmerman already had his firearm drawn and at the ready before Martin attacked him (assuming that such was the case) which means that Zimmerman was totally and irrevocably culpable for shooting Martin, and a honest (or at least intellectually astute) jury would have found him guilty of manslaughter.
And the real problem here (aside from racism) is that George Zimmerman flat-out lied about the shooting event itself, and for whatever reason (i.e., racism, stupidity) no one - not the police, not the prosecution, and certainly not the jury - either saw through his lies or had the intestinal fortitude to stand up and call him on them.
Note: If you doubt the credibility of the above analysis, just try this simple experiment out for yourself…
Lay flat on your back and act as if you are drawing a handgun from a side hip holster on your dominant side; that is, the same side as you would shoot with. (Of course if you have a holstered handgun at your disposal you can do this with your weapon for added realism, but obviously please make sure your weapon is completely discharged before doing so).
You will find that it is impossible to draw your weapon while lying flat on your back.
Malia Litman’s blog page offers further insight from a retired police officer, detailing that officer’s opinion on the feasibility of the shooting, as Zimmerman recounts it (“A Retired Police Officer’s Perspective on the Killing of Trayvon.” July 19th, 2012):
From Zimmerman’s own account, he was lying on his back, shoulders pinned down and head against the concrete, at the time he pulled the trigger on Martin … He raised his elbow back and clinched his arm toward his own body, representing that he pinched Martin’s arm against his torso. After Trayvon reaches for Zimmerman’s weapon unsuccessfully, Zimmerman pulls it out, with no recollection of resistance from Martin.
It is unimaginable why Zimmerman, in the name of self-defense and firearms training, would… introduce a firearm in the midst of a close counter ground fight, in which you are not in a dominant position? One would assume that keeping a gun out of the fight for as long as possible would be the key to self-preservation. As Zimmerman explains, he is the one on the ground, pinned down and being knocked around. If this is the way things actually happened, he is either extremely lucky or well trained in close combat firearms. It takes repetitive training just to learn how to draw from a side holster when the person in possession of the firearm is in a ground position.
Any firearms instructor will tell you that it is virtually impossible to draw while lying flat on your back. Because the withdrawal of a gun from a holster requires a backward motion of the arm, and the ground prevents that, it seems unlikely that Zimmerman could draw his weapon while pinned to the ground. You have to roll over to the side, creating enough distance from the ground and your hips to draw your arm back and reach your weapon. Even after reaching a gun, there is an additional requirement of additional space in which to withdraw the firearm out of its holster.
Even if you can manage doing this while someone is overpowering you, as Zimmerman explains was the case, it would not be wise to pull out a weapon without creating ample distance between you and your attacker. If you have the ability to freely draw a weapon, you might have the ability to control the situation without deadly force. Zimmerman said he had a flashlight with him, but there is no mention of any attempt to hit Martin with the flashlight.
—Book author’s emphasis added
But the absurdity of Zimmerman story—that he “somehow” drew his gun from its holster with the same arm that he was using to pin Trayvon’s hand—is rendered even more ridiculous when we think about how one person straddles another in order to take control of them. Here that point is almost comically made in an article from by Evan McMurry in Mediaite, ‘Prosecutor Grills Zimmerman Expert; Re-enacts Shooting Using Dummy to Attack Self-Defense Story”, July 10th, 2013:
During cross-examination of defense [Zimmerman] witness Dennis Root, prosecuting attorney John Guy reenacted a potential scenario of the Trayvon Martin killing using a dummy, attempting to show that George Zimmerman’s story that he had fired while Martin was straddling him was not believable.
Root, who had approached the Zimmerman defense about testifying, was on the stand as an expert on self-defense issues. Guy immediately began to attack Root’s credentials, noting that Root could gain financially from appearing on national television to advertise his company, and that his investigation of the incident was less than thorough. (For instance, Root went to the scene of the crime in early June, during the day, despite the fact that the event had occurred in February after sundown.)
Guy put the dummy, representing Zimmerman, down on the floor and straddled it, and had Root locate where Zimmerman’s gun would be. Guy pointed out that in a position straddling the waist—which Root had testified Martin was in during the struggle … according to Zimmerman’s account to his friend, Martin’s knees were more up to Zimmerman’s armpits, rendering the gun inaccessible. In this case, Zimmerman would only have been able to reach his gun had Martin been backing up from him, i.e., disengaging from the struggle. This would be contrary to the forensic expert’s testimony yesterday that Zimmerman shot Martin while Martin was straddling him, i.e., still engaged in the fight …
As an aside, Guy asked if Root had had Zimmerman act out the incident: “Did you have the defendant do this?”
“No, sir,” Root said.
Meanwhile, defense attorneys stared in fascination.
End article excerpt; book author’s emphasis added
And if you have any doubt about this, have a friend straddle you (no jokes, this is serious now), as any person would who was trying to get control of you. Now imagine that your gun is where George Zimmerman said his was—down at his waist. You would have to dig in past the inside of your friend’s thigh, which is pressed against your torso. This is the stupidest lie I’ve heard from you yet, George.
There is one plausible way that the shooting could have happened, though. In his blog, Frederick Leatherman observes: “All of these problems are avoided if Zimmerman is on top, straddling Trayvon with his knees and shins pinning Trayvon’s arms to the ground. He could take his time, draw his gun, taunt Trayvon, aim and pull the trigger.”
WHAT DID THE WITNESSES SEE?
Well, regarding all this, that is very interesting.
Witnesses Mary Cutcher, Selma Mora and “the teacher” all said that the shooter stood up immediately after the shot, leaving the victim lying on the ground.
(And yes, we have our doubts about this theory, because of the disparity between how Trayvon’s shirt lays on his body, and the position of the bullet holes. But maybe George was holding the shirt, or maybe it was akimbo on Trayvon after being shoved to the ground. We feel our job here is not to prove definitively what happened, but simply to make the point that George must have lied about a great deal. And the “good guys” didn’t work nearly hard enough to prove that fact, or to get at the truth.)
THE STRANGE STORY OF JONATHAN MANALO
Told, appropriately enough, in “bullet list” form.
The first witness actually on scene, immediately after the shooting, was a neighbor named Jonathan Manalo. His wife and daughter were helping him build a coffee table in their townhouse, very near the scene of the murder. His wife heard the struggle, ran to the window, and Manalo urged her away from the window. When a shot was fired, he grabbed a flashlight, ran out his front door, and made his way to the scene. His first act was to ask if he needed to call 911; Zimmerman responded that the police were already on their way.
Now begins the bizarre and inexplicable:
--Manalo, without being asked by Zimmerman, takes pictures of the “injuries” on the back of Zimmerman’s head, and of a flashlight lying in the grass. And of Trayvon’s body. But Manalo did not know whether or not Trayvon was dead at that point. The medical examiner would later testify that Trayvon may well have lived ten full minutes in agony, prior to dying. But Manalo did not make another call to 911, attempt to administer any kind of CPR, or stop the bleeding. Nor did he call out for anyone who might be able to help. Instead, he took pictures of a boy who might very well have been in the agonized throes of drawing his last breath.
--Keep in mind that a few minutes later, a police officer will also thoroughly document Zimmerman’s injuries, but only takes a picture of Zimmerman’s face from the front.
--Good citizen? Hardly. Manalo does not turn his cellphone, or even copies of the pictures, over to the police. Instead, he hides the knowledge that he has them. FOR TWO MONTHS.
--The picture of Zimmerman’s “injuries” appears a couple of months later, on ABC News. It is billed as a big exclusive story; nobody else but ABC has this new picture. (Specifically April 20th, 2012.) While any monies paid to Manalo for the picture are not reported, it is a logical conclusion that, given the magnitude of the story, Manalo was paid a great deal. I say this because by now, the story was explosively huge, and the pictures were worth a great deal. Manalo chose to not turn his evidence over to investigators, but to make sure that ABC had exclusive rights.
--Now go back to the night of the murder, and consider this: the “injuries” that Manalo took a picture of were neither seen, nor recorded, by the officer who arrived just minutes after the shooting. Officer Wagner examined Zimmerman, and saw only one place on Zimmerman’s person where there were injuries which needed to be documented: Zimmerman’s face, and the infamously unconvincing “bloody nose”. (And Zimmerman’s claim of two black eyes, which, mysteriously, we cannot see on Zimmerman’s face when he is being interviewed by a detective the next morning and “recreating” the crime scene for us.)
MY CONCLUSION: I could be wrong, but I see no other explanation, given the above facts: Manalo Photoshopped the pictures of the injuries. And he had plenty of time to do it. As I have said elsewhere, I don’t generally think of myself as a “conspiracy nut”, but how could a police officer examining Zimmerman miss large rivulets of blood running down his skull, when he is full aware of the bloody injuries on his face? This simply makes no sense. And we already know that Manalo had financial incentive to Photoshop the injuries; he clearly had no civic zeal to turn over the pictures to the police on the night of the murder, or for weeks thereafter. Here is a fascinating picture and YouTube video that someone has pulled from the internet. Could this be a part of the Photoshopping?
These, then, are the further conclusions which we can deduce. It could be any of the three:
Manalo is a heartless (taking pictures as Trayvon is dying) and greedy (selling the pictures instead of giving them to the police) opportunist. And we know that he chose to take the pictures, even before interacting with Zimmerman. Zimmerman, who had a bizarre and violent history prior to the killing, threatened Manalo. Manalo essentially reacted to “the carrot and the stick”—Zimmerman approach him with a choice: terrifying threats of some kind (perhaps against his family), or to collaborate together, in order to fabricate corroborative and exculpatory evidence, and then to profit greatly from it. AND AS THEY SAY IN INFOMERCIALS;
Wait. There’s more.
Jonathan Manalo further chose to enrich himself from the shooting of a boy by writing a book about it. It was a Kindle Book, available on Amazon. It was 9.99, and it was an in depth piece of journalism that weighed in at 13 pages. Including the bigfont title, and such. The title: “With a Flashlight and a Cellphone…MY TRUTH.” Tragically, it is no longer available for download.
But wait, it gets better.
The police interviewed Manalo a number of times, as one might expect, given that he was the first witness actually on the scene. And during those interviews, they asked Manalo a number of questions about Zimmerman, including his prior knowledge of the shooter. According to Manalo, he had no knowledge whatsoever of Zimmerman. Only one little problem with that. That is a lie. And it is a lie, according to Manalo himself, who, AFTER the Not Guilty verdict was finally rendered, decided to garner himself even more publicity by appearing on the Joy Ann Reid Show.
It was on this show that he made another big reveal. He shared with us that George Zimmerman allegedly pulled a gun on a UPS driver in November 2011. And for no good reason, other than, apparently, Zimmerman likes to pull his gun out, at the slightest provocation.
Here is a transcribed excerpt of his interview with Ms. Reid.
REID: Now, let’s go back and talk about your testimony. There were some other things that didn’t come up that you have since talked about. You have written a book, we should say that you’ve written and is available on Amazon.
MANALO: Yes.
REID: And, in that, one of the stories you tell is about another interaction with a colleague of yours at UPS between him and George Zimmerman. Tell me a little about that.
MANALO: Um. It was about November.
REID: This is the November before the shooting? November of eleven.
MANALO: Before the shooting…3 or 4 months before the actual shooting. He was just…one of the biggest trucks that we have…..daylight….he knocks on the door so the driver can just leave it at the door….and he walks back to his truck. When he turns around, George Zimmerman is just standing there with his gun in his hand, and then just says, “Oh, I didn’t know who it was.” But, clearly, there’s a big, brown truck in front of your house with a UPS logo on it…and you don’t know who it is. It kind of makes you wonder what his mind was thinking at that moment.
REID: And, was that incident reported to your supervisor?
MANALO: Yes, it was.
REID: Okay. And, when did you learn about that incident?
MANALO: I learned about it a few weeks before the trial, um, so I didn’t really get a chance to elaborate on it, but, um, it was in the back of my mind.
REID: Now, why didn’t you mention that on the stand. I mean, you were asked at one point if you had known George Zimmerman before or had ever seen him before. At that point, why not say, “Well, I didn’t know him, but a colleague of mine at UPS had this interaction with him. That might have actually made a big impression on that jury.
MANALO: I understand, but, you know, it’s just one of those things in court, or yeah, in trial, it’s…it’s…What they ask you is they want a direct answer. So, they didn’t exactly ask me to elaborate on anything, his demeanor, if I …you know, it really didn’t get in depth of what actually what I had experienced. I do hope that the FBI finds this driver and interviews him before the DOJ closes its case on George Zimmerman.
Manalo would also tell Reid that Zimmerman had lied during the walk-through. Zimmerman was very emphatic that he had asked Manalo to help restrain Martin, by helping to pull Trayvon’s arms away from his person and spread them out lengthwise (like a crucifixion). But Manalo made it clear that such an exchange never happened. Manalo also stated that he did not believe that justice had been served at the trial, and that he believed Zimmerman was guilty. That is all very strange, given that Manalo had abundant opportunity to tell the authorities about Zimmerman’s penchant for gun brandishing during the UPS incident.
And yet he chose not to.
Until the trial was over—and his fifteen minutes of fame, his moment of basking in the ray of Florida sunshiny publicity, were at last dwindling. That was when he decided to tell another ugly truth about George Zimmerman.
When it was too late.
ZIMMERMAN, HIS WIFE, AND THE BAIL BOND LIE
Zimmerman lied to get out of jail.
It was breaking news, and it was delicious to those of us waiting to have a little Schadenfreude at Zimmerman’s expense.
JUNE 1st, 2012 CNN: “Judge Revokes Zimmerman’s Bond”.
Seminole County Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. ordered Zimmerman to surrender to the county sheriff no later than Sunday afternoon. Lester accused Zimmerman of having misrepresented how much money he had when his bond was originally set in April. Prosecutors say he had $135,000 at the time Zimmerman's wife, Shellie, told the court, under oath, that they were indigent.
Zimmerman did not want to sit behind bars for shooting Trayvon. This would mean posting bail. Only problem, Zimmerman did not want to let go of the tens of thousands of dollars in donations that were pouring in. Kelley Phillips Erb outlines the Zimmerman fundraising extravaganza in a June 12, 2012 article published in Forbes Magazine:
Nearly $200,000 has been raised for Mr. Zimmerman’s defense. Of that amount, Zimmerman’s attorneys say that $150,000 is now in a trust fund for the defense. Nearly $30,000 has been used “to make the complicated transition from private life in Sanford, Florida, to a life in hiding as a defendant in a high-profile court case” – a taped jail conversation suggests that the money was used to pay bills including American Express and Sam’s Club credit cards. The remaining $20,000 will be used to provide living expenses for the Zimmermans up to and during the trial. The original web site used to raise money, therealgeorgezimmerman.com, is now defunct. Last month, a new site was created at www.gzdefensefund.com. That site raised about $15,000 in its first two weeks of operation, according to Zimmerman’s attorneys. Most of the donations to the fund ranged from $25 to $100 with the largest donation received being $3,000. According to the site, the money donated will be used for “Zimmerman’s ongoing living expenses, legal costs, and fees.”
--“The Zimmerman Defense Fund: Donations and Taxes: Sorting It All Out”
Forbes gives us the big picture, but the Schadenfreude snapshot is this: picture good old George Zimmerman, in his orange prison jumpsuit, trying to talk in the now infamous “code” that he thought would keep prosecutors from figuring out what he was really up to: trying to get his poor old wife Shelley to tell him how much money was in the online defense fund. Here are further excerpts from
the above noted CNN article:
The prosecution cited as evidence recorded telephone conversations that Zimmerman had with his wife prior to the hearing. The conversations were recorded while Zimmerman was being held in the Seminole County Jail after being charged with second-degree murder on April 11.
There are numerous places on the web where you can read the transcripts or, more entertainingly (I suggest accompanying cocktails), you can listen to the six jailhouse conversations that are released. It is delightfully amusing to hear George whispering throughout so much of them, as if he is too great of a dolt to understand that the way authorities exercise their right to hear what prisoners say on phone calls is not to lurk just around the corner like Barney Fife, but rather to simply listen to the recordings. Why are you whispering, George? But the most hilarious part of the phone calls is what he has come up with that he thinks passes for code between him and his wife Shellie. After talking about sharing passwords and learning how to get into the appropriate online accounts, they speak of taking “twenty dollars out of an account at a time” (code for $20,000), and splitting that 20 dollars between two people, so that each gets 10 dollars (code for $10,000), and as if that is not bad enough, they talk about getting money every day from Peter Pan. This is how they intend to outsmart the prosecutors: by talking about money every day from an online account that Peter Pan has set up. As though everybody can’t figure out that Peter Pan is Pay Pal.
And ridiculous as this all is, remember that in some way, Zimmerman and his team (funded by so many generous donations) did outsmart the prosecutors. Zimmerman is a free man today.
In fact, for what it’s worth, he is really free, meaning his wife divorced him, expressing fear of him. As has every woman he has been involved with since; all three have made domestic violence calls.
Shellie Zimmerman would later reveal her personal observations and opinions about George in a November 21st, 2013 interview with Katie Couric. Just days after George Zimmerman’s new girlfriend had made a call to police, reporting that George had attacked her, Shellie Zimmerman revealed to Katie Couric that after the arrest, George had turned into “a ticking time bomb”. And Shellie went on to say, "I certainly hope that there are no casualties. I hope that there is no violence … I know I am certainly afraid. I just hope that he can get the help that he needs to deal with his situation and that no one else will be hurt."
Let’s leave this section on bail with something that will really make your blood boil.
The records also show that the second-degree murder charge was a big money-maker for Zimmerman: on the day of his arrest, contributions surpassed a $75,000 in a single day. He quickly paid off about $1,800 in bills and then after his release from jail spent nearly $5,000 in one day paying off Sam’s Club, Target and other credit cards, bank records show.
“Ah man, that feels good,” he said to his wife in a recorded phone call the day after his arrest. “That there are people in America that care.”
His wife told him so many contributions arrived to his online PayPal site on the day of his arrest that the site kept crashing.
“People were just trying to give you, you know, words of support and kindness,” Shellie Zimmerman said.
“Good. Wow, that is awesome,” he said.
Later he told her: “I’m so happy to know that you’re gonna be okay.”
His wife assured him, “After this is all over, you’re gonna be able to just, have a great life.”
Too bad Trayvon and his family can’t look forward to a great life together.
DID THE PROSECUTION THROW THE CASE?
This is going to sound peculiar, given that this is largely a book about racism, and justice denied, but here it is: I can understand the verdict that the jury rendered in the case of The State V. George Zimmerman: NOT GUILTY.
Now, before you scream, swear, throw your Kindle reader or a hard copy, hitting the cat and ruining your day (and the cat’s), please stay with me. For a horrible dark spectrum of reasons, the defense in the George Zimmerman homicide trial was able to create just a glimmer of doubt, thereby thrusting upon the jurors the moral and legal responsibility to render a NOT GUILTY verdict. For a brief moment, let us get right into the head of one of the jurors--the one who wanted, more than any other juror, to find Zimmerman guilty of second degree murder. Soon after the verdict, she spoke to ABC’s Robin Roberts about her decision:
JUROR B29: My first vote was second degree murder. In between that nine hours it was hard. A lot of us had wanted to find something bad something we would connect to the law. For myself, he’s guilty. Because the evidence shows he’s guilty…
ROBIN ROBERTS: He’s guilty of…?
JUROR B29: Killing Trayvon Martin. But as the law was read to me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can’t say he’s guilty.
It is also worth noting that half of the six women on the jury voted to convict on the first vote: two for manslaughter, one for second degree murder. But in the end … reasonable doubt, and all that. It is this kind of conscience-contorting-conundrum on the part of (some) jurors which impels me to examine a truly ugly side of the Trayvon Martin killing: did the prosecution purposely “throw” the trial? Let me state clearly from the outset: yes, I believe that they did. I believe there is convincing evidence of that chilling charge. So rather than rage on the jurors and their decision, let us take a closer look at the dialogue that erupted among and between some of the finest legal minds in this country: Did the prosecution purposely throw the Trayvon Martin case?
Certainly, the issue is not without precedent or logic. As we will see in a later chapter (the murders being in chronological order), during grand jury testimony, Police Officer Darren Wilson was allowed to testify for forty-five uninterrupted minutes, reciting what was clearly a well-rehearsed speech regarding his role in the killing of Michael Brown, written by the best lawyers that the Ferguson Police Union’s slush fund could buy. There were no interruptions, no requests for clarifications, and no incisive questions designed to probe the witness’s veracity, memory, or credibility. In fact, prosecutors have a long history of not acting like prosecutors when they are prosecuting cops. After all, they all work for the same guy. The government. Many prosecutors see it as working against their best interests and future careers, to give the “Boys in Blue” a black eye. Certainly, there is abundant discussion of this all over the blogosphere. Many of the best legal minds in the country are appalled at the all too frequent failure of prosecutors to get convictions, and the twisted goings on within many a grand jury.
Naturally, this begs a question, why would the authorities help George Zimmerman, who is not a police officer? There are several possibilities.
It could be because George Zimmerman’s father was a magistrate. Understanding that requires a much closer look at George Zimmerman’s father, Robert Zimmerman—and at the bizarre history of George Zimmerman’s relationship with the Sanford Police. And with trouble, in general.
DID GEORGE ZIMMERMAN’S FATHER INTERVENE:
HAS HE BEEN INTERVENING ALL ALONG?
There are those who claim that George Zimmerman’s father was a judge, and there are those who become irate at this, claiming that GZ’s father is no such thing. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. And in this middle ground one suspects, there lies the possibility for influence peddling within the Sanford Police Department.
THE FACTS: George Zimmerman’s father served as a Supreme Court magistrate in the Virginia court system from 2000 to 2006, serving as a court officer who dealt with criminal cases. Magistrates perform judicial functions such as conducting “probable cause” hearings on criminal complaints brought by police, and determining whether a person who has been arrested is eligible for bail.
From the Virginia judicial website, it’s clear that Zimmerman’s duties had much to do with dealing with people under arrest: In many instances, a citizen’s first contact with Virginia’s Judicial System comes through the office of the magistrate. A principal function of the magistrate is to provide an independent, unbiased review of complaints of criminal conduct brought to the office by law enforcement or the general public. Magistrate duties include issuing various types of processes such as arrest warrants, summonses, bonds, search warrants, subpoenas, and certain civil warrants. Magistrates also conduct bail hearings in instances in which an individual is arrested on a warrant charging him or her with a criminal offense. Magistrates provide services on an around-the-clock basis, conducting hearings in person or through the use of videoconferencing systems.
So, dear reader, to paraphrase a former president, you be “the decider”. Did Robert Zimmerman have an “in” with the Sanford PD? Could he have used his influence when his son George got in trouble, from time to time? Those who have dealt with Sanford PD say most certainly; but that is hearsay, and we won’t go there.
So now, with the shadow of the father, Robert Zimmerman, in mind, let’s take another look at the history of George Zimmerman.
2001 through 2005: George Zimmerman was fired from his job as an under-the-table security guard for “being too aggressive,” a former co-worker told The New York Daily News. Zimmerman … worked for two different agencies providing security to illegal house parties between 2001 and 2005, the former co-worker said. “Usually he was just a cool guy. He liked to drink and hang with the women like the rest of us,” he said. “But it was like Jekyll and Hyde. When the dude snapped, he snapped.” The source said Zimmerman, who made between $50 and $100 a night, was let go in 2005. “He had a temper and he became a liability,” the man said. “One time this woman was acting a little out of control. She was drunk. George lost his cool and totally overreacted. It was weird, because he was such a cool guy, but he got all nuts. He picked her up and threw her. It was pure rage. She twisted her ankle. Everyone was flipping out.”
September 2003: Zimmerman called police and reported that another motorist spat on him. According to reports, Zimmerman followed the man in his car until the police arrived. Daniel Osum, the other driver, told police that Zimmerman was tailgating and that he spit his gum out the window “out of frustration.” Osum said that Zimmerman then pulled alongside of him, and the two argued. In a police report of the incident, Osum said “at one point, he thought Mr. Zimmerman was going to attack him.” No charges were filed against either man.
July 2005: Zimmerman was arrested and accused of resisting an officer with violence, near the University of Central Florida campus after a scuffle with police. The charges were eventually dropped, after Zimmerman entered an alcohol education program.
August 2005: Zimmerman’s former fiancée, Veronica Zuazo, filed for a restraining order against him, alleging domestic violence. The couple had split up at the time of the incident. Zuazo stated that she saw Zimmerman near her home, and when she asked why he was there, he claimed he was there to “check up on her.” Zimmerman responded by requesting a restraining order against her. Both requests were granted. No criminal charges were filed. Zuazo said that three years earlier, in 2002, Zimmerman attacked her while the two were driving to a counseling session. Zuazo said she popped her gum in his face and he repeatedly smacked her in the face. Also in January 2002, she added, Zimmerman became enraged that she had come home late. They wrestled and he threw her on the bed, smacking her, according to the newspaper.
Let’s sum that up, then:
According to a records search on George, he was previously arrested for domestic violence, resisting an officer without violence and most shockingly, resisting an officer with violence — a felony charge, that surely could have landed him in prison. All three of those arrests, however, were mysteriously closed with no semblance of charges for the Florida resident. So how was someone with a violent past including that of battery against an officer able to carry a 9 mm handgun? Maybe that’s a question Robert Zimmerman should answer.
--”George Zimmerman, Son of a Retired Judge, Has 3 Closed Arrests”, from “Rolling Out” Magazine, by Danielle Canada, (March 27th 2012)
But it isn’t just women that Zimmerman has a history of pushing to the brink. Some of Zimmerman’s neighbors said he had a history of being overly aggressive, and that he followed people whom he thought appeared suspicious back to their homes. At a meeting of neighbors in Zimmerman’s community, days after the killing, “one man was escorted out because he openly expressed his frustration because he had previously contacted the Sanford Police Department about Zimmerman approaching him and even coming to his home,” a resident who spoke on the condition of anonymity told the Huffington Post. “It was also made known that there had been several complaints about George Zimmerman and his tactics” in his neighborhood watch role. The former co-worker quoted by The New York Daily News said he had not recently been in touch with Zimmerman, but his latest troubles came as a shock nonetheless. “He definitely loved being in charge. He loved the power.” he said.
Now, we have to take a break from the creepy history of George Zimmerman and ask ourselves—could George really have escaped all these incidents without being charged by the police, if there were not someone who had some kind of sway or influence over the local police?
Now, let us fast forward to what happened the morning after George Zimmerman had shot Trayvon Martin. George made sure that his daddy stayed close by when things got scary. According to an article in “The New York Times”:
The day after the shooting, George Zimmerman, according to his father, returned with at least three police officers to the Retreat at Twin Lakes, back to that grassy area where plaintive cries for help had gone unanswered. The investigators, accompanied by someone with a video camera, wanted him to re-enact the events of the night when the two strangers had stood their ground. Mr. Zimmerman’s father watched from nearby.
--”Race, Tragedy and Outrage Collide After a Shot in Florida” by Dan Barry, Serge F. Kovaleski, Campbell Robertson and Lizette Alvarez, April 1, 2012
Anybody can see that this is extremely unorthodox, and very bizarre. How would the average detective, who has worked hard to achieve his rank, feel about that? Having a former magistrate watch you question his son, and possibly advise his son on what to say and how to answer questions? Possibly non-verbally? A look, a glance, a gesture? At the very least, if Robert Zimmerman did not interfere with that morning’s questioning, he could have analyzed it, and told George how to proceed in the weeks and months that followed. \And this could have a huge impact on how matters finally came together for Zimmerman. The Sean Hannity interview was the most orchestrated thing I have ever seen. And I have seen Handel’s Hallelujah chorus performed at Prince Albert Hall with full chorus, orchestra, and dance troupe. I actually have.
And when political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell asked Sanford City Manager Norton Bonaparte about any influence that Robert Zimmerman’s father was having on the investigation, and also asked why proper police procedure wasn’t followed at the crime scene, O’Donnell received only a non–answer from the uncomfortable city official:
Bonaparte replied, extending “on behalf of our city our deepest sympathies and condolences” to Martin’s family, and adding that “I’ve always called for a review of the investigation of what they did… so people know that what they did was either appropriate or not appropriate.” O’Donnell also asked if police officials spoke to George Zimmerman’s father on the night of the shooting, or if there was a connection there, which Bonaparte said he did not have an answer to, but said “that would come out in the investigation.”
We can never know the answer with any degree of certainty: did Robert Zimmerman intercede to help his son?
Or it could be that it was not so much a matter of “helping” George Zimmerman, as much as it was an attitude, on the part of the police and the prosecution, of not caring too much about Trayvon Martin? In the final pages of this chapter, we will take a disturbing look at the racist history of Sanford, Florida: seen through that filter, the apathy shown towards the crime scene, the investigation, and the prosecution becomes almost expected. Par for the course.
Note: this chapter is not suggesting that every single person on the legal team was “in on it”. Or, perhaps the “desired outcome” was subtly suggested, and persons who might have fought harder for a conviction backed off, because of the impact they felt it might have on their career. I say this because a.), throughout much of the trial, it does appear that certain members of the prosecution are doing a decent job, and b.), any ongoing overt efforts to throw the case would no doubt just blow up in everybody’s faces down the road. But bear with us—I think that you will find the following points alarming.
EVIDENCE THAT THE PROSECUTORS WANTED TO LOSE:
A FEW POINTS OF PROOF TO CONSIDER
THEY OVERCHARGED GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: this strategy is simple enough to understand. Charge the suspect with something worse than he did, create an impossibly large burden of proof, and the jury will have no choice but to acquit. We just saw this strategy played out in “The Little Book of Lynching, Part I”, with the horrific abuse of Cequan Haskins on the school bus in Appomattox: charge the sweet little old lady with felony child abuse, and there is no way that jurors from her small home town of less than 1700 people—many of them folks from her church--will find her guilty of something so heinous. In the case of The State of Florida V. George Zimmerman, legal minds across the country flooded the airwaves and the internet with their shocked and appalled reactions, after Special Prosecutor Angela Corey charged Zimmerman with second degree murder. In the words of Jonathan Turley, Professor of Law at George Washington University, “This was clearly a challenging case even for manslaughter and the decision to push second-degree murder (while satisfying to many in the public) was legally and tactically unwise. The facts simply did not support a claim beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman acted with intent and a ‘depraved mind, hatred, malice, evil intent or ill will.’ Had Corey charged manslaughter, the case might have been closer but would have still been a challenge.”
But charging Zimmerman, who acted in the heat of the moment, with something that requires behavior as intense as “evil intent” while in a “depraved mind” was the ideal charge for a prosecutor who, in truth, did not wish to win the case. Turley goes on to comment, “There was never a basis for a second degree murder charge. There is a high standard for proving that, and it did not fit the facts or the evidence. By overcharging, she played into the hands of the defense.”
THE PROSECUTION DID NOT OBJECT TO SOME TRULY OBJECTIONABLE JURORS. It was a jury of six people, all women. And the consultant to the Zimmerman defense wanted it that way, because he knows that women consistently score as better listeners. More to the point, the prosecution did not use its power of veto to get rid of jurors who were clearly pro Zimmerman. Juror B37, for example. During questioning, she referred multiple times to “riots” in Sanford after Trayvon Martin was killed. “I knew there was rioting, but I guess [the authorities] had it pretty well organized,” she says at one point. Truth: there were no riots in Sanford. There simply were none. (The protestors, perennially in trouble with Fox News, were, I imagine, doing the right thing and waiting for an actual verdict, before they got upset—trusting the justice system to do the right thing, and all.) She referred to the killing of Trayvon Martin as “an unfortunate incident that happened.” And when asked by George Zimmerman’s attorney to describe Trayvon Martin, she said, “He was a boy of color.” Cripes. That has been politically incorrect for about half a century. And while I am not a left of center rigorist on matters PC, I think we pretty much know where she stands on all of this.
THE JUDGE AND THE PROSECUTION ALLOWED, FOR DAYS AT A TIME, THE VIOLATION OF WITNESS SEQUESTRATION RULES: Witness for the defense John Donnelly was in the courtroom during the trial several weeks before he testified, which is a violation of witness sequestration rules. A judge ruled against the request to strike his testimony, after a defense attorney said he didn’t know about the rule. “On one hand the court is very very, very, very, very concerned -- that’s four ‘very’s’ for those who want to know -- about the rule of sequestration and the witnesses and counsel abiding by them, the question becomes whether the witness themselves had knowledge …” Judge Debra Nelson said. OK, Debra. But everybody else knew. Surely the prosecutors and the defense team knew. You knew. I almost don’t know what to say. I have never heard a judge, holding some position of importance, excusing illegal behavior by resorting to using the word “Very” not four times, Debra, but five times. What is she anyway, a ‘tween texting?
THE JUDGE WOULD NOT EXPLAIN, WHEN ASKED FOR A CLARIFICATION: The purpose of jury instructions is to make complex points of the law understandable to the layperson. Why, then, when the jury asked for clarification of the manslaughter charge, did the Judge refuse to provide them? It happened after the jurors had been sequestered for three weeks, and were weighing the lesser charge of manslaughter. Specifically, their question was, “May we please have clarification on the instructions regarding manslaughter? Rather than aiding the jurors, as one might expect, she first spoke with the attorneys, then called a recess, and then, the judge then sent a note back to the jury that read: “The court can’t engage in general discussion but may be able to address a specific question regarding clarification of the instructions regarding manslaughter. If you have a specific question, please submit it.”
But legal pundits would say that the entire matter of clarification, and the Judge’s refusal to do her part went much farther and served a more cynical purpose. For more on this, read “The Zimmerman Verdict and the Initial Aggressor Exception” by Professor Jeffrey A. Fagan, Columbia Law School Magazine
AT TIMES, THE PROSECUTION JUST ACTED JUST PLAIN BIZARRELY: When nothing else seemed to be working (because they had done such a lousy job), they asked Judge Nelson if the jury would consider finding George Zimmerman guilty of “child abuse.” Felony murder based on child abuse. And yes, of course it is more complicated than that. That, of course, is the point. Baffle and confuse the jury completely, until the jurors have no recourse but to find reasonable doubt.
6.), LAST, AND TO MY MIND MOST IMPORTANTLY, THEY STARTED THIS WHOLE TAILSPIN BY APPOINTING A “very, very, very, very, very” BAD PROSECUTOR.
It started roughly a month after Trayvon had been killed. On March 22, 2012, Florida Governor Rick Scott announced his appointment of Angela Corey as the Special Prosecutor in the Martin investigation. Let me just say it. She is an abysmal prosecutor. But that is not merely my opinion, it is the opinion of some of the best legal minds in the country. Just listen to this rant from the august Alan Dershowitz, in an interview with Mike Huckabee:
MIKE HUCKABEE: You have said that you thought the prosecutor ought to be disbarred, that’s a pretty serious type of violation to get a person disbarred. It is that serious to you?
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Right, it is. She submitted an affidavit that was, if not perjurious, completely misleading. She violated all kinds of rules of the profession, and her conduct bordered on criminal conduct. She, by the way, has a horrible reputation in Florida. She’s known for overcharging, she’s known for being highly political. And in this case, of course she overcharged. Halfway through the trial she realized she wasn’t going to get a second degree murder verdict, so she asked for a compromised verdict, for manslaughter. And then, she went even further and said that she was going to charge him with child abuse and felony murder. That was such a stretch that it goes beyond anything professionally responsible. She was among the most irresponsible prosecutors I’ve seen in 50 years of litigating cases, and believe me, I’ve seen good prosecutors, bad prosecutors, but rarely have I seen one as bad as this prosecutor, [Angela] Cory. (Huckabee, July 14, 2013)
-exchange from Angela Corey should be Disbarred, RealClearPolitics
And in case you are still unclear about the vitriol some feel for Angela Corey, here are a couple more examples:
In 2009, Ronald Thompson, a disabled 65-year-old army veteran fired two shots into the ground to scare off teenagers who were demanding entry into his elderly neighbor’s house, in Keystone Heights, Florida. Before we talk about Prosecutor Corey’s role in all this, here is a little more about Ronald Thompson, from FAMM, Families Against Mandatory Minimums. I think you could definitely call Ronald one of the good guys.
Ronald Thompson is a 100% disabled veteran who spent 14 years in the Army (1966-1980). After his service, Thompson remained active in veterans’ affairs. In addition to acting as a Deputy Representative for AMVETS, Thompson accumulated 5,532 hours volunteering at the VA hospital in Lake City, Florida, primarily acting as recreational therapy coordinator at the VA’s nursing home. Thompson was 62-years-old in September 2009 when he visited a friend of his, an elderly woman in Keystone Heights, Florida, at the woman’s daughter’s home. During his visit, his friend’s 17-year-old grandson, who had been violent toward her in the past, came by with three friends, and wanted to go into his mother’s home. Having been instructed by her daughter not to let him into the house, Thompson’s friend refused them entry. Her grandson began yelling and cursing at his grandmother. Events escalated to the point where Mr. Thompson felt his friend was in danger. He grabbed his pistol (for which he had a concealed-carry license) and fired two warning shots into the ground to scare off the 17-year-old.
I suppose you could argue that firing two warning shots into the ground was too aggressive, but we weren’t there to see just how scary those teenagers were behaving. More to the point, just how much would you punish that man, who only fired shots into the ground? Here’s what Corey would do.
Corey prosecuted Thompson for aggravated assault, and after he refused a plea agreement with a three-year prison sentence, Corey won a conviction that would carry a mandatory 20-year sentence under Florida’s 10-20-Life statute. The trial judge, Fourth Circuit Judge John Skinner called the 20-year sentence “a crime in itself” and declared the 10-20-Life statute unconstitutional. Skinner gave Thompson three years instead. Corey appealed the 3-year sentence and won, sending Thompson to prison for 20 years. A veteran. Shooting warning shots into the ground to warn off some very threatening teenagers, and Corey sends him to prison, effectively for the rest of his life. (Yes, there was an appeal, and it was partially successful. But that doesn’t change the unconscionable viciousness of Prosecutor Corey. It is also worth noting that this veteran was denied his proper medications during the year he did spend in jail, and his diabetic condition worsened to almost total irreversible blindness.)
She has also charged two twelve-year-olds, on two different occasions, as adult murderers, which could send them to jail for the rest of their lives. While I do believe these children need to be punished, and treated, I find it curious that Angela Corey does not seemed disturbed at the fact that she is in violation of the United States Supreme Court, which recognizes that on all kinds of levels—emotionally, physiologically—a twelve year old brain is not the same as an adult brain. But Corey apparently feels she knows better than the United States Supreme Court.
And lastly, there was the nationally publicized case of Marissa Alexander. Marissa was in the home of her estranged husband Rico Gray, when Marissa stated that Gray threatened to kill her via texts on Marissa’s phone. Gray had previously abused Marissa, giving her reason to believe that her life was in danger. According to Marissa, she tried to escape through the garage, but the garage door would not open. This account was confirmed by Gray in a sworn deposition. Marissa retrieved her gun from the car, went back into the kitchen, and fired a “warning shot” towards Gray, which hit the wall near Gray at the height of his head, then deflected into the ceiling. The single shot did not injure anyone. Marissa had fired the warning shot because of Florida’s stand-your-ground law, a law that allows self-defense, such as lethal force, in life-threatening situations. Thanks to Angela Corey, Marissa Alexander, who tried to use the Stand Your Ground defense, was given 20 years in jail. Hundreds of people each year get off using the Stand Your Ground defense. But not Marissa.
And so now you know more than you probably ever wanted to, about prosecutor Angela Corey. And as a last note, regarding this strange woman, I have included a link to the press conference where Corey announces that she (the prosecutor) and her staff have lost the case of The State V. George Zimmerman. She seems positively jubilant! And everybody who was following the case, hoping that the ghost of Trayvon might finally get some justice, was to notice her curious, thinly veiled elation. As you watch, notice her rather perverse wording, given that she is announcing her loss of a big, high profile case: “We are so proud to stand before you … we announced that we would seek the truth for Trayvon Martin … to the dead, we owe the truth …and we believe that we brought out the truth, on behalf of Trayvon Martin.” Apparently, Corey believes that Trayvon Martin is guilty. Which is bizarre, since it was her office that decided to charge Zimmerman and bring him to trial. Her office which felt they had enough evidence to prove that Zimmerman had committed second degree murder. And that what she says in just the first minute of an incoherent, rambling, twenty minute press conference.
****
There is one last, very disturbing and impossible to explain detail, which has made me ponder deeply just how much the police and prosecutors—possibly with pressure applied from George Zimmerman’s magistrate father—were “proactive” in doing everything possible to make sure that George Zimmerman was found Not Guilty.
HERE is a picture of what George Zimmerman’s famous orange-red jacket looked like when first photographed at the police station, about an hour after Zimmerman shot Trayvon--with everybody’s blood allegedly flying everywhere….bloody nose, punching fists, gunshot, etcetera.
OR GOOGLE IMAGES GEORGE ZIMMERMAN JACKET
HERE is a picture of what George Zimmerman’s famous orange-red jacket looked like by the time it got to trial, and the prosecution presented it as evidence that GZ had been attacked:
OR GOOGLE IMAGES OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN’S JACKET, SCAN PICTURES:
Excuse me. But what the hell happened to that jacket while it was in the chain of custody? Something horrible. Something very crooked…
GEORGE ZIMMERMAN, ALONE AGAIN, NATURALLY
As if the public writ large (with the predictable exceptions), didn’t find George Zimmerman repulsive enough after he killed Trayvon Martin, he has managed to continue offending us, all over again, on multiple occasions, in chilling affronts, all without consequence.
First, there was the ugly end to his marriage, just a couple of months after he was acquitted for the murder of Trayvon. In a New York Daily News article by Carol Kuruvilla, “George Zimmerman’s estranged wife speaks out: My ex is a ‘ticking time-bomb’ ”, we get a recap of a Katie Couric interview where Shelly Zimmerman spoke in frighteningly candid terms about the true George Zimmerman:
Shellie Zimmerman says her estranged husband George Zimmerman is acting “like a ticking time-bomb.” … Shellie Zimmerman admitted to Katie Couric that the man has “snapped” and is behaving “like a monster. I don’t know who George is anymore,”
The murder trial and all the national media attention that came with it, have turned the 30-year-old man into a “pacing lion,” she said. This week, he was arrested on charges that he threatened his girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, with a gun …“I certainly hope that there are no casualties. I hope that there is no violence. I know I am certainly afraid. I just hope that he can get the help that he needs to deal with his situation and that no one else will be hurt.”
In September, just roughly two months after his acquittal, Zimmerman was accused by Shellie Zimmerman of smashing an iPad during an argument at the home they had shared. Shellie Zimmerman initially told a dispatcher her husband had a gun … Shellie Zimmerman said that she hopes to be an inspiration to other women who want to “leave a dysfunctional relationship. I hope to be a warning to other woman, that if somebody shows you who they really are, that you should believe them.”
Shellie Zimmerman wasn’t home on the night Zimmerman shot Martin. She went to her father’s house the night before because she said Zimmerman had humiliated her publicly after she complained about not feeling well when they were out. “I do wish that the night before when I had left ... that he had just let me go and didn’t call me back into his life and that I didn’t play the role I played as a supportive wife. Because my life would be very different now.”
End article excerpt:
And also not to be missed, there is a fascinating article in GQ by Amanda Robb (September 28th, 2014) about the Zimmerman’s family’s life after the Trayvon shooting. And it is creepily titled “Meet George Zimmerman’s Family.” And danged if you don’t almost expect to see a picture of the Munster Family, or the Addams Family, when you click on the link …
It is worth noting here that George Zimmerman’s family, with the exception of his brother, seem to be victims in all of this; George’s sociopathic vigilante antics, along with his frightening behavior since the shooting of Trayvon, has left his family in fear for their lives, as they live out their days impoverished, and in hiding. George doesn’t seem to feel particularly guilty or phased by that—certainly his determination to keep pulling newsworthy stunts suggests that he doesn’t care how much they suffer, or if they stay on the internet’s radar. Or even if he has put them in danger.
Here is an excerpt from the above mentioned GQ article, in which we get a glimpse into another aspect of George’s character—his unquenchable greed:
(Note: references to “Robert” are references to George’s brother, Robert Zimmerman, Jr.)
The Univision appearance went smoothly enough—no gotcha questions… so emboldened, George agreed to another media stop, this time on CNN. It would tape at the Ritz-Carlton in Miami. The network agreed to pay for two hotel rooms for three nights and, according to Robert, “everything” they wanted during their stay. (For this article, George refused to speak with me on the record unless GQ provided a similar hotel room—he asked for a week’s stay—but the magazine declined.)
The Zimmerman family seized on their brief stint of subsidized luxury. They ran up a big room-service bill, cleaned out the minibars, got their clothes laundered, made several trips to the spa, treated a party of ten to dinner at the hotel restaurant, and bought swag—from bracelets to bath fizzies—at the gift shop.
Toward the end of their stay, according to Robert, a manager presented him with a bill for $3,600. He says he called CNN, outraged, only to have the producer accuse them of splurging shamelessly on CNN’s dime. “You and your brother are evil!” he remembers her screaming. The hotel manager threatened to call the police. Alone in his room, Robert started shaking. He wrapped all the blankets around him, ordered shrimp, chain-smoked cigarettes, got roaring drunk. Nothing helped. He called his mother in a panic. “I can’t get warm,” he sobbed. “I just can’t get warm.”
Unconsoled, Robert called the only person he could think of: Dr. Drew, who’d been kind to him when he went on Drew’s TV show shortly before George’s trial. He reached a producer, who told him Dr. Drew wasn’t available. But the guy was nice, at least. He stayed on the phone awhile and talked Robert down. Eventually CNN agreed to pay the bill, and the next morning Robert returned the only purchases he could: a bottle of Mercedes-Benz cologne and a Ritz-Carlton wallet that George had bought him to say thanks.
ZIMMERMAN THE DIRTBAG
None of the following will be any revelation to those who have been paying attention to headlines since the death of Trayvon. The incidents simply confirm our worst fears: George Zimmerman is a powder keg, a ticking time bomb. Pick the cliché of your choice.
Since the arrest:
July 28th, 2013. Forney, Texas. Zimmerman is pulled over for speeding, and blithely informs the officer that he has a gun in his vehicle. When asked where he is going, George replies, “Nowhere in particular.” George wants to know if the officer recognizes him from TV; the officer lets him off with a warning, and the officer reminds him, “Don’t play with your firearm, OK?” (Not an electric incident, I will grant you, we just want to keep the running tally of encounters and incidents, accurate. Frankly, the officer looked in a mighty hurry to get away from old George. (As would we all.)
August 22nd, 2013. Zimmerman visits the Kel-Tec factory. Kel-Tec is the company that manufactured the gun that killed Trayvon. He was reportedly inquiring about the legality of buying a tactical shotgun, and was given a tour by the owner’s son. You could say that Kel-Tec is as big a villain in this as Zimmerman, as they state that they don’t give tours: “Special arrangements can sometimes be made for Military, Law enforcement, or Educational purposes only.” So what the hell is so “special” about citizen George Zimmerman that he gets a tour? It is a public relations nightmare, and Zimmerman’s legal team basically said as much. This incident is not to be underrated in its importance as a glimpse into the psychopathy of George Zimmerman: what kind of person, knowing the story would go viral, would rub the death of Trayvon in his parents’ faces by visiting a gun factory, knowing that story will make headlines? The dopey picture of George posing with the owner’s son with a big shit-eating grin on his big fat face made its way around the internet. Disgusting.
September 3rd, 2013. Lake Mary, Florida. George is pulled over for going 60 in a 45, and gets a ticket for $265 bucks. Yee-hah!
September 9th, 2013. Z’s estranged wife, Shellie, called 911 to say that Z had threatened her and her father with a gun. “I don’t know what he’s capable of, I’m really, really scared. He punched my dad in the nose, my dad has a mark on his face.” Police said that Zimmerman smashed as IPad that had recorded the encounter. I’m guessing that she didn’t press charges for one reason: contrary to her 911 call, I think she knows exactly what he’s capable of. Dirtbag. Then, a month later, George nailed a marksman’s target to the wall of their home with seventeen bullet holes in it—an eerie reminder that he had taken care of that seventeen year old troublemaker. Again, Dirtbag.
November 18th 2013. Zimmerman is arrested after allegedly pointing a gun at his new girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe. “You just broke my sunglasses and you put your gun in my friggin’ face,” she says to him, as it is captured on audio. “He pushed me out of my house and locked me out… He knows how to do this, he knows how to play this game,” she told the dispatcher. Officers found and confiscated an arsenal of weapons belonging to George: .38 caliber handgun, a 9-mm handgun, a Glock 19 handgun, a Kel-Tec 12-gauge shotgun and an AR-15 assault-style rifle. Police also recovered more than 100 rounds of ammunition. Major Dirtbag.
Over the next few months, Zimmerman starts painting. He sells one for over $100,000 dollars on eBay. Then he gets a Cease and Desist letter from the AP, whom he is apparently ripping off. Loser.
March 8th, 2014, Zimmerman signs autographs, and shakes hands with people at a gun show, and lets them take pictures of him posing with his dog. Then organizers have to frantically change the location of the gun show because so many people are pissed off. I am wondering if the dog had any say in all of this. Narcissist.
July 28th, 2014. A police officer finds Zimmerman sitting in his parked car outside of a business called “Pampano Pat’s Motorcycles”, and when asked why he has been sitting there for so long, Zimmerman tells the officer he is a security guard for the company. The owner of the company later denies that Zimmerman is an employee, and states that Zimmerman is certainly not on the payroll. Creepy creep.
September 9th, 2014. Lake Mary, Florida. A 911 call comes in from a man claiming that Zimmerman tried to kill him during a road rage incident. He said that while stopped at a light, Zimmerman, in the next car over, began lashing out with threats and profanities and name calling. As if this is not terrifying enough—to have George Zimmerman threatening you—Zimmerman shows up the next day at the man’s place of work. Chilling.
January 2015. George is dating his dental hygienist, Brittany Brunelle. Police are called when they get into a huge fight; he throws a wine bottle at her, and destroys her cell phone. Oddly enough, a few days later she recants her story, claiming none of this happened. Dirtbag.
May 11th, 2015. Lake Mary, Florida. The same man, who was threatened and stalked by George Zimmerman, takes a shot at Zimmerman while Zimmerman is in his car. Seems to me this guy was trying to neutralize the threat. He is currently awaiting trial. Weird.
And of course, no list of George Zimmerman’s bizarre antics would be complete, without mentioning the March 2015 YouTube clip of CNN’s Don Lemon playing George Zimmerman, seated next to a potted plant, blaming his life’s troubles on one particular man: “Barrack Hussein Obama”. Yes, it is the President who has inflamed the nation against poor George. What the President said during a press conference, in a moment of thoughtful reflection, is to George Zimmerman, a clear “dereliction of duty”, and an attempt by the President to inflame the nation against the unfortunate Zimmerman. Here’s another way to look at this. It was George Zimmerman shooting down a black kid, and getting away with this crime by lying his ass off, that heightened racial tensions, not the statements of the President.
Zimmerman has also managed to infuriate the Twitter Universe. In late August 2015, Zimmerman enraged many when he twittered a picture of a Confederate flag “backed by an American flag” (in his words). In another August Twitter, Zimmerman called Obama an “ignorant baboon”. There was another tweet in which he posted an image of Vesper Lee Flanagan, an African-American former news reporter who shot and killed two ex-coworkers during a broadcast, and wrote, “If Obama had a son...” And yet another in which Zimmerman typed, in response to people who wanted him killed, that the United States understands “how it ended for the last moron that hit me” (in reference to Trayvon Martin). In September 2015, Zimmerman retweeted a photo of Trayvon Martin’s slain body posted by another Twitter user with the caption “Z-Man is a one man army”. Several days later, Zimmerman posted a letter in which he said that the photo in the original tweet was marked as “sensitive” and was blocked, so he retweeted it because of the text message without seeing the photo.
And last but certainly not least, as of this writing, George’s most recent creepy antics again had to do with harassing and terrifying an innocent woman. A December 4th, 2015 USA Today article by reporter Michael Harthorne broke this grotesque Zimmerman story: “Infamous Florida man George Zimmerman has been kicked off Twitter, at least temporarily, after managing to fit harassment, slut shaming, Islamophobia, misogyny, and bigotry into 140 characters or less.” The USA Today article goes on to say how Zimmerman tweeted two topless photos of a woman he says is his ex-girlfriend, to his more than 15,000 followers on Thursday. “This is Heather. She cheated on me with a dirty Muslim. She’ll sleep with anyone,” the first tweet says; the tweet included a phone number apparently belonging to Heather. In a second tweet, Zimmerman accused Heather of stealing cash and a gun from him, and included an email address.” Dirtbag Redux.
And finally, there are some of the choice words that Zimmerman offered when he was on the Sean Hannity Show. Not surprisingly, it was worse than a softball interview; as I watched the creepy tone of it (the only time I have ever seen Hannity, casual, sans tie,) I almost expected Hannity to offer George a neck massage. But even worse than the lies and manipulations, that spew from George Zimmerman’s mouth, are his answers, when asked to give his deepest insights and beliefs, about his choices that night.
HANNITY: Is there anything you regret? Do you regret getting out of the car to follow Trayvon that night?
ZIMMERMAN: No, sir.
HANNITY: Do you regret that you had a gun that night?
ZIMMERMAN: I feel that it was all God’s plan and for me to second guess it or judge it…
HANNITY: --Is there anything that you would do different?
ZIMMERMAN: No sir.
What a demon. What a pair. One of the particularly galling parts of the exchange—apart from the obvious killer line—is that Zimmerman claims he had no regrets about getting out of the car that night. This is particularly perverse, since “given hindsight”, George now knows that Trayvon had no plans to burglarize a home, rob a person, nor was he carrying a weapon. But George Zimmerman doesn’t regret that he stalked, and then shot dead a kid who was on his way home, with a can of Arizona iced tea and a bag of Skittles.
Not surprisingly, Trayvon’s father had a response to Zimmerman’s take on the wants of the almighty: “We must worship a different God, because there is no way that my God would have wanted George Zimmerman to kill my teenage son.”
“It was all part of God’s plan.”
Really, George? I think God might have something to say about that.
THE TROUBLED HISTORY OF SANFORD, FLORIDA
There are those who are not the least bit surprised that all of this should happen in Sanford, Florida. The place has a history of racial ugliness. It would be unfair to suggest that racism pervades the city, or the people. But it is, unfortunately, an ingrained part of Sanford’s legacy.
The founder had dreams of shipping Florida Negroes back to Africa. Sanford’s racist beginnings are uncovered in an article by Adam Weinstein in “Mother Jones”:
Long before the live oaks and Spanish moss gave way to interstate highways and box stores, Sanford began as a citrus town in the 1870s, conceived by a New England tycoon. Henry Shelton Sanford, who had ingratiated himself to Abraham Lincoln and served as Lincoln's ambassador to Belgium for eight years, had the town built by Swedish laborers. Though the citrus empire he dreamed of didn't exactly flourish, Sanford proved instrumental to promoting trade with the Belgian-controlled territory of Congo—which included his vision of promoting Congo as a place to ship America's freed blacks. The African locale, he said, represented an outlet "for the enterprise and ambition of our colored people in more congenial fields than politics." A Congo peopled with African Americans could be "the ground to draw the gathering electricity from that black cloud spreading over the Southern states."
--“Trayvon Martin’s death extends Sanford’s sordid legacy.” Mother Jones, March 28th, 2012
Flash forward several decades.
The town was less than welcoming, when Jackie Robinson came to practice with the Montreal Royals, in preparation for leading the Brooklyn Dodgers to new heights. Journalist David Zirin, writing in “The Nation” just a month after the Trayvon killing, revisits that sad chapter in Robinson’s life, and in Sanford’s history:
Before Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color line in 1947 as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he spent a season desegregating the minor leagues, playing for the Dodgers AAA team, the Montreal Royals. The Royals held Spring Training in Sanford. Dodgers’ general manager Branch Rickey, after so many years, thought he knew Florida. He believed that Robinson’s presence could go over if efforts were taken to ruffle as few feathers as possible. Robinson, on Rickey’s instructions, didn’t try to stay at any Sanford hotels. He and his wife didn’t eat out at any restaurants not deemed “Negro restaurants." He didn’t even dress in the same locker room as his teammates. Rickey thought that would be enough. He thought he knew Florida. But he didn’t know Sanford…As Jean West, a school teacher in Florida, wrote, "Branch Rickey had miscalculated the degree to which Jim Crow was entrenched in Sanford. As an example, an inanimate object, a second-hand piano, purchased in 1924 from the courthouse for use in a segregated school in nearby Oviedo, was filed as a ‘Negro Piano’ in the school board’s record; living human beings challenging segregation certainly would not be tolerated." It wasn’t. The mayor of Sanford was confronted by what the author describes as a "large group of white residents" who "demanded that Robinson…be run out of town." The Mayor caved. On March 5th, the Royals were informed that they would not be permitted to take the field as an integrated group. Rickey was concerned for Robinson’s life and sent him to stay in Daytona Beach. His daughter, Sharon Robinson, remembered, "The Robinsons were run out of Sanford, Florida, with threats of violence." This was a low moment for Jackie. The man whose number, 42, is retired throughout Major League Baseball almost quit and rejoined the Negro Leagues.
-- “Jackie Robinson, Trayvon Martin, and the sad history of Sanford, Florida”, The Nation, March 23rd, 2012
It was an ugly moment in a city with a racist history. The Ku Klux Klan was so infuriated at the thought of a Negro (we can be sure that is not the word they used) playing with a white team that Jackie had to slip out of town, in fear for his life.
But the Klan was not done. Around this same time, the NAACP was making itself felt in the state of Florida, and in the city of Sanford. Educator and black activist Harry T. Moore had sued the state, in an attempt to get black teachers the same pay as white teachers. Then, in an act that further enraged the Klan, Moore, along with his wife (also a teacher) opened up the first NAACP office in Sanford. The Moore’s were also instrumental in growing black voter registration by thirty-one percent. The local Klan was reaching a boiling point. They also didn’t care for Moore’s dogged determination to hold a Sheriff accountable for shooting two prisoners in cold blood, according to a surviving witness—those prisoners having been found guilty in a highly questionable trial.
As punishment for Moore’s activism, the Klan firebombed the Moores’ home. The Klan, which has always loudly and proudly espoused its Christian values, firebombed the Moore family home on Christmas Day. This also happened to be the Moores’ 25th wedding anniversary. Harry Moore died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. His wife died in the hospital nine days later.
This is a memory that their two daughters would carry with them for the rest of their lives, and every Christmas thereafter.
This undercurrent of white supremacy has continued for decades, and it erupted again in 2010, just fifteen months before Trayvon’s killing. It is an enraging and convoluted story, which we will reprise here.
SANFORD FLORIDA, 2010. The story goes essentially like this: For no apparent reason, Justin Collison, 22, sucker punched a black homeless man outside of a bar. He beat the poor man repeatedly and then left him, sprawled on the sidewalk with a broken nose. Then Justin Collison walked away--but then, inexplicably, punched another stranger on the street. The entire incident was captured on video, which the responding patrolmen then sat and watched. The officers wanted to charge Justin, but their superior, a one Sergeant Anthony Raimondo, didn’t want Justin charged. Remember the name “Raimondo”. That will be interesting later on.
The reason Raimondo didn’t want Justin charged is that after being detained, a panicky Justin called his dad, a police lieutenant, and Raimondo decided not to press charges, at the urging of Justin’s father. Justin walked away, a free man. It took the NAACP’s complaints and seven long weeks to get the arrest warrant. Justin Collison quickly posted bail, and was released. The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office had to step in, and began an internal investigation which found so much corruption that the Chief of Police was forced to resign—although he was the only casualty of that investigation.
At trial, Justin Collison was given probation, even as the courtroom watched the video of him attacking that man. Observers say that Justin turned beet red with rage while being forced to watch it. Interestingly enough, it was the second fight Justin had been in that night. Earlier, he had attacked the DJ inside the bar.
It was also not Justin Collison’s first bout of violence, or brush with the law. Justin had been arrested four years earlier, accused,
along with another man, of shooting a motorist in the chest after a beer bash at his grandfather's ranch in Volusia County.
Prosecutors dropped that case, though, after they failed to determine which of the two young men pulled the trigger. A year previous to that incident, at age seventeen, Justin was charged with beating and choking his girlfriend, and damaging her home. Prosecutors dropped those charges after his family paid for repairs and the girl “stopped cooperating”.
The sucker punching and beating of a black homeless man may not seem like a horrific crime to some people. But it would seem obvious that Justin Collison has a vicious and violent road ahead of him--and that Sanford police are happy to turn a blind eye, when a white man attacks a black man.
Oh, and that sergeant who refused to press charges, in spite of the damning video evidence? Just a little over one year later, Sergeant Raimondo was the first officer to show up at the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The man whose job it would be to try to save Trayvon’s life, and to correctly document the scene, and catalogue the evidence. Hmph.
What happened next is a matter of great debate, although we will prove in this chapter that, when it comes to George Zimmerman’s version of events, he is lying. He must be lying. To prove this point we will use the tools that we employ throughout this book: logic, forensic evidence, and the laws of physics. And of course, there are Zimmerman’s own words, which damn him for all time in the eyes of many enraged citizens, even if he was found Not Guilty by a jury. (We will touch on that as well.)
The single most important fact to come out of that night is that a seventeen year old unarmed black boy who was looking forward to having some snacks and playing video games with his friend ended up dead in the middle of a Florida condominium complex because a bully named George Zimmerman lacks self-control, reason, and compassion.
This is what we will undertake to prove in this chapter. Because if we do not, we have no doubt that George Zimmerman will come after us and sue us for everything we’ve got. Suing people is what George Zimmerman does, since apparently he is not interested in holding down a job to make a living.
THE LIES OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN
LIES ABOUT HIS PAST
George Zimmerman is a liar. It seems pathological with him. He lies so much that it would appear he can’t help but lie. Let’s go over the lies of George Zimmerman, as we ponder why the hell the jury chose to believe him, and not convict him of murder. It is worth noting that Zimmerman went into this confrontation with a documented record of acting like an irrational kook. Specifically, Zimmerman had called the local Emergency Response Services forty-six times with complaints, problems, and petite paranoias.
In fact, just for fun, let’s look at the complaint history that George Zimmerman had with the police, prior to the famous 911 call that he made about Trayvon Martin on that rainy February Florida night. For it is impossible to fully appreciate the kind of bizarre psychosis one is dealing with, in the person of George Zimmerman, until one has seen his call history, in his self-titled role as Community Watchman Extraordinaire.
(Any abbreviations or misspelling come directly from the police reports; read as [sic].)
General Terms:
TEL = non-911 police number (answered by 911 dispatcher)
BM = black male
LSW = last seen wearing
46. Feb. 26, 2012 – 7:20 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Repeats prior report
45. Feb. 26, 2012 (night of Martin shooting) – 7:11 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Black male “late teens lsw dark gray hoodie jeans or sweatpants walking around area” … “subj now running towards back entrance of complex”
44. Feb. 2, 2012 – 8:29 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: “BM lsw: black leather jacket, black hat, printed PJ pants, he keeps going to this” location
43. Jan. 29, 2012 – 5:38 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: Children “running and playing in the street”
42. Dec. 10, 2011 – 5:29 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: “At the club house” … “Male subject [arrived on scene] that thought he was employed by” Zimmerman … “Subj is expected to get paid for serving food.” … Zimmerman “said that he didn’t wish him to serve at the [event]” … Zimmerman “hired someone else, subj sounded upset and wants to get paid”\
41. Oct. 1, 2011 – 12:53 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Two black male suspects “20–30 YOA in [white] Chevy poss Impala at the gate of the community.” Zimmerman “does not recognize subjs or veh and is concerned due to recent” burglaries in the area
40. Sept. 23, 2011 – 11:08 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Neighbor/Suspicious activity
Report: Zimmerman reports “open garage door” … Describes “neighborhood watch mtg last night with Sgt Herx who [advised] to report anything [suspicious]” … Zimmerman “is part of neighborhood watch” and is concerned because of recent burglaries in the area
39. Aug. 6, 2011 – 10:20 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Two black males, one wearing a black tank top and black shorts, the second wearing a black t-shirt and jeans … “Subjs are in their teens”
38. Aug. 3, 2011 – 6:45 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Black male last seen wearing a white tank top and black shorts … Zimmerman “believes subject is involved in recent” burglaries in the neighborhood
37. May 27, 2011 – 9:18 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Alarm
Report: Zimmerman “has a self responding alarm that just notified him of” an alarm at this location
36. April 22, 2011 – 7:09 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Juvenile black male “apprx 7–9” years old, four feet tall “skinny build short blk hair” last seen wearing a blue t-shirt and blue shorts
35. March 18, 2011 – 9:26 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Animals
Report: Zimmerman requested an officer meet him regarding a pit bull in his garage
34. Nov. 26, 2010 – 2:54 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Alarm
Report: Zimmerman was out of town and a motion alarm he monitors himself went off
33. Nov. 8, 2010 – 6:54 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Maintenance
Report: Zimmerman reports “trash in roadway”
32. Oct. 2, 2010 – 1:55 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: Zimmerman reports “blue jeep grand Cherokee female driver yelling at elderly passengers … windows are tinted” … “the vehicle was rocking back and forth and he could hear the female yelling”
31. June 26, 2010 – 11:00 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Disturbance
Report: “Loud party … approx 50 subjs & blocking the street”
30. June 12, 2010 – 11:13 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Disturbance
Report: Subject “at the clubhouse & pool areas having a party”
29. April 28, 2010 – 9:02 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: “White older model four-door Buick or Oldsmobile” obstructing road
28. Feb. 27, 2010 – 4:46 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: “Residence w/a lot of [suspicious] activity” … “multiple vehs are constantly coming to the” location … “unk subs run out to the vehs and run back inside” … “the subjs are always outside w/the garage open” … “the subjs hang out towards the st all night//ongoing problem”
27. Jan. 12, 2010 – 10:25 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Neighbor
Report: Open garage door … Zimmerman says “this is very unlike his neighbor” … “there is a lot of electronics in the resd and posb in the garage”
26. Jan. 1, 2010 – 4:34 a.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Disturbance
Report: Zimmerman reports reckless driver in “purplish Ford Ranger single cab”
25. Nov. 3, 2009 – 5:04 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: White Ford F350 that was “cutting people off”
24. Nov. 21, 2009 – 2:26 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Unclear
23. Oct. 23, 2009 – 9:18 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Animals
Report: “Aggressive white and brown pitbull” sitting outside Zimmerman’s home
22. Sept. 22, 2009 – 6:00 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Disturbance
Report: “Yellow speed bike … was speeding and weaving in and out of traffic and doing wheelies”
21. Sept. 7, 2009 – 9:01 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Maintenance
Report: “Pot hole in the road” … “it is deep and can cause damage to vehicles”
20. Aug. 26, 2009 - 8:35 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: “Gold Caprice … male driving with no headlights … speeding”
19. Aug. 21, 2009 – 6:57 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Conflict
Report: “Landlord is trying to take [Zimmerman’s] money for rent … and home in foreclosure”
18. June 16, 2009 – 3:50 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: Persons in the pool area playing basketball, “jumpin over the fence going into pool area and trashin the bathroom”
17. June 10, 2009 – 1:55 a.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Alarm
Report: Fire alarm going off
16. May 4, 2009 – 4:07 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Reports a blue Audi A4
15. March 12, 2009 – 6:58 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Patrol
Report: Patrol request between March 13 and March 22
14. Jan. 5, 2009 – 10:53 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Alarm
Report: Fire alarm going off
13. Nov. 25, 2007 – 12:40 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Disturbance
Report: “Ex roommate is letting people that [Zimmerman] don’t like in the” house
12. Nov. 25, 2007 – 12:21 a.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Disturbance
Report: White male ex-roommate last seen wearing a red Florida State University shirt
11. Oct. 14, 2007 – 4:10 p.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Possible criminal mischief to the tire of Zimmerman’s black Dodge Durango
10. June 24, 2007 – 12:48 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: “By the pool”, two Hispanic males and one white male with “slim jim”
9. Nov. 4, 2006 – 2:37 a.m.
Type: TEL
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: A call regarding a “late model red” Toyota pickup “driving around the neighborhood and apt complex for the past 5 min”
8. Sept. 23, 2005 – 7:03 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Zimmerman’s “little sister just call him from above” his address and advises “there was a” suspicious person “at the front door”
7. Sept. 21, 2005 – 9:00 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Animals
Report: Reports a stray dog
6. April 27, 2005 – 12:40 a.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Neighbor
Report: Open garage door
5. March 17, 2005 – 7:21 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Maintenance
Report: Pothole “that is blocking the road”
4. Oct. 20, 2004 – 9:13 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Disturbance
Report: Drunk pedestrian walking in the road
3. Aug. 20, 2004 – 11:33 p.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Neighbor
Report: Reports an open garage door
2. Aug.12, 2004 – 10:03 a.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Repeats earlier report
1. Aug. 12, 2004 – 9:59 a.m.
Type: 911
Subject: Suspicious activity
Report: Places a call reporting a male in a green Ford pickup
But now, let’s begin with the lies. Keep in mind that Zimmerman knew nothing about “Stand Your Ground” laws going into this tragic confrontation. I know this because that is what he told Sean Hannity during a July 18th, 2012 interview.
LIE NUMBER ONE. Oh wait. That is his first lie. George Zimmerman knew everything about “Stand Your Ground.” He knew damn well that he could kill the kid and have a good chance of getting away with it. How do we know that? One of Zimmerman’s Seminole County State college professors, Alexias Carter, who taught a criminal law course involving extensive Stand Your Ground laws where Zimmerman was a student in 2010, testified that he remembers Zimmerman for being one of his better students who got an A grade in the course. Apparently Zimmerman knew the Stand Your Ground law better than most others, perhaps well enough to try and get away with murder.
LIE NUMBER TWO. George Zimmerman’s next lie about his past. He tried to pass himself off to the policeman as a good guy, a choirboy, an upright citizen. After George Zimmerman was arrested that night for shooting Trayvon, the police asked him point blank if he had a record. Zimmerman said he did not. Liar. Liar. He had a record from 2005. There were two different incidents. Two different acts of violence:
— July 2005, Zimmerman was arrested and accused of resisting an officer with violence near the University of Central Florida campus after a scuffle with police. The charges were eventually dropped after Zimmerman entered an alcohol education program.
— August 2005, Zimmerman's former fiancé filed for a restraining order against him, alleging domestic violence. Zimmerman responded by requesting a restraining order against her. Both requests were granted. No criminal charges were filed.
If taken as individual events, we could minimize them—a harmless drunken brawl in the first place, a “he said she said” in the latter. Only one problem with that. In the years that would follow, George would build up quite a record for violence, particularly against women.
THE LIES OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN:
A DEADLY NIGHT
(Note: I could certainly understand if people who are deeply familiar with the case would feel that this list was not complete. There seems to be no end to George’s lies.)
LIE NUMBER THREE: The fatal clash of those two lives started with Trayvon Martin circling the vehicle of a passive, frightened George Zimmerman, who was minding his own business, just sitting in his car. Imagine how terrifying this would be--a swarthy faced, hooded man, circling your car. We know this happened because George Zimmerman told the police that’s what happened. Later that night. And he made sure that the news outlets all knew, because this made Trayvon look like one bad dude. who needed to be shot. Except one problem. In his initial call to police (not 911, but non-emergency, since he was already getting a reputation with the police for being a crackpot, having called forty-six times before with some perceived threat or nuisance), George Zimmerman did not mention this. Again, George Zimmerman did not bother to mention, during the prolonged six minute conversation he initially had with the police (a call which recounts in excoriating detail every single thing George sees Trayvon doing), that even as George was talking to the police, Trayvon was circling his car for a good portion of the conversation. Keep in mind that the first part of the conversation took place while George was sitting in the car. Eerie black man circling your car as you talk, but you don’t bring that up. Lie. Lie, lie, lie.
LIE NUMBER FOUR: The entire strength of Zimmerman’s Stand Your Ground defense is predicated upon the legal lynchpin that Trayvon attacked him. If he was stalking Trayvon, everything would fall apart. That is why the “T” version of the story is so important to Zimmerman. But like everything else about the murder, it does not hold up to scrutiny. The “T” version of the murder has been written about at length; there are many analyses of it on the web. Essentially, it goes like this.
a.) Zimmerman was just innocently sitting in his car when Trayvon popped up in his neighborhood, acting suspiciously. Suspicious apparently, because he was black, and wearing a hoodie. (And of course, a crazed and dangerous Trayvon started circling George’s car.)
b.) Although he was expressly told by the police not to, George got out of the car to follow Trayvon and then, when Trayvon disappeared, George continued walking down the sidewalk to get to the front of some of the townhouses, ostensibly so he could have a street name to give to the officers—or so that’s what George told police. Try not to laugh at the fact that George Zimmerman was a big neighborhood watch guy in his townhouse development of three streets, but he did not know the names of those streets.
c.) While George Zimmerman was “innocently” returning to his car, Trayvon leapt out of bushes and attacked; a fight ensued which led to Trayvon’s death.
THE “T”: According to Zimmerman, his car was parked at one end of “The T”. (Think two cement sidewalks intersecting in the shape of a “T”.) The sidewalk that George stepped onto, out of his parked car, constitutes the top bar or line of “The T”. Zimmerman continued on the sidewalk, which would be him going from the left of that horizontal bar to the far right of that horizontal bar, which constitutes the top of “The T”. Try to picture it: only if Trayvon attacked him along that path, going from the left to the right of “The T”, does the crucial “Stand Your Ground”—which might be all that stands between Zimmerman and a murder conviction—have any credibility. As soon as George steps off of the top of “The T”, he is no longer the victim. George Zimmerman becomes the aggressor.
He is actively pursuing Trayvon Martin.
But here is the great problem, one that strangely enough was never made into enough of an issue during trial. The deadly fight did not take place anywhere along George Zimmerman’s walking path, from the car to the place where he could get an address; i.e, traversing the top of “The T” from left to right. The fight took place forty feet down the sidewalk. Forty feet from the intersection of “The T”. Not only was that where Trayvon’s body was found, but also the detritus of the death: cellphone, flashlight, etcetera. George Zimmerman wants it both ways, which in his case coalesces into a lie: he tells investigators that at the intersection of “The T”, Trayvon sucker punched him in the nose, and knocked him down. But then, when talking to the police investigators and realizing that the location of Trayvon’s body makes this fairy tale impossible, George invents a lame story about staggering around for yards and yards down the leg of “The T”, presumably as the hyper aggressive Trayvon just stops attacking him for a moment, and idly watches? Bull. Lies.
Here it is recounted by Susan Simpson, Associate at the Volkov Law Group and graduate of George Washington University Law. Ms. Simpson tracked all pertinent documents, videos, and the trial in excoriating detail:
“Zimmerman’s initial police statements and interviews are all clear, direct, and consistent with one another. Zimmerman states, in three separate statements given in the days following the shooting, that after Trayvon punched him in the nose he “immediately” “fell backwards.” Those statements were Zimmerman’s 2/26 written statement, (“the suspect punched me in the face. I fell backwards onto my back. The suspect got on top of me”), the 2/26 Singleton interview (“And he punched me in the nose. At that point I fell down.”; “I fell to the ground when he punched me the first time.”; “As soon as he punched me, I fell backwards, um, into the grass”; “He punched me in the face and I fell backwards”), and the 2/27 Serino interview (Zimmerman: “… And then he punched me in the face.” Serino: “Oh, so he said, OK, you have a problem now. OK, he punched and you fell?” Zimmerman: “Yes, sir.”; “He punched me in the face and I fell backwards.”).
On the afternoon of February 27, after the interview that occurred that morning, Zimmerman then performed a walkthrough with police. During that walkthrough, Zimmerman started to describe the altercation with Trayvon in the same way as in his first three statements. Zimmerman describes that he was on the west prong of the “T” junction, walking west towards his car, having hung up with the non-emergency number approximately 1.5 minutes prior. Zimmerman then describes that Trayvon was to the south of him, and walking north along the path towards the junction, towards Zimmerman.
Also of interest is the fact that this description directly contradicts Zimmerman’s prior claims that “[Trayvon] jumped out from the bushes.” There are no bushes Trayvon could have come out from, and Zimmerman never mentions the bushes again. But there is a bigger inconsistency with Zimmerman’s statement: as seen in the walkthrough video, Zimmerman’s claim that he “fell backwards” after Trayvon “sucker punched him” cannot be true. This is where Zimmerman claims to have been standing when he was punched and fell backwards: There’s a problem here. Trayvon’s body was found 40 feet south of where Zimmerman is standing in this screenshot – and in front of him, not behind him.
Note: There are those who might argue that Zimmerman’s defense team did not technically argue “Stand Your Ground” as a defense, but it was clear that the general philosophy was operative throughout the trial. With or without a formal declaration of “Stand Your Ground”, jurors were constantly being presented with information, and being asked to consider whether or not George Zimmerman was victim or aggressor. Even more significantly, jurors admitted to considering the Stand Your Ground verdict during deliberations. Therefore, it was crucial to the defense that this business about Zimmerman not moving off the top part of “The T” be believable.
LIE NUMBER FIVE: Trayvon Martin “leapt out of the bushes’ to attack George. This business of how Trayvon “leapt out of the bushes” is just one of many different versions of what happened that night, versions that Zimmerman told to assorted parties. In one version, Trayvon surprised him by leaping out of the bushes and knocking him down, but not, apparently, before George staggered about forty feet. In another version, George turned around and Trayvon was walking towards him on the sidewalk. I have all the respect in the world for PTSD, but these are two wildly different versions. But what is the main reason we know that both versions—the leaping from shrubbery, and Trayvon striding forward to sucker punch poor George—are complete lies? Because Trayvon was on the phone the entire time. Objective, verifiable phone records confirm this; the conversation started when Trayvon left the 7-11 to buy the now famous tea and skittles, and the call connection continued even after the confrontation, as the person on the other end of the phone with Trayvon testified to hearing conversation between GZ and TM.
And here is how we know George is lying: Nobody, nobody ever in the entire history of robberies, hold-ups, muggings, or other thuggery has just been chatting it up with their girlfriend on the cellphone until the very millisecond that they attack somebody. That’s just not how attacks work. That is, in a word, stupid. But perhaps George thinks we are as stupid as he is.
It is also worth noting that screams heard on the 911 call constitute more damaging inconsistencies. Zimmerman wants the world to believe that the screams for help on the 911 call are his voice. Yet, when he was questioned by Detective Serino, George Zimmerman told a different story. Detective Serino asks him if the screams on the 911 tape were his voice…stating “the screams are yours right?” Zimmerman responded “they don’t sound like me”. And witness Jane Surdyka, who lived in a nearby townhouse, testified that she heard the screams of a boy screaming for help immediately before the shot occurred.
THE LIES OF ZIMMERMAN:
DNA DOES NOT LIE
For the record, I believe that George Zimmerman faked or exacerbated his injuries. Let’s take a close look at the facts. These forensic details will not only pick apart Zimmerman’s claims about the injuries he supposedly sustained, but also his claims about how the fight went down that fateful night:
ZIMMERMAN LIE NUMBER SIX: TRAYVON WAS GRABBING ZIMMERMAN’S SKULL AND BANGING IT ON THE HARD CEMENT PAVEMENT. Let’s look at Zimmerman’s own words, when he was being interviewed by a detective the next day. : “And then’s when he grabbed me, oh I tried to sit up and that’s when he grabbed me by the head and tried to slam my head down … my head was on the cement and he just kept slamming and slamming…I tried to squirm again because all I could think about was when he was hitting my head against it, it felt like my head was going to explode and I thought I was going to lose consciousness.”
How do we know that this was a lie? Several pieces of irrefutable evidence point to this. Firstly, there was absolutely none of George Zimmerman’s DNA found on Trayvon’s hands or under his fingernails. Zimmerman sported a shaved head, and in order for Trayvon to get a grip on GZ’s head, he would surely have to get some microscopic bit of Zimmerman’s DNA on himself: blood, skin, something. According to GZ, Trayvon managed to slam Zimmerman’s head against the cement over, and over, and over again, bloodying his skull. He would describe it later to Sean Hannity as happening a couple of dozen times. Just imagine the scene that George describes (and trust me, this will take some imagination): Trayvon Martin uses both hands to slam George Zimmerman’s skull into the pavement, and at the same time, according to George, Trayvon’s third hand is clamped over George’s mouth, while Trayvon’s fourth hand presses on Zimmerman’s nose, as he continues to beat George with his fifth and sixth hands, while pinning the gallant watchman’s body to the ground with hands seven and eight.
Yet throughout this brutal octo-assault, absolutely not one tiny bit of skin, not a drop of blood, not one trace of DNA, (except for a single drop of blood found on Trayvon’s shirt hem), was transferred from George to Trayvon. The autopsy also states that none of Zimmerman's DNA is under Martin's nails, which dispels Zimmerman's claim that Trayvon Martin grabbed his bald head with such a tight grip that he slammed Zimmerman's head onto the sidewalk over a dozen times. (“Exhibit ME-2, fingernail scrapings from Trayvon, only showed the presence of blood from his right hand. No DNA results foreign to Trayvon Benjamin Martin ...were found.... Translation: Zimmerman’s blood isn’t present.” From an article by Jonathan Capehart, “George Zimmerman’s bloody mess” Washington Post 9/28/2012)
Another way we know it was a lie--that Trayvon supposedly slammed his head into the sidewalk again, and again and again--is that medical experts don’t believe Zimmerman’s story. In the words of Deborah Moore, a nurse with over two decades in a Level 1 Trauma Center, “His head does not resemble a crushed watermelon, by no means. He would have had contusions, lacerations, not to mention blood splatter on his clothes and the sidewalk.”
The following transcripts are taken directly from the trial:
PROSECUTOR: Are the injuries to the back of the head consistent with having been repeatedly slammed into a concrete surface?
DR. VALERIE ROAD: No.
PROSECUTOR: Why not?
DR. VALERIE ROAD: Because if you look at the injuries are so minor that to me the word slammed implies great force and this, the resultant injuries are not great force.
The fact that the police and the prosecutors did not make a gigantic deal of this is unbelievable, and unconscionable.
Which leads me to the next lie.
ZIMMERMAN LIE NUMBER SEVEN: ZIMMERMAN CLAIMED THAT WHEN TRAYVON PUNCHED HIM, HE BROKE HIS NOSE. Zimmerman told detectives that Martin punched him in the nose so hard that he "fell to the ground when he punched me the first time" and that he was "punched in the nose 25 to 30 times." Looking at the picture of Zimmerman’s nose, with no blood at all coming from the nostrils, it is easy to figure out why Detective Serino told Zimmerman right to his face that "the 25 to 30 punches" he claimed he took from Trayvon Martin "were not consistent with Zimmerman's injuries." (Or lack thereof.) Zimmerman was lying about this, pure and simple.
First, Zimmerman refused to go to the ER or get any kind of hospitalization on the night of the incident. It seems implausible that he would make a hue and cry about these terrible injuries, but would turn down immediate medical treatment—holding off, cleverly enough, until he could conveniently go to his family doctor—or as it turned out, “physician’s assistant”. As one nurse put it, “broken noses bleed like a stuck pig.” Zimmerman’s nose didn’t bleed much at all. If you look at the pictures of Zimmerman’s “bloody nose”, taken by Officer Wagner when he arrived on scene, it looks like no other bloody nose you’ve ever seen. The bleeding seems to be from the philtrum of the nose, and the blood seems as though it might have been daubed on him, or applied. There is almost no blood flowing from the inside of the nostrils, and anybody who knows anything about broken noses will tell you that blood would have been flowing directly from his nostrils. And, as so many have pointed out, there appears to be not one drop of blood on George’s jacket or t-shirt, when we see him emerge from the police cruiser at the station, and when his clothes are photographed by forensic photographers.
Even more revelatory are the pictures of Zimmerman’s nose taken later at the station, after he has been cleaned up. Where, we must ask, are the beginnings of the two black eyes, which would clearly accompany a broken nose, if you had been punched “25-30 times”? But Zimmerman’s nose looks perfect. Not broken. There is no more swelling on the right-side bridge of Zimmerman's nose forty-five minutes after Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. I think it's pretty clear that the only part of Zimmerman's nose that is bleeding is the very tip of his nose. Except for one thing, you can see two pinholes on the tip of Zimmerman's nose, which is exactly the location of the bleeding shown in the pictures taken by Officer Wagner on scene, right after the shooting. What kind of punch to the nose causes two tiny pinholes, and nothing else? It is also worth noting that neither pictures taken of GZ the next day, nor for the rest of that week, showed anything resembling black eyes or a broken nose.
But let’s get clarification from a medical professional, someone who does this all the time. (Although I am guessing that for many of you, your own experience with bloody noses has made it clear that the pictures of George Zimmerman, both before and after his nose was cleaned up, show no evidence of a broken nose, no true bloody nose, and no black eyes.) To prove that Zimmerman lied about being "told" by the EMS that he had a broken nose, the EMS report does not state he has a broken nose. The EMS report simply says his nose is “tender” and "the mucous membrane is normal". It is important to emphasize that the EMS wrote that, regarding Zimmerman's nose: "mucous membrane is normal". He observed that there was “no blood and no swelling” of the mucous membranes that line the sinus cavities. Dear readers, this fact alone should have warranted a national headline, and this alone should have swayed the jury: nobody can get punched in the nose so hard that they allegedly go from standing to flat on their back, then get punched, allegedly, 25-30 times, have blood on their face from an alleged bloody nose, and then have a professional trained EMT say “mucous membrane is normal”. And let’s face it. If Trayvon did not attack George Zimmerman, then Zimmerman had no business pulling his weapon. Much less murdering the kid.
Zimmerman also lied to his Family Physician’s Assistant, because the EMS never stated that Zimmerman had a broken nose. Zimmerman was forced by his employer to get medical clearance before he could return to work. Zimmerman went to see his family Physician’s Assistant, Lindzee E. Folgate, about nine hours after he was released from the Sanford Police Department, about sixteen hours after he killed Trayvon Martin. His family Physician’s Assistant took Zimmerman's word for it, when Zimmerman falsely claimed he was "told" by EMS he had a broken nose. But Ms. Folgate did not take x-rays to independently verify. (Why not?) The Physician’s Assistant wrote "We discussed it was likely broken." The Physician’s Assistant also wrote Zimmerman "refuses to be seen an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat doctor)" and they discussed the "risks" of him not being seen by an ENT. Gosh, after all that alleged pummeling to his nose and head, why would Zimmerman refuse to go see an ENT? Who knows? Note also, on page 3 of Zimmerman's Family Physician’s Report, the Physician’s Assistant did not note any dried blood in the nostrils (nares) and wrote "does not appear to have septal deviation". To date, George Zimmerman has not released any x-rays showing that he had a broken nose, nor has any licensed medical doctor ever diagnosed Zimmerman with a broken nose. And Zimmerman has never released a medical report from an Ear Nose and Throat Doctor. And again, if GZ was not punched 25-30 times … if, in fact, he was not even punched once, then he had no business killing a child.
TRAYVON’S TRUTH: Contrary to what some people would have you think, The Dead can speak. Trayvon can tell the truth. I have saved what I believe to be the most damning evidence against the whole “25-30 times” story for last: Trayvon had absolutely none of Zimmerman’s blood on his hands. Work with me, people. Trayvon supposedly hit Zimmerman “25-30 times”, leaving Zimmerman with “a bloody nose.” Yet there is none of Zimmerman’s blood on Trayvon’s hands. The autopsy report on Trayvon Martin did not mention any blood or dirt on Martin's fists. Seriously? Most of us have seen the bloody nose picture of George; how the hell could Trayvon have done that without getting a drop of blood on his hands, on his knuckles? I have been over it a thousand times in my mind. How can Zimmerman be anything but a homicidal liar? And just to gild the lily, there was none of Zimmerman’s blood on Trayvon’s clothing, either (except for the aforementioned tiny drop at the very hem of Trayvon’s shirt). Trayvon’s tragic and infamous hoodie had NONE of Zimmerman’s blood on it? How could that be, with Zimmerman claiming that Trayvon was attacking and that he, Zimmerman, was experiencing multiple injuries? “Exhibit ME-12,” Trayvon’s hoodie, had no traces of Zimmerman’s blood on it.
“No DNA results foreign to Trayvon Benjamin Martin....” (Jonathan Capehart “George Zimmerman’s bloody mess” Washington Post 9/28/2012)
Another interesting factoid that came out of GZ’s medical report: According to the family physician’s assistant report, prior to the shooting Zimmerman had been prescribed Adderall and Temazepam, medications that can cause side effects such as agitation and mood swings. Nobody is alleging that these medications caused George Zimmerman to kill Trayvon Martin, but it is interesting that the police didn’t bother to test GZ for drugs, which is a violation of their own prescribed procedure. And certainly, abusing these drugs and overdosing on them can cause exactly the kind of behavior that might have led George Zimmerman to stalk and kill Trayvon.
ZIMMERMAN LIE NUMBER EIGHT: ZIMMERMAN WAS ON THE GROUND AND TRAYVON WAS ON TOP OF HIM, beating his head mercilessly. Oh George. No he wasn’t. Trayvon wasn’t. We have all bled at one time or another in our lives, and everybody in the world knows that blood flows in the direction of gravity. Just look at the direction that the blood is flowing in the wounds that poor George sustained. (Or GOOGLE IMAGES GEORGE ZIMMERMAN’S BLOOD INJURIES) George tried to look so pitiful in the pictures. But we can all see from the pictures of the back of George’s head, there is no way that George Zimmerman was injured while on his back, his skull being smashed against the pavement—but then the blood flows against the direction of gravity? If George was on his back, the blood would be flowing away from his face, converging towards the very back of his head. Big problem, George: the picture shows dried blood flowing from the back of your skull, towards the front of your skull.
And that is only one reason we know that Zimmerman lied about Trayvon smashing his head against the pavement over and over again. Here is another shocker, a damning detail: none of Zimmerman’s blood was found on the pavement that it was slammed into so many times, the very pavement that supposedly caused Zimmerman to bleed. The medical technician on site after the murder did a thorough analysis of the death scene, and found NO BLOOD BELONGING TO ZIMMERMAN on the sidewalk. Medical technicians now know how to find and analyze an amount of blood that is almost microscopic, and it is a pure defiance of the laws of science that, as George Zimmerman testified, the slamming of his head against the pavement would cause those injuries, yet there is not one drop of blood on said pavement.
Let’s add to this the fact that two of the four witnesses to the event said that Zimmerman—the man in the red jacket--was indeed on top.
And, as we have already observed, police station cameras show him apparently having no injuries or very minimal injuries, and a stunning lack of blood on his body or his clothing. Nor do the back of his clothes reflect a man who has been struggling on the pavement and grass.
ZIMMERMAN LIE NUMBER NINE: GEORGE TOLD HIS FRIEND MARK OSTERMAN—WHO HAD HIMSELF BEEN A COP FOR OVER 20 YEARS—THAT HE WAS IN A DESPERATE STRUGGLE WITH TRAYVON FOR ZIMMERMAN'S GUN. Zimmerman never said this to police. But Osterman wrote in a book, and it was entered into evidence, that Zimmerman said, “somehow I broke his grip on the gun where the guy grabbed it between the rear site and the hammer. I got the gun in my hand, raised it towards the guy’s chest, and pulled the trigger.” How do we know George is lying? DNA evidence ruled out any real possibility that Trayvon ever touched Zimmerman's gun. The only DNA evidence on the gun's grip was that of George Zimmerman. None was Trayvon's. Zimmerman also claimed that Trayvon went for Zimmerman's holster. Anthony Gorgone, a DNA lab analyst for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, testified as an expert witness that “Zimmerman's holster tested positive for only Zimmerman's DNA.” And, of course, it is worth noting that once again, Zimmerman is telling wildly different versions to different people. And these versions were far too wildly different from one another to simply be explained away by stress, PTSD, or memory playing tricks. As some pundits have artfully pointed out, poor George had a lot to worry about, as the time after the crime crept by: there was what the person on the other end of Trayvon’s phone heard, what witnesses heard, what witnesses saw, what might have been recorded by 911 when witnesses were on the phone reporting a fight, what the evidence would show, what George Zimmerman needed to make people think happened, if he was going to walk away a free man …and then, of course, the thorny issue of what really happened that night.
ZIMMERMAN LIE NUMBER TEN: ZIMMERMAN, FLAT ON HIS BACK AND IN FEAR FOR HIS LIFE, GRABBED HIS OWN GUN AND SHOT TRAYVON, WHO WAS LOOMING OVER HIM. We devote the entire next few pages to experts who explain how this is basically physically impossible. But since we are now focused on blood and DNA evidence, let’s look at what kind of story the clothing tells:
I believe we have already established that Trayvon could not have been on top of Zimmerman. Nothing about that claim by Zimmerman makes sense: not the lack of any serious injuries to the back of GZ’s head, not the direction of the dried blood flow on Zimmerman, not the broken nose claim….there is no blood of Zimmerman’s on Trayvon’s hands, under his fingernails, and almost zero blood on his clothes (a tiny droplet), and absolutely no Zimmerman blood around Trayvon’s cuffs. This simply does not jive with having someone on top of you, beating your bloody nose “25-30” times and slamming your head against the pristine bloodless sidewalk a dozen times. But neither could Zimmerman have been on top of Trayvon during the shooting. Some have posited this, but I think that theory is impossible. Why? Ballistic evidence does not lie. This is part and parcel of the laws of physics. Forensic experts on every side of the issue observed that the bullet holes in the clothing do not line up with the bullet hole to Trayvon’s body. Quite simply, either Trayvon’s clothing was hanging loose from his body, because he was leaning over Zimmerman’s body—which the lack of exchanged blood evidence clearly disproves. OR, as some forensic experts suggest, Zimmerman might have been grabbing onto Trayvon’s clothing and pulling it away from his body.
TWO POSSIBLE THEORIES: George Zimmerman did indeed confront Trayvon. He was angry, sick of what he perceived as problems in his little neighborhood (as evidenced by his lengthy history of bizarre and petty calls). He had previously, and has since demonstrated his short fuse and violent temper. THEORY ONE: Zimmerman had a screaming Trayvon on the ground, and shot him from a standing position. Or THEORY TWO: As both men were standing, Zimmerman grabbed Trayvon and shot him in the chest. I know it may fly in the face of what you, the reader, might have envisioned up to this point. But ask yourself this—what other explanation can there be for facts such as the almost complete lack of Trayvon’s blood on Zimmerman’s person? Or the lack of Zimmerman’s “injury” blood on Trayvon? It explains why the gunshots through the clothing do no align with the shot to Trayvon’s heart. And unlike the tragedy in Ferguson, where fifteen witnesses testified that they saw Darren Wilson shooting at a fleeing Michael Brown, there were only two witnesses who “thought” they saw one man on top of another man—and Zimmerman, by his own admission, was straddling Trayvon, immediately after he was shot. That is what the witnesses were remembering.
THE LIES OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN
SHOOTING TRAYVON
We have looked at the DNA evidence. But now let’s look at the sheer physicality of the shooting. Could it have happened the way that Zimmerman said it did? Highly doubtful. Experts in both martial arts and gun training have gone to great lengths to demonstrate the impossibility of Zimmerman’s version of events. One of the clearest explanations, I believe, is offered by Mr. Thom Hartmann, in his blog article logorrheaically entitled “Zimmerman flat-out lied about the shooting event, but no one called him out on it,” published July 19th, 2014 on the author’s website, thomhartmann.com. In his explanation, Hartmann takes us through the “re-enactment” of the shooting that Zimmerman conducted with a police detective, the morning after it happened. Hartman quotes Zimmerman, describes for the reader exactly what Zimmerman is demonstrating to the detective, and then Hartmann will explain to us the real world impossibility of it:
ZIMMERMAN: I said “No, help me, I need help!” And I don’t know what they did, but that’s when my jacket moved up. I had my firearm on my right-hand side hip.
(Z places hand back on hip to show the location of his firearm and then slides his hand back up his rib cage again to demonstrate how firearm was exposed. Then he talks about Trayvon supposedly spotting the gun)
ZIMMERMAN: He saw it. I feel like he saw it…he looked at it, he said, “You’re going to die tonight motherfucker!” And he reached for it. He reached…like I felt his arm going down my side. I grabbed it!
(Z demonstrates how he trapped Martin's hand/lower arm under his own upper arm by tightly squeezing it to his side)
ZIMEMRMAN: And I just grabbed my firearm and shot him…somehow."
(While saying these last few lines, Zimmerman demonstrates his quick draw technique, but of course does so while standing, without a real firearm, and without a real live struggling person's hand/arm trapped beneath his own)
Consider this: In order to draw a gun on your dominant side, you must extend your arm (at the elbow) a significant distance behind your back, which is impossible to do while flat on your back on the ground. When presented with this argument, I have heard some claim that Zimmerman must have arched his back enough to give him room to extend his arm far enough backwards to reach his gun in this manner. However, this argument is unconvincing due to the fact that:
—According to Zimmerman, Martin was on top on him, and had him, more or less, pinned to the ground (i.e., “ground and pound”). At the very least, he was unable to get out from underneath Martin or throw him off. As Zimmerman's own MMA trainer testified, Zimmerman was “soft” and even after a year of regular training, only rated a 0.5 on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of fighting skills, but now he suddenly has the strength to lift up his body with an added 170 pounds on top of him. Really?
—Zimmerman never claims to, nor demonstrates, how he performed this maneuver (i.e., arch his back enough to reach his gun). He just pulled his gun out in a quick draw maneuver and shot Martin..."somehow".
Of course, it is also possible to draw a gun from your dominant side by extending your elbow straight out sideways from your rib cage. This is a much more awkward maneuver, but it can be done. However, there are some serious problems with this scenario as well.
In the police video Zimmerman demonstrates how he trapped Martin’s hand between his upper arm and rib cage by squeezing his own arm tightly to his side… If Zimmerman had extended his arm away from his body at his elbow, Martin’s trapped hand would have been instantly freed to grab the gun (and Martin was in a much better position to do so).
So exactly how did Zimmerman draw his gun and shoot Martin as he demonstrated in the police video?
Answer: He didn’t, as it was physically impossible for him to do so in the manner in which he described in the police video, or in any other reasonable scenario for that matter. (In other words, Zimmerman concocted the whole story in order to save his sorry ass.)
Conclusion: Zimmerman already had his firearm drawn and at the ready before Martin attacked him (assuming that such was the case) which means that Zimmerman was totally and irrevocably culpable for shooting Martin, and a honest (or at least intellectually astute) jury would have found him guilty of manslaughter.
And the real problem here (aside from racism) is that George Zimmerman flat-out lied about the shooting event itself, and for whatever reason (i.e., racism, stupidity) no one - not the police, not the prosecution, and certainly not the jury - either saw through his lies or had the intestinal fortitude to stand up and call him on them.
Note: If you doubt the credibility of the above analysis, just try this simple experiment out for yourself…
Lay flat on your back and act as if you are drawing a handgun from a side hip holster on your dominant side; that is, the same side as you would shoot with. (Of course if you have a holstered handgun at your disposal you can do this with your weapon for added realism, but obviously please make sure your weapon is completely discharged before doing so).
You will find that it is impossible to draw your weapon while lying flat on your back.
Malia Litman’s blog page offers further insight from a retired police officer, detailing that officer’s opinion on the feasibility of the shooting, as Zimmerman recounts it (“A Retired Police Officer’s Perspective on the Killing of Trayvon.” July 19th, 2012):
From Zimmerman’s own account, he was lying on his back, shoulders pinned down and head against the concrete, at the time he pulled the trigger on Martin … He raised his elbow back and clinched his arm toward his own body, representing that he pinched Martin’s arm against his torso. After Trayvon reaches for Zimmerman’s weapon unsuccessfully, Zimmerman pulls it out, with no recollection of resistance from Martin.
It is unimaginable why Zimmerman, in the name of self-defense and firearms training, would… introduce a firearm in the midst of a close counter ground fight, in which you are not in a dominant position? One would assume that keeping a gun out of the fight for as long as possible would be the key to self-preservation. As Zimmerman explains, he is the one on the ground, pinned down and being knocked around. If this is the way things actually happened, he is either extremely lucky or well trained in close combat firearms. It takes repetitive training just to learn how to draw from a side holster when the person in possession of the firearm is in a ground position.
Any firearms instructor will tell you that it is virtually impossible to draw while lying flat on your back. Because the withdrawal of a gun from a holster requires a backward motion of the arm, and the ground prevents that, it seems unlikely that Zimmerman could draw his weapon while pinned to the ground. You have to roll over to the side, creating enough distance from the ground and your hips to draw your arm back and reach your weapon. Even after reaching a gun, there is an additional requirement of additional space in which to withdraw the firearm out of its holster.
Even if you can manage doing this while someone is overpowering you, as Zimmerman explains was the case, it would not be wise to pull out a weapon without creating ample distance between you and your attacker. If you have the ability to freely draw a weapon, you might have the ability to control the situation without deadly force. Zimmerman said he had a flashlight with him, but there is no mention of any attempt to hit Martin with the flashlight.
—Book author’s emphasis added
But the absurdity of Zimmerman story—that he “somehow” drew his gun from its holster with the same arm that he was using to pin Trayvon’s hand—is rendered even more ridiculous when we think about how one person straddles another in order to take control of them. Here that point is almost comically made in an article from by Evan McMurry in Mediaite, ‘Prosecutor Grills Zimmerman Expert; Re-enacts Shooting Using Dummy to Attack Self-Defense Story”, July 10th, 2013:
During cross-examination of defense [Zimmerman] witness Dennis Root, prosecuting attorney John Guy reenacted a potential scenario of the Trayvon Martin killing using a dummy, attempting to show that George Zimmerman’s story that he had fired while Martin was straddling him was not believable.
Root, who had approached the Zimmerman defense about testifying, was on the stand as an expert on self-defense issues. Guy immediately began to attack Root’s credentials, noting that Root could gain financially from appearing on national television to advertise his company, and that his investigation of the incident was less than thorough. (For instance, Root went to the scene of the crime in early June, during the day, despite the fact that the event had occurred in February after sundown.)
Guy put the dummy, representing Zimmerman, down on the floor and straddled it, and had Root locate where Zimmerman’s gun would be. Guy pointed out that in a position straddling the waist—which Root had testified Martin was in during the struggle … according to Zimmerman’s account to his friend, Martin’s knees were more up to Zimmerman’s armpits, rendering the gun inaccessible. In this case, Zimmerman would only have been able to reach his gun had Martin been backing up from him, i.e., disengaging from the struggle. This would be contrary to the forensic expert’s testimony yesterday that Zimmerman shot Martin while Martin was straddling him, i.e., still engaged in the fight …
As an aside, Guy asked if Root had had Zimmerman act out the incident: “Did you have the defendant do this?”
“No, sir,” Root said.
Meanwhile, defense attorneys stared in fascination.
End article excerpt; book author’s emphasis added
And if you have any doubt about this, have a friend straddle you (no jokes, this is serious now), as any person would who was trying to get control of you. Now imagine that your gun is where George Zimmerman said his was—down at his waist. You would have to dig in past the inside of your friend’s thigh, which is pressed against your torso. This is the stupidest lie I’ve heard from you yet, George.
There is one plausible way that the shooting could have happened, though. In his blog, Frederick Leatherman observes: “All of these problems are avoided if Zimmerman is on top, straddling Trayvon with his knees and shins pinning Trayvon’s arms to the ground. He could take his time, draw his gun, taunt Trayvon, aim and pull the trigger.”
WHAT DID THE WITNESSES SEE?
Well, regarding all this, that is very interesting.
Witnesses Mary Cutcher, Selma Mora and “the teacher” all said that the shooter stood up immediately after the shot, leaving the victim lying on the ground.
(And yes, we have our doubts about this theory, because of the disparity between how Trayvon’s shirt lays on his body, and the position of the bullet holes. But maybe George was holding the shirt, or maybe it was akimbo on Trayvon after being shoved to the ground. We feel our job here is not to prove definitively what happened, but simply to make the point that George must have lied about a great deal. And the “good guys” didn’t work nearly hard enough to prove that fact, or to get at the truth.)
THE STRANGE STORY OF JONATHAN MANALO
Told, appropriately enough, in “bullet list” form.
The first witness actually on scene, immediately after the shooting, was a neighbor named Jonathan Manalo. His wife and daughter were helping him build a coffee table in their townhouse, very near the scene of the murder. His wife heard the struggle, ran to the window, and Manalo urged her away from the window. When a shot was fired, he grabbed a flashlight, ran out his front door, and made his way to the scene. His first act was to ask if he needed to call 911; Zimmerman responded that the police were already on their way.
Now begins the bizarre and inexplicable:
--Manalo, without being asked by Zimmerman, takes pictures of the “injuries” on the back of Zimmerman’s head, and of a flashlight lying in the grass. And of Trayvon’s body. But Manalo did not know whether or not Trayvon was dead at that point. The medical examiner would later testify that Trayvon may well have lived ten full minutes in agony, prior to dying. But Manalo did not make another call to 911, attempt to administer any kind of CPR, or stop the bleeding. Nor did he call out for anyone who might be able to help. Instead, he took pictures of a boy who might very well have been in the agonized throes of drawing his last breath.
--Keep in mind that a few minutes later, a police officer will also thoroughly document Zimmerman’s injuries, but only takes a picture of Zimmerman’s face from the front.
--Good citizen? Hardly. Manalo does not turn his cellphone, or even copies of the pictures, over to the police. Instead, he hides the knowledge that he has them. FOR TWO MONTHS.
--The picture of Zimmerman’s “injuries” appears a couple of months later, on ABC News. It is billed as a big exclusive story; nobody else but ABC has this new picture. (Specifically April 20th, 2012.) While any monies paid to Manalo for the picture are not reported, it is a logical conclusion that, given the magnitude of the story, Manalo was paid a great deal. I say this because by now, the story was explosively huge, and the pictures were worth a great deal. Manalo chose to not turn his evidence over to investigators, but to make sure that ABC had exclusive rights.
--Now go back to the night of the murder, and consider this: the “injuries” that Manalo took a picture of were neither seen, nor recorded, by the officer who arrived just minutes after the shooting. Officer Wagner examined Zimmerman, and saw only one place on Zimmerman’s person where there were injuries which needed to be documented: Zimmerman’s face, and the infamously unconvincing “bloody nose”. (And Zimmerman’s claim of two black eyes, which, mysteriously, we cannot see on Zimmerman’s face when he is being interviewed by a detective the next morning and “recreating” the crime scene for us.)
MY CONCLUSION: I could be wrong, but I see no other explanation, given the above facts: Manalo Photoshopped the pictures of the injuries. And he had plenty of time to do it. As I have said elsewhere, I don’t generally think of myself as a “conspiracy nut”, but how could a police officer examining Zimmerman miss large rivulets of blood running down his skull, when he is full aware of the bloody injuries on his face? This simply makes no sense. And we already know that Manalo had financial incentive to Photoshop the injuries; he clearly had no civic zeal to turn over the pictures to the police on the night of the murder, or for weeks thereafter. Here is a fascinating picture and YouTube video that someone has pulled from the internet. Could this be a part of the Photoshopping?
These, then, are the further conclusions which we can deduce. It could be any of the three:
Manalo is a heartless (taking pictures as Trayvon is dying) and greedy (selling the pictures instead of giving them to the police) opportunist. And we know that he chose to take the pictures, even before interacting with Zimmerman. Zimmerman, who had a bizarre and violent history prior to the killing, threatened Manalo. Manalo essentially reacted to “the carrot and the stick”—Zimmerman approach him with a choice: terrifying threats of some kind (perhaps against his family), or to collaborate together, in order to fabricate corroborative and exculpatory evidence, and then to profit greatly from it. AND AS THEY SAY IN INFOMERCIALS;
Wait. There’s more.
Jonathan Manalo further chose to enrich himself from the shooting of a boy by writing a book about it. It was a Kindle Book, available on Amazon. It was 9.99, and it was an in depth piece of journalism that weighed in at 13 pages. Including the bigfont title, and such. The title: “With a Flashlight and a Cellphone…MY TRUTH.” Tragically, it is no longer available for download.
But wait, it gets better.
The police interviewed Manalo a number of times, as one might expect, given that he was the first witness actually on the scene. And during those interviews, they asked Manalo a number of questions about Zimmerman, including his prior knowledge of the shooter. According to Manalo, he had no knowledge whatsoever of Zimmerman. Only one little problem with that. That is a lie. And it is a lie, according to Manalo himself, who, AFTER the Not Guilty verdict was finally rendered, decided to garner himself even more publicity by appearing on the Joy Ann Reid Show.
It was on this show that he made another big reveal. He shared with us that George Zimmerman allegedly pulled a gun on a UPS driver in November 2011. And for no good reason, other than, apparently, Zimmerman likes to pull his gun out, at the slightest provocation.
Here is a transcribed excerpt of his interview with Ms. Reid.
REID: Now, let’s go back and talk about your testimony. There were some other things that didn’t come up that you have since talked about. You have written a book, we should say that you’ve written and is available on Amazon.
MANALO: Yes.
REID: And, in that, one of the stories you tell is about another interaction with a colleague of yours at UPS between him and George Zimmerman. Tell me a little about that.
MANALO: Um. It was about November.
REID: This is the November before the shooting? November of eleven.
MANALO: Before the shooting…3 or 4 months before the actual shooting. He was just…one of the biggest trucks that we have…..daylight….he knocks on the door so the driver can just leave it at the door….and he walks back to his truck. When he turns around, George Zimmerman is just standing there with his gun in his hand, and then just says, “Oh, I didn’t know who it was.” But, clearly, there’s a big, brown truck in front of your house with a UPS logo on it…and you don’t know who it is. It kind of makes you wonder what his mind was thinking at that moment.
REID: And, was that incident reported to your supervisor?
MANALO: Yes, it was.
REID: Okay. And, when did you learn about that incident?
MANALO: I learned about it a few weeks before the trial, um, so I didn’t really get a chance to elaborate on it, but, um, it was in the back of my mind.
REID: Now, why didn’t you mention that on the stand. I mean, you were asked at one point if you had known George Zimmerman before or had ever seen him before. At that point, why not say, “Well, I didn’t know him, but a colleague of mine at UPS had this interaction with him. That might have actually made a big impression on that jury.
MANALO: I understand, but, you know, it’s just one of those things in court, or yeah, in trial, it’s…it’s…What they ask you is they want a direct answer. So, they didn’t exactly ask me to elaborate on anything, his demeanor, if I …you know, it really didn’t get in depth of what actually what I had experienced. I do hope that the FBI finds this driver and interviews him before the DOJ closes its case on George Zimmerman.
Manalo would also tell Reid that Zimmerman had lied during the walk-through. Zimmerman was very emphatic that he had asked Manalo to help restrain Martin, by helping to pull Trayvon’s arms away from his person and spread them out lengthwise (like a crucifixion). But Manalo made it clear that such an exchange never happened. Manalo also stated that he did not believe that justice had been served at the trial, and that he believed Zimmerman was guilty. That is all very strange, given that Manalo had abundant opportunity to tell the authorities about Zimmerman’s penchant for gun brandishing during the UPS incident.
And yet he chose not to.
Until the trial was over—and his fifteen minutes of fame, his moment of basking in the ray of Florida sunshiny publicity, were at last dwindling. That was when he decided to tell another ugly truth about George Zimmerman.
When it was too late.
ZIMMERMAN, HIS WIFE, AND THE BAIL BOND LIE
Zimmerman lied to get out of jail.
It was breaking news, and it was delicious to those of us waiting to have a little Schadenfreude at Zimmerman’s expense.
JUNE 1st, 2012 CNN: “Judge Revokes Zimmerman’s Bond”.
Seminole County Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. ordered Zimmerman to surrender to the county sheriff no later than Sunday afternoon. Lester accused Zimmerman of having misrepresented how much money he had when his bond was originally set in April. Prosecutors say he had $135,000 at the time Zimmerman's wife, Shellie, told the court, under oath, that they were indigent.
Zimmerman did not want to sit behind bars for shooting Trayvon. This would mean posting bail. Only problem, Zimmerman did not want to let go of the tens of thousands of dollars in donations that were pouring in. Kelley Phillips Erb outlines the Zimmerman fundraising extravaganza in a June 12, 2012 article published in Forbes Magazine:
Nearly $200,000 has been raised for Mr. Zimmerman’s defense. Of that amount, Zimmerman’s attorneys say that $150,000 is now in a trust fund for the defense. Nearly $30,000 has been used “to make the complicated transition from private life in Sanford, Florida, to a life in hiding as a defendant in a high-profile court case” – a taped jail conversation suggests that the money was used to pay bills including American Express and Sam’s Club credit cards. The remaining $20,000 will be used to provide living expenses for the Zimmermans up to and during the trial. The original web site used to raise money, therealgeorgezimmerman.com, is now defunct. Last month, a new site was created at www.gzdefensefund.com. That site raised about $15,000 in its first two weeks of operation, according to Zimmerman’s attorneys. Most of the donations to the fund ranged from $25 to $100 with the largest donation received being $3,000. According to the site, the money donated will be used for “Zimmerman’s ongoing living expenses, legal costs, and fees.”
--“The Zimmerman Defense Fund: Donations and Taxes: Sorting It All Out”
Forbes gives us the big picture, but the Schadenfreude snapshot is this: picture good old George Zimmerman, in his orange prison jumpsuit, trying to talk in the now infamous “code” that he thought would keep prosecutors from figuring out what he was really up to: trying to get his poor old wife Shelley to tell him how much money was in the online defense fund. Here are further excerpts from
the above noted CNN article:
The prosecution cited as evidence recorded telephone conversations that Zimmerman had with his wife prior to the hearing. The conversations were recorded while Zimmerman was being held in the Seminole County Jail after being charged with second-degree murder on April 11.
There are numerous places on the web where you can read the transcripts or, more entertainingly (I suggest accompanying cocktails), you can listen to the six jailhouse conversations that are released. It is delightfully amusing to hear George whispering throughout so much of them, as if he is too great of a dolt to understand that the way authorities exercise their right to hear what prisoners say on phone calls is not to lurk just around the corner like Barney Fife, but rather to simply listen to the recordings. Why are you whispering, George? But the most hilarious part of the phone calls is what he has come up with that he thinks passes for code between him and his wife Shellie. After talking about sharing passwords and learning how to get into the appropriate online accounts, they speak of taking “twenty dollars out of an account at a time” (code for $20,000), and splitting that 20 dollars between two people, so that each gets 10 dollars (code for $10,000), and as if that is not bad enough, they talk about getting money every day from Peter Pan. This is how they intend to outsmart the prosecutors: by talking about money every day from an online account that Peter Pan has set up. As though everybody can’t figure out that Peter Pan is Pay Pal.
And ridiculous as this all is, remember that in some way, Zimmerman and his team (funded by so many generous donations) did outsmart the prosecutors. Zimmerman is a free man today.
In fact, for what it’s worth, he is really free, meaning his wife divorced him, expressing fear of him. As has every woman he has been involved with since; all three have made domestic violence calls.
Shellie Zimmerman would later reveal her personal observations and opinions about George in a November 21st, 2013 interview with Katie Couric. Just days after George Zimmerman’s new girlfriend had made a call to police, reporting that George had attacked her, Shellie Zimmerman revealed to Katie Couric that after the arrest, George had turned into “a ticking time bomb”. And Shellie went on to say, "I certainly hope that there are no casualties. I hope that there is no violence … I know I am certainly afraid. I just hope that he can get the help that he needs to deal with his situation and that no one else will be hurt."
Let’s leave this section on bail with something that will really make your blood boil.
The records also show that the second-degree murder charge was a big money-maker for Zimmerman: on the day of his arrest, contributions surpassed a $75,000 in a single day. He quickly paid off about $1,800 in bills and then after his release from jail spent nearly $5,000 in one day paying off Sam’s Club, Target and other credit cards, bank records show.
“Ah man, that feels good,” he said to his wife in a recorded phone call the day after his arrest. “That there are people in America that care.”
His wife told him so many contributions arrived to his online PayPal site on the day of his arrest that the site kept crashing.
“People were just trying to give you, you know, words of support and kindness,” Shellie Zimmerman said.
“Good. Wow, that is awesome,” he said.
Later he told her: “I’m so happy to know that you’re gonna be okay.”
His wife assured him, “After this is all over, you’re gonna be able to just, have a great life.”
Too bad Trayvon and his family can’t look forward to a great life together.
DID THE PROSECUTION THROW THE CASE?
This is going to sound peculiar, given that this is largely a book about racism, and justice denied, but here it is: I can understand the verdict that the jury rendered in the case of The State V. George Zimmerman: NOT GUILTY.
Now, before you scream, swear, throw your Kindle reader or a hard copy, hitting the cat and ruining your day (and the cat’s), please stay with me. For a horrible dark spectrum of reasons, the defense in the George Zimmerman homicide trial was able to create just a glimmer of doubt, thereby thrusting upon the jurors the moral and legal responsibility to render a NOT GUILTY verdict. For a brief moment, let us get right into the head of one of the jurors--the one who wanted, more than any other juror, to find Zimmerman guilty of second degree murder. Soon after the verdict, she spoke to ABC’s Robin Roberts about her decision:
JUROR B29: My first vote was second degree murder. In between that nine hours it was hard. A lot of us had wanted to find something bad something we would connect to the law. For myself, he’s guilty. Because the evidence shows he’s guilty…
ROBIN ROBERTS: He’s guilty of…?
JUROR B29: Killing Trayvon Martin. But as the law was read to me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can’t say he’s guilty.
It is also worth noting that half of the six women on the jury voted to convict on the first vote: two for manslaughter, one for second degree murder. But in the end … reasonable doubt, and all that. It is this kind of conscience-contorting-conundrum on the part of (some) jurors which impels me to examine a truly ugly side of the Trayvon Martin killing: did the prosecution purposely “throw” the trial? Let me state clearly from the outset: yes, I believe that they did. I believe there is convincing evidence of that chilling charge. So rather than rage on the jurors and their decision, let us take a closer look at the dialogue that erupted among and between some of the finest legal minds in this country: Did the prosecution purposely throw the Trayvon Martin case?
Certainly, the issue is not without precedent or logic. As we will see in a later chapter (the murders being in chronological order), during grand jury testimony, Police Officer Darren Wilson was allowed to testify for forty-five uninterrupted minutes, reciting what was clearly a well-rehearsed speech regarding his role in the killing of Michael Brown, written by the best lawyers that the Ferguson Police Union’s slush fund could buy. There were no interruptions, no requests for clarifications, and no incisive questions designed to probe the witness’s veracity, memory, or credibility. In fact, prosecutors have a long history of not acting like prosecutors when they are prosecuting cops. After all, they all work for the same guy. The government. Many prosecutors see it as working against their best interests and future careers, to give the “Boys in Blue” a black eye. Certainly, there is abundant discussion of this all over the blogosphere. Many of the best legal minds in the country are appalled at the all too frequent failure of prosecutors to get convictions, and the twisted goings on within many a grand jury.
Naturally, this begs a question, why would the authorities help George Zimmerman, who is not a police officer? There are several possibilities.
It could be because George Zimmerman’s father was a magistrate. Understanding that requires a much closer look at George Zimmerman’s father, Robert Zimmerman—and at the bizarre history of George Zimmerman’s relationship with the Sanford Police. And with trouble, in general.
DID GEORGE ZIMMERMAN’S FATHER INTERVENE:
HAS HE BEEN INTERVENING ALL ALONG?
There are those who claim that George Zimmerman’s father was a judge, and there are those who become irate at this, claiming that GZ’s father is no such thing. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. And in this middle ground one suspects, there lies the possibility for influence peddling within the Sanford Police Department.
THE FACTS: George Zimmerman’s father served as a Supreme Court magistrate in the Virginia court system from 2000 to 2006, serving as a court officer who dealt with criminal cases. Magistrates perform judicial functions such as conducting “probable cause” hearings on criminal complaints brought by police, and determining whether a person who has been arrested is eligible for bail.
From the Virginia judicial website, it’s clear that Zimmerman’s duties had much to do with dealing with people under arrest: In many instances, a citizen’s first contact with Virginia’s Judicial System comes through the office of the magistrate. A principal function of the magistrate is to provide an independent, unbiased review of complaints of criminal conduct brought to the office by law enforcement or the general public. Magistrate duties include issuing various types of processes such as arrest warrants, summonses, bonds, search warrants, subpoenas, and certain civil warrants. Magistrates also conduct bail hearings in instances in which an individual is arrested on a warrant charging him or her with a criminal offense. Magistrates provide services on an around-the-clock basis, conducting hearings in person or through the use of videoconferencing systems.
So, dear reader, to paraphrase a former president, you be “the decider”. Did Robert Zimmerman have an “in” with the Sanford PD? Could he have used his influence when his son George got in trouble, from time to time? Those who have dealt with Sanford PD say most certainly; but that is hearsay, and we won’t go there.
So now, with the shadow of the father, Robert Zimmerman, in mind, let’s take another look at the history of George Zimmerman.
2001 through 2005: George Zimmerman was fired from his job as an under-the-table security guard for “being too aggressive,” a former co-worker told The New York Daily News. Zimmerman … worked for two different agencies providing security to illegal house parties between 2001 and 2005, the former co-worker said. “Usually he was just a cool guy. He liked to drink and hang with the women like the rest of us,” he said. “But it was like Jekyll and Hyde. When the dude snapped, he snapped.” The source said Zimmerman, who made between $50 and $100 a night, was let go in 2005. “He had a temper and he became a liability,” the man said. “One time this woman was acting a little out of control. She was drunk. George lost his cool and totally overreacted. It was weird, because he was such a cool guy, but he got all nuts. He picked her up and threw her. It was pure rage. She twisted her ankle. Everyone was flipping out.”
September 2003: Zimmerman called police and reported that another motorist spat on him. According to reports, Zimmerman followed the man in his car until the police arrived. Daniel Osum, the other driver, told police that Zimmerman was tailgating and that he spit his gum out the window “out of frustration.” Osum said that Zimmerman then pulled alongside of him, and the two argued. In a police report of the incident, Osum said “at one point, he thought Mr. Zimmerman was going to attack him.” No charges were filed against either man.
July 2005: Zimmerman was arrested and accused of resisting an officer with violence, near the University of Central Florida campus after a scuffle with police. The charges were eventually dropped, after Zimmerman entered an alcohol education program.
August 2005: Zimmerman’s former fiancée, Veronica Zuazo, filed for a restraining order against him, alleging domestic violence. The couple had split up at the time of the incident. Zuazo stated that she saw Zimmerman near her home, and when she asked why he was there, he claimed he was there to “check up on her.” Zimmerman responded by requesting a restraining order against her. Both requests were granted. No criminal charges were filed. Zuazo said that three years earlier, in 2002, Zimmerman attacked her while the two were driving to a counseling session. Zuazo said she popped her gum in his face and he repeatedly smacked her in the face. Also in January 2002, she added, Zimmerman became enraged that she had come home late. They wrestled and he threw her on the bed, smacking her, according to the newspaper.
Let’s sum that up, then:
According to a records search on George, he was previously arrested for domestic violence, resisting an officer without violence and most shockingly, resisting an officer with violence — a felony charge, that surely could have landed him in prison. All three of those arrests, however, were mysteriously closed with no semblance of charges for the Florida resident. So how was someone with a violent past including that of battery against an officer able to carry a 9 mm handgun? Maybe that’s a question Robert Zimmerman should answer.
--”George Zimmerman, Son of a Retired Judge, Has 3 Closed Arrests”, from “Rolling Out” Magazine, by Danielle Canada, (March 27th 2012)
But it isn’t just women that Zimmerman has a history of pushing to the brink. Some of Zimmerman’s neighbors said he had a history of being overly aggressive, and that he followed people whom he thought appeared suspicious back to their homes. At a meeting of neighbors in Zimmerman’s community, days after the killing, “one man was escorted out because he openly expressed his frustration because he had previously contacted the Sanford Police Department about Zimmerman approaching him and even coming to his home,” a resident who spoke on the condition of anonymity told the Huffington Post. “It was also made known that there had been several complaints about George Zimmerman and his tactics” in his neighborhood watch role. The former co-worker quoted by The New York Daily News said he had not recently been in touch with Zimmerman, but his latest troubles came as a shock nonetheless. “He definitely loved being in charge. He loved the power.” he said.
Now, we have to take a break from the creepy history of George Zimmerman and ask ourselves—could George really have escaped all these incidents without being charged by the police, if there were not someone who had some kind of sway or influence over the local police?
Now, let us fast forward to what happened the morning after George Zimmerman had shot Trayvon Martin. George made sure that his daddy stayed close by when things got scary. According to an article in “The New York Times”:
The day after the shooting, George Zimmerman, according to his father, returned with at least three police officers to the Retreat at Twin Lakes, back to that grassy area where plaintive cries for help had gone unanswered. The investigators, accompanied by someone with a video camera, wanted him to re-enact the events of the night when the two strangers had stood their ground. Mr. Zimmerman’s father watched from nearby.
--”Race, Tragedy and Outrage Collide After a Shot in Florida” by Dan Barry, Serge F. Kovaleski, Campbell Robertson and Lizette Alvarez, April 1, 2012
Anybody can see that this is extremely unorthodox, and very bizarre. How would the average detective, who has worked hard to achieve his rank, feel about that? Having a former magistrate watch you question his son, and possibly advise his son on what to say and how to answer questions? Possibly non-verbally? A look, a glance, a gesture? At the very least, if Robert Zimmerman did not interfere with that morning’s questioning, he could have analyzed it, and told George how to proceed in the weeks and months that followed. \And this could have a huge impact on how matters finally came together for Zimmerman. The Sean Hannity interview was the most orchestrated thing I have ever seen. And I have seen Handel’s Hallelujah chorus performed at Prince Albert Hall with full chorus, orchestra, and dance troupe. I actually have.
And when political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell asked Sanford City Manager Norton Bonaparte about any influence that Robert Zimmerman’s father was having on the investigation, and also asked why proper police procedure wasn’t followed at the crime scene, O’Donnell received only a non–answer from the uncomfortable city official:
Bonaparte replied, extending “on behalf of our city our deepest sympathies and condolences” to Martin’s family, and adding that “I’ve always called for a review of the investigation of what they did… so people know that what they did was either appropriate or not appropriate.” O’Donnell also asked if police officials spoke to George Zimmerman’s father on the night of the shooting, or if there was a connection there, which Bonaparte said he did not have an answer to, but said “that would come out in the investigation.”
We can never know the answer with any degree of certainty: did Robert Zimmerman intercede to help his son?
Or it could be that it was not so much a matter of “helping” George Zimmerman, as much as it was an attitude, on the part of the police and the prosecution, of not caring too much about Trayvon Martin? In the final pages of this chapter, we will take a disturbing look at the racist history of Sanford, Florida: seen through that filter, the apathy shown towards the crime scene, the investigation, and the prosecution becomes almost expected. Par for the course.
Note: this chapter is not suggesting that every single person on the legal team was “in on it”. Or, perhaps the “desired outcome” was subtly suggested, and persons who might have fought harder for a conviction backed off, because of the impact they felt it might have on their career. I say this because a.), throughout much of the trial, it does appear that certain members of the prosecution are doing a decent job, and b.), any ongoing overt efforts to throw the case would no doubt just blow up in everybody’s faces down the road. But bear with us—I think that you will find the following points alarming.
EVIDENCE THAT THE PROSECUTORS WANTED TO LOSE:
A FEW POINTS OF PROOF TO CONSIDER
THEY OVERCHARGED GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: this strategy is simple enough to understand. Charge the suspect with something worse than he did, create an impossibly large burden of proof, and the jury will have no choice but to acquit. We just saw this strategy played out in “The Little Book of Lynching, Part I”, with the horrific abuse of Cequan Haskins on the school bus in Appomattox: charge the sweet little old lady with felony child abuse, and there is no way that jurors from her small home town of less than 1700 people—many of them folks from her church--will find her guilty of something so heinous. In the case of The State of Florida V. George Zimmerman, legal minds across the country flooded the airwaves and the internet with their shocked and appalled reactions, after Special Prosecutor Angela Corey charged Zimmerman with second degree murder. In the words of Jonathan Turley, Professor of Law at George Washington University, “This was clearly a challenging case even for manslaughter and the decision to push second-degree murder (while satisfying to many in the public) was legally and tactically unwise. The facts simply did not support a claim beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman acted with intent and a ‘depraved mind, hatred, malice, evil intent or ill will.’ Had Corey charged manslaughter, the case might have been closer but would have still been a challenge.”
But charging Zimmerman, who acted in the heat of the moment, with something that requires behavior as intense as “evil intent” while in a “depraved mind” was the ideal charge for a prosecutor who, in truth, did not wish to win the case. Turley goes on to comment, “There was never a basis for a second degree murder charge. There is a high standard for proving that, and it did not fit the facts or the evidence. By overcharging, she played into the hands of the defense.”
THE PROSECUTION DID NOT OBJECT TO SOME TRULY OBJECTIONABLE JURORS. It was a jury of six people, all women. And the consultant to the Zimmerman defense wanted it that way, because he knows that women consistently score as better listeners. More to the point, the prosecution did not use its power of veto to get rid of jurors who were clearly pro Zimmerman. Juror B37, for example. During questioning, she referred multiple times to “riots” in Sanford after Trayvon Martin was killed. “I knew there was rioting, but I guess [the authorities] had it pretty well organized,” she says at one point. Truth: there were no riots in Sanford. There simply were none. (The protestors, perennially in trouble with Fox News, were, I imagine, doing the right thing and waiting for an actual verdict, before they got upset—trusting the justice system to do the right thing, and all.) She referred to the killing of Trayvon Martin as “an unfortunate incident that happened.” And when asked by George Zimmerman’s attorney to describe Trayvon Martin, she said, “He was a boy of color.” Cripes. That has been politically incorrect for about half a century. And while I am not a left of center rigorist on matters PC, I think we pretty much know where she stands on all of this.
THE JUDGE AND THE PROSECUTION ALLOWED, FOR DAYS AT A TIME, THE VIOLATION OF WITNESS SEQUESTRATION RULES: Witness for the defense John Donnelly was in the courtroom during the trial several weeks before he testified, which is a violation of witness sequestration rules. A judge ruled against the request to strike his testimony, after a defense attorney said he didn’t know about the rule. “On one hand the court is very very, very, very, very concerned -- that’s four ‘very’s’ for those who want to know -- about the rule of sequestration and the witnesses and counsel abiding by them, the question becomes whether the witness themselves had knowledge …” Judge Debra Nelson said. OK, Debra. But everybody else knew. Surely the prosecutors and the defense team knew. You knew. I almost don’t know what to say. I have never heard a judge, holding some position of importance, excusing illegal behavior by resorting to using the word “Very” not four times, Debra, but five times. What is she anyway, a ‘tween texting?
THE JUDGE WOULD NOT EXPLAIN, WHEN ASKED FOR A CLARIFICATION: The purpose of jury instructions is to make complex points of the law understandable to the layperson. Why, then, when the jury asked for clarification of the manslaughter charge, did the Judge refuse to provide them? It happened after the jurors had been sequestered for three weeks, and were weighing the lesser charge of manslaughter. Specifically, their question was, “May we please have clarification on the instructions regarding manslaughter? Rather than aiding the jurors, as one might expect, she first spoke with the attorneys, then called a recess, and then, the judge then sent a note back to the jury that read: “The court can’t engage in general discussion but may be able to address a specific question regarding clarification of the instructions regarding manslaughter. If you have a specific question, please submit it.”
But legal pundits would say that the entire matter of clarification, and the Judge’s refusal to do her part went much farther and served a more cynical purpose. For more on this, read “The Zimmerman Verdict and the Initial Aggressor Exception” by Professor Jeffrey A. Fagan, Columbia Law School Magazine
AT TIMES, THE PROSECUTION JUST ACTED JUST PLAIN BIZARRELY: When nothing else seemed to be working (because they had done such a lousy job), they asked Judge Nelson if the jury would consider finding George Zimmerman guilty of “child abuse.” Felony murder based on child abuse. And yes, of course it is more complicated than that. That, of course, is the point. Baffle and confuse the jury completely, until the jurors have no recourse but to find reasonable doubt.
6.), LAST, AND TO MY MIND MOST IMPORTANTLY, THEY STARTED THIS WHOLE TAILSPIN BY APPOINTING A “very, very, very, very, very” BAD PROSECUTOR.
It started roughly a month after Trayvon had been killed. On March 22, 2012, Florida Governor Rick Scott announced his appointment of Angela Corey as the Special Prosecutor in the Martin investigation. Let me just say it. She is an abysmal prosecutor. But that is not merely my opinion, it is the opinion of some of the best legal minds in the country. Just listen to this rant from the august Alan Dershowitz, in an interview with Mike Huckabee:
MIKE HUCKABEE: You have said that you thought the prosecutor ought to be disbarred, that’s a pretty serious type of violation to get a person disbarred. It is that serious to you?
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Right, it is. She submitted an affidavit that was, if not perjurious, completely misleading. She violated all kinds of rules of the profession, and her conduct bordered on criminal conduct. She, by the way, has a horrible reputation in Florida. She’s known for overcharging, she’s known for being highly political. And in this case, of course she overcharged. Halfway through the trial she realized she wasn’t going to get a second degree murder verdict, so she asked for a compromised verdict, for manslaughter. And then, she went even further and said that she was going to charge him with child abuse and felony murder. That was such a stretch that it goes beyond anything professionally responsible. She was among the most irresponsible prosecutors I’ve seen in 50 years of litigating cases, and believe me, I’ve seen good prosecutors, bad prosecutors, but rarely have I seen one as bad as this prosecutor, [Angela] Cory. (Huckabee, July 14, 2013)
-exchange from Angela Corey should be Disbarred, RealClearPolitics
And in case you are still unclear about the vitriol some feel for Angela Corey, here are a couple more examples:
In 2009, Ronald Thompson, a disabled 65-year-old army veteran fired two shots into the ground to scare off teenagers who were demanding entry into his elderly neighbor’s house, in Keystone Heights, Florida. Before we talk about Prosecutor Corey’s role in all this, here is a little more about Ronald Thompson, from FAMM, Families Against Mandatory Minimums. I think you could definitely call Ronald one of the good guys.
Ronald Thompson is a 100% disabled veteran who spent 14 years in the Army (1966-1980). After his service, Thompson remained active in veterans’ affairs. In addition to acting as a Deputy Representative for AMVETS, Thompson accumulated 5,532 hours volunteering at the VA hospital in Lake City, Florida, primarily acting as recreational therapy coordinator at the VA’s nursing home. Thompson was 62-years-old in September 2009 when he visited a friend of his, an elderly woman in Keystone Heights, Florida, at the woman’s daughter’s home. During his visit, his friend’s 17-year-old grandson, who had been violent toward her in the past, came by with three friends, and wanted to go into his mother’s home. Having been instructed by her daughter not to let him into the house, Thompson’s friend refused them entry. Her grandson began yelling and cursing at his grandmother. Events escalated to the point where Mr. Thompson felt his friend was in danger. He grabbed his pistol (for which he had a concealed-carry license) and fired two warning shots into the ground to scare off the 17-year-old.
I suppose you could argue that firing two warning shots into the ground was too aggressive, but we weren’t there to see just how scary those teenagers were behaving. More to the point, just how much would you punish that man, who only fired shots into the ground? Here’s what Corey would do.
Corey prosecuted Thompson for aggravated assault, and after he refused a plea agreement with a three-year prison sentence, Corey won a conviction that would carry a mandatory 20-year sentence under Florida’s 10-20-Life statute. The trial judge, Fourth Circuit Judge John Skinner called the 20-year sentence “a crime in itself” and declared the 10-20-Life statute unconstitutional. Skinner gave Thompson three years instead. Corey appealed the 3-year sentence and won, sending Thompson to prison for 20 years. A veteran. Shooting warning shots into the ground to warn off some very threatening teenagers, and Corey sends him to prison, effectively for the rest of his life. (Yes, there was an appeal, and it was partially successful. But that doesn’t change the unconscionable viciousness of Prosecutor Corey. It is also worth noting that this veteran was denied his proper medications during the year he did spend in jail, and his diabetic condition worsened to almost total irreversible blindness.)
She has also charged two twelve-year-olds, on two different occasions, as adult murderers, which could send them to jail for the rest of their lives. While I do believe these children need to be punished, and treated, I find it curious that Angela Corey does not seemed disturbed at the fact that she is in violation of the United States Supreme Court, which recognizes that on all kinds of levels—emotionally, physiologically—a twelve year old brain is not the same as an adult brain. But Corey apparently feels she knows better than the United States Supreme Court.
And lastly, there was the nationally publicized case of Marissa Alexander. Marissa was in the home of her estranged husband Rico Gray, when Marissa stated that Gray threatened to kill her via texts on Marissa’s phone. Gray had previously abused Marissa, giving her reason to believe that her life was in danger. According to Marissa, she tried to escape through the garage, but the garage door would not open. This account was confirmed by Gray in a sworn deposition. Marissa retrieved her gun from the car, went back into the kitchen, and fired a “warning shot” towards Gray, which hit the wall near Gray at the height of his head, then deflected into the ceiling. The single shot did not injure anyone. Marissa had fired the warning shot because of Florida’s stand-your-ground law, a law that allows self-defense, such as lethal force, in life-threatening situations. Thanks to Angela Corey, Marissa Alexander, who tried to use the Stand Your Ground defense, was given 20 years in jail. Hundreds of people each year get off using the Stand Your Ground defense. But not Marissa.
And so now you know more than you probably ever wanted to, about prosecutor Angela Corey. And as a last note, regarding this strange woman, I have included a link to the press conference where Corey announces that she (the prosecutor) and her staff have lost the case of The State V. George Zimmerman. She seems positively jubilant! And everybody who was following the case, hoping that the ghost of Trayvon might finally get some justice, was to notice her curious, thinly veiled elation. As you watch, notice her rather perverse wording, given that she is announcing her loss of a big, high profile case: “We are so proud to stand before you … we announced that we would seek the truth for Trayvon Martin … to the dead, we owe the truth …and we believe that we brought out the truth, on behalf of Trayvon Martin.” Apparently, Corey believes that Trayvon Martin is guilty. Which is bizarre, since it was her office that decided to charge Zimmerman and bring him to trial. Her office which felt they had enough evidence to prove that Zimmerman had committed second degree murder. And that what she says in just the first minute of an incoherent, rambling, twenty minute press conference.
****
There is one last, very disturbing and impossible to explain detail, which has made me ponder deeply just how much the police and prosecutors—possibly with pressure applied from George Zimmerman’s magistrate father—were “proactive” in doing everything possible to make sure that George Zimmerman was found Not Guilty.
HERE is a picture of what George Zimmerman’s famous orange-red jacket looked like when first photographed at the police station, about an hour after Zimmerman shot Trayvon--with everybody’s blood allegedly flying everywhere….bloody nose, punching fists, gunshot, etcetera.
OR GOOGLE IMAGES GEORGE ZIMMERMAN JACKET
HERE is a picture of what George Zimmerman’s famous orange-red jacket looked like by the time it got to trial, and the prosecution presented it as evidence that GZ had been attacked:
OR GOOGLE IMAGES OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN’S JACKET, SCAN PICTURES:
Excuse me. But what the hell happened to that jacket while it was in the chain of custody? Something horrible. Something very crooked…
GEORGE ZIMMERMAN, ALONE AGAIN, NATURALLY
As if the public writ large (with the predictable exceptions), didn’t find George Zimmerman repulsive enough after he killed Trayvon Martin, he has managed to continue offending us, all over again, on multiple occasions, in chilling affronts, all without consequence.
First, there was the ugly end to his marriage, just a couple of months after he was acquitted for the murder of Trayvon. In a New York Daily News article by Carol Kuruvilla, “George Zimmerman’s estranged wife speaks out: My ex is a ‘ticking time-bomb’ ”, we get a recap of a Katie Couric interview where Shelly Zimmerman spoke in frighteningly candid terms about the true George Zimmerman:
Shellie Zimmerman says her estranged husband George Zimmerman is acting “like a ticking time-bomb.” … Shellie Zimmerman admitted to Katie Couric that the man has “snapped” and is behaving “like a monster. I don’t know who George is anymore,”
The murder trial and all the national media attention that came with it, have turned the 30-year-old man into a “pacing lion,” she said. This week, he was arrested on charges that he threatened his girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, with a gun …“I certainly hope that there are no casualties. I hope that there is no violence. I know I am certainly afraid. I just hope that he can get the help that he needs to deal with his situation and that no one else will be hurt.”
In September, just roughly two months after his acquittal, Zimmerman was accused by Shellie Zimmerman of smashing an iPad during an argument at the home they had shared. Shellie Zimmerman initially told a dispatcher her husband had a gun … Shellie Zimmerman said that she hopes to be an inspiration to other women who want to “leave a dysfunctional relationship. I hope to be a warning to other woman, that if somebody shows you who they really are, that you should believe them.”
Shellie Zimmerman wasn’t home on the night Zimmerman shot Martin. She went to her father’s house the night before because she said Zimmerman had humiliated her publicly after she complained about not feeling well when they were out. “I do wish that the night before when I had left ... that he had just let me go and didn’t call me back into his life and that I didn’t play the role I played as a supportive wife. Because my life would be very different now.”
End article excerpt:
And also not to be missed, there is a fascinating article in GQ by Amanda Robb (September 28th, 2014) about the Zimmerman’s family’s life after the Trayvon shooting. And it is creepily titled “Meet George Zimmerman’s Family.” And danged if you don’t almost expect to see a picture of the Munster Family, or the Addams Family, when you click on the link …
It is worth noting here that George Zimmerman’s family, with the exception of his brother, seem to be victims in all of this; George’s sociopathic vigilante antics, along with his frightening behavior since the shooting of Trayvon, has left his family in fear for their lives, as they live out their days impoverished, and in hiding. George doesn’t seem to feel particularly guilty or phased by that—certainly his determination to keep pulling newsworthy stunts suggests that he doesn’t care how much they suffer, or if they stay on the internet’s radar. Or even if he has put them in danger.
Here is an excerpt from the above mentioned GQ article, in which we get a glimpse into another aspect of George’s character—his unquenchable greed:
(Note: references to “Robert” are references to George’s brother, Robert Zimmerman, Jr.)
The Univision appearance went smoothly enough—no gotcha questions… so emboldened, George agreed to another media stop, this time on CNN. It would tape at the Ritz-Carlton in Miami. The network agreed to pay for two hotel rooms for three nights and, according to Robert, “everything” they wanted during their stay. (For this article, George refused to speak with me on the record unless GQ provided a similar hotel room—he asked for a week’s stay—but the magazine declined.)
The Zimmerman family seized on their brief stint of subsidized luxury. They ran up a big room-service bill, cleaned out the minibars, got their clothes laundered, made several trips to the spa, treated a party of ten to dinner at the hotel restaurant, and bought swag—from bracelets to bath fizzies—at the gift shop.
Toward the end of their stay, according to Robert, a manager presented him with a bill for $3,600. He says he called CNN, outraged, only to have the producer accuse them of splurging shamelessly on CNN’s dime. “You and your brother are evil!” he remembers her screaming. The hotel manager threatened to call the police. Alone in his room, Robert started shaking. He wrapped all the blankets around him, ordered shrimp, chain-smoked cigarettes, got roaring drunk. Nothing helped. He called his mother in a panic. “I can’t get warm,” he sobbed. “I just can’t get warm.”
Unconsoled, Robert called the only person he could think of: Dr. Drew, who’d been kind to him when he went on Drew’s TV show shortly before George’s trial. He reached a producer, who told him Dr. Drew wasn’t available. But the guy was nice, at least. He stayed on the phone awhile and talked Robert down. Eventually CNN agreed to pay the bill, and the next morning Robert returned the only purchases he could: a bottle of Mercedes-Benz cologne and a Ritz-Carlton wallet that George had bought him to say thanks.
ZIMMERMAN THE DIRTBAG
None of the following will be any revelation to those who have been paying attention to headlines since the death of Trayvon. The incidents simply confirm our worst fears: George Zimmerman is a powder keg, a ticking time bomb. Pick the cliché of your choice.
Since the arrest:
July 28th, 2013. Forney, Texas. Zimmerman is pulled over for speeding, and blithely informs the officer that he has a gun in his vehicle. When asked where he is going, George replies, “Nowhere in particular.” George wants to know if the officer recognizes him from TV; the officer lets him off with a warning, and the officer reminds him, “Don’t play with your firearm, OK?” (Not an electric incident, I will grant you, we just want to keep the running tally of encounters and incidents, accurate. Frankly, the officer looked in a mighty hurry to get away from old George. (As would we all.)
August 22nd, 2013. Zimmerman visits the Kel-Tec factory. Kel-Tec is the company that manufactured the gun that killed Trayvon. He was reportedly inquiring about the legality of buying a tactical shotgun, and was given a tour by the owner’s son. You could say that Kel-Tec is as big a villain in this as Zimmerman, as they state that they don’t give tours: “Special arrangements can sometimes be made for Military, Law enforcement, or Educational purposes only.” So what the hell is so “special” about citizen George Zimmerman that he gets a tour? It is a public relations nightmare, and Zimmerman’s legal team basically said as much. This incident is not to be underrated in its importance as a glimpse into the psychopathy of George Zimmerman: what kind of person, knowing the story would go viral, would rub the death of Trayvon in his parents’ faces by visiting a gun factory, knowing that story will make headlines? The dopey picture of George posing with the owner’s son with a big shit-eating grin on his big fat face made its way around the internet. Disgusting.
September 3rd, 2013. Lake Mary, Florida. George is pulled over for going 60 in a 45, and gets a ticket for $265 bucks. Yee-hah!
September 9th, 2013. Z’s estranged wife, Shellie, called 911 to say that Z had threatened her and her father with a gun. “I don’t know what he’s capable of, I’m really, really scared. He punched my dad in the nose, my dad has a mark on his face.” Police said that Zimmerman smashed as IPad that had recorded the encounter. I’m guessing that she didn’t press charges for one reason: contrary to her 911 call, I think she knows exactly what he’s capable of. Dirtbag. Then, a month later, George nailed a marksman’s target to the wall of their home with seventeen bullet holes in it—an eerie reminder that he had taken care of that seventeen year old troublemaker. Again, Dirtbag.
November 18th 2013. Zimmerman is arrested after allegedly pointing a gun at his new girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe. “You just broke my sunglasses and you put your gun in my friggin’ face,” she says to him, as it is captured on audio. “He pushed me out of my house and locked me out… He knows how to do this, he knows how to play this game,” she told the dispatcher. Officers found and confiscated an arsenal of weapons belonging to George: .38 caliber handgun, a 9-mm handgun, a Glock 19 handgun, a Kel-Tec 12-gauge shotgun and an AR-15 assault-style rifle. Police also recovered more than 100 rounds of ammunition. Major Dirtbag.
Over the next few months, Zimmerman starts painting. He sells one for over $100,000 dollars on eBay. Then he gets a Cease and Desist letter from the AP, whom he is apparently ripping off. Loser.
March 8th, 2014, Zimmerman signs autographs, and shakes hands with people at a gun show, and lets them take pictures of him posing with his dog. Then organizers have to frantically change the location of the gun show because so many people are pissed off. I am wondering if the dog had any say in all of this. Narcissist.
July 28th, 2014. A police officer finds Zimmerman sitting in his parked car outside of a business called “Pampano Pat’s Motorcycles”, and when asked why he has been sitting there for so long, Zimmerman tells the officer he is a security guard for the company. The owner of the company later denies that Zimmerman is an employee, and states that Zimmerman is certainly not on the payroll. Creepy creep.
September 9th, 2014. Lake Mary, Florida. A 911 call comes in from a man claiming that Zimmerman tried to kill him during a road rage incident. He said that while stopped at a light, Zimmerman, in the next car over, began lashing out with threats and profanities and name calling. As if this is not terrifying enough—to have George Zimmerman threatening you—Zimmerman shows up the next day at the man’s place of work. Chilling.
January 2015. George is dating his dental hygienist, Brittany Brunelle. Police are called when they get into a huge fight; he throws a wine bottle at her, and destroys her cell phone. Oddly enough, a few days later she recants her story, claiming none of this happened. Dirtbag.
May 11th, 2015. Lake Mary, Florida. The same man, who was threatened and stalked by George Zimmerman, takes a shot at Zimmerman while Zimmerman is in his car. Seems to me this guy was trying to neutralize the threat. He is currently awaiting trial. Weird.
And of course, no list of George Zimmerman’s bizarre antics would be complete, without mentioning the March 2015 YouTube clip of CNN’s Don Lemon playing George Zimmerman, seated next to a potted plant, blaming his life’s troubles on one particular man: “Barrack Hussein Obama”. Yes, it is the President who has inflamed the nation against poor George. What the President said during a press conference, in a moment of thoughtful reflection, is to George Zimmerman, a clear “dereliction of duty”, and an attempt by the President to inflame the nation against the unfortunate Zimmerman. Here’s another way to look at this. It was George Zimmerman shooting down a black kid, and getting away with this crime by lying his ass off, that heightened racial tensions, not the statements of the President.
Zimmerman has also managed to infuriate the Twitter Universe. In late August 2015, Zimmerman enraged many when he twittered a picture of a Confederate flag “backed by an American flag” (in his words). In another August Twitter, Zimmerman called Obama an “ignorant baboon”. There was another tweet in which he posted an image of Vesper Lee Flanagan, an African-American former news reporter who shot and killed two ex-coworkers during a broadcast, and wrote, “If Obama had a son...” And yet another in which Zimmerman typed, in response to people who wanted him killed, that the United States understands “how it ended for the last moron that hit me” (in reference to Trayvon Martin). In September 2015, Zimmerman retweeted a photo of Trayvon Martin’s slain body posted by another Twitter user with the caption “Z-Man is a one man army”. Several days later, Zimmerman posted a letter in which he said that the photo in the original tweet was marked as “sensitive” and was blocked, so he retweeted it because of the text message without seeing the photo.
And last but certainly not least, as of this writing, George’s most recent creepy antics again had to do with harassing and terrifying an innocent woman. A December 4th, 2015 USA Today article by reporter Michael Harthorne broke this grotesque Zimmerman story: “Infamous Florida man George Zimmerman has been kicked off Twitter, at least temporarily, after managing to fit harassment, slut shaming, Islamophobia, misogyny, and bigotry into 140 characters or less.” The USA Today article goes on to say how Zimmerman tweeted two topless photos of a woman he says is his ex-girlfriend, to his more than 15,000 followers on Thursday. “This is Heather. She cheated on me with a dirty Muslim. She’ll sleep with anyone,” the first tweet says; the tweet included a phone number apparently belonging to Heather. In a second tweet, Zimmerman accused Heather of stealing cash and a gun from him, and included an email address.” Dirtbag Redux.
And finally, there are some of the choice words that Zimmerman offered when he was on the Sean Hannity Show. Not surprisingly, it was worse than a softball interview; as I watched the creepy tone of it (the only time I have ever seen Hannity, casual, sans tie,) I almost expected Hannity to offer George a neck massage. But even worse than the lies and manipulations, that spew from George Zimmerman’s mouth, are his answers, when asked to give his deepest insights and beliefs, about his choices that night.
HANNITY: Is there anything you regret? Do you regret getting out of the car to follow Trayvon that night?
ZIMMERMAN: No, sir.
HANNITY: Do you regret that you had a gun that night?
ZIMMERMAN: I feel that it was all God’s plan and for me to second guess it or judge it…
HANNITY: --Is there anything that you would do different?
ZIMMERMAN: No sir.
What a demon. What a pair. One of the particularly galling parts of the exchange—apart from the obvious killer line—is that Zimmerman claims he had no regrets about getting out of the car that night. This is particularly perverse, since “given hindsight”, George now knows that Trayvon had no plans to burglarize a home, rob a person, nor was he carrying a weapon. But George Zimmerman doesn’t regret that he stalked, and then shot dead a kid who was on his way home, with a can of Arizona iced tea and a bag of Skittles.
Not surprisingly, Trayvon’s father had a response to Zimmerman’s take on the wants of the almighty: “We must worship a different God, because there is no way that my God would have wanted George Zimmerman to kill my teenage son.”
“It was all part of God’s plan.”
Really, George? I think God might have something to say about that.
THE TROUBLED HISTORY OF SANFORD, FLORIDA
There are those who are not the least bit surprised that all of this should happen in Sanford, Florida. The place has a history of racial ugliness. It would be unfair to suggest that racism pervades the city, or the people. But it is, unfortunately, an ingrained part of Sanford’s legacy.
The founder had dreams of shipping Florida Negroes back to Africa. Sanford’s racist beginnings are uncovered in an article by Adam Weinstein in “Mother Jones”:
Long before the live oaks and Spanish moss gave way to interstate highways and box stores, Sanford began as a citrus town in the 1870s, conceived by a New England tycoon. Henry Shelton Sanford, who had ingratiated himself to Abraham Lincoln and served as Lincoln's ambassador to Belgium for eight years, had the town built by Swedish laborers. Though the citrus empire he dreamed of didn't exactly flourish, Sanford proved instrumental to promoting trade with the Belgian-controlled territory of Congo—which included his vision of promoting Congo as a place to ship America's freed blacks. The African locale, he said, represented an outlet "for the enterprise and ambition of our colored people in more congenial fields than politics." A Congo peopled with African Americans could be "the ground to draw the gathering electricity from that black cloud spreading over the Southern states."
--“Trayvon Martin’s death extends Sanford’s sordid legacy.” Mother Jones, March 28th, 2012
Flash forward several decades.
The town was less than welcoming, when Jackie Robinson came to practice with the Montreal Royals, in preparation for leading the Brooklyn Dodgers to new heights. Journalist David Zirin, writing in “The Nation” just a month after the Trayvon killing, revisits that sad chapter in Robinson’s life, and in Sanford’s history:
Before Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color line in 1947 as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he spent a season desegregating the minor leagues, playing for the Dodgers AAA team, the Montreal Royals. The Royals held Spring Training in Sanford. Dodgers’ general manager Branch Rickey, after so many years, thought he knew Florida. He believed that Robinson’s presence could go over if efforts were taken to ruffle as few feathers as possible. Robinson, on Rickey’s instructions, didn’t try to stay at any Sanford hotels. He and his wife didn’t eat out at any restaurants not deemed “Negro restaurants." He didn’t even dress in the same locker room as his teammates. Rickey thought that would be enough. He thought he knew Florida. But he didn’t know Sanford…As Jean West, a school teacher in Florida, wrote, "Branch Rickey had miscalculated the degree to which Jim Crow was entrenched in Sanford. As an example, an inanimate object, a second-hand piano, purchased in 1924 from the courthouse for use in a segregated school in nearby Oviedo, was filed as a ‘Negro Piano’ in the school board’s record; living human beings challenging segregation certainly would not be tolerated." It wasn’t. The mayor of Sanford was confronted by what the author describes as a "large group of white residents" who "demanded that Robinson…be run out of town." The Mayor caved. On March 5th, the Royals were informed that they would not be permitted to take the field as an integrated group. Rickey was concerned for Robinson’s life and sent him to stay in Daytona Beach. His daughter, Sharon Robinson, remembered, "The Robinsons were run out of Sanford, Florida, with threats of violence." This was a low moment for Jackie. The man whose number, 42, is retired throughout Major League Baseball almost quit and rejoined the Negro Leagues.
-- “Jackie Robinson, Trayvon Martin, and the sad history of Sanford, Florida”, The Nation, March 23rd, 2012
It was an ugly moment in a city with a racist history. The Ku Klux Klan was so infuriated at the thought of a Negro (we can be sure that is not the word they used) playing with a white team that Jackie had to slip out of town, in fear for his life.
But the Klan was not done. Around this same time, the NAACP was making itself felt in the state of Florida, and in the city of Sanford. Educator and black activist Harry T. Moore had sued the state, in an attempt to get black teachers the same pay as white teachers. Then, in an act that further enraged the Klan, Moore, along with his wife (also a teacher) opened up the first NAACP office in Sanford. The Moore’s were also instrumental in growing black voter registration by thirty-one percent. The local Klan was reaching a boiling point. They also didn’t care for Moore’s dogged determination to hold a Sheriff accountable for shooting two prisoners in cold blood, according to a surviving witness—those prisoners having been found guilty in a highly questionable trial.
As punishment for Moore’s activism, the Klan firebombed the Moores’ home. The Klan, which has always loudly and proudly espoused its Christian values, firebombed the Moore family home on Christmas Day. This also happened to be the Moores’ 25th wedding anniversary. Harry Moore died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. His wife died in the hospital nine days later.
This is a memory that their two daughters would carry with them for the rest of their lives, and every Christmas thereafter.
This undercurrent of white supremacy has continued for decades, and it erupted again in 2010, just fifteen months before Trayvon’s killing. It is an enraging and convoluted story, which we will reprise here.
SANFORD FLORIDA, 2010. The story goes essentially like this: For no apparent reason, Justin Collison, 22, sucker punched a black homeless man outside of a bar. He beat the poor man repeatedly and then left him, sprawled on the sidewalk with a broken nose. Then Justin Collison walked away--but then, inexplicably, punched another stranger on the street. The entire incident was captured on video, which the responding patrolmen then sat and watched. The officers wanted to charge Justin, but their superior, a one Sergeant Anthony Raimondo, didn’t want Justin charged. Remember the name “Raimondo”. That will be interesting later on.
The reason Raimondo didn’t want Justin charged is that after being detained, a panicky Justin called his dad, a police lieutenant, and Raimondo decided not to press charges, at the urging of Justin’s father. Justin walked away, a free man. It took the NAACP’s complaints and seven long weeks to get the arrest warrant. Justin Collison quickly posted bail, and was released. The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office had to step in, and began an internal investigation which found so much corruption that the Chief of Police was forced to resign—although he was the only casualty of that investigation.
At trial, Justin Collison was given probation, even as the courtroom watched the video of him attacking that man. Observers say that Justin turned beet red with rage while being forced to watch it. Interestingly enough, it was the second fight Justin had been in that night. Earlier, he had attacked the DJ inside the bar.
It was also not Justin Collison’s first bout of violence, or brush with the law. Justin had been arrested four years earlier, accused,
along with another man, of shooting a motorist in the chest after a beer bash at his grandfather's ranch in Volusia County.
Prosecutors dropped that case, though, after they failed to determine which of the two young men pulled the trigger. A year previous to that incident, at age seventeen, Justin was charged with beating and choking his girlfriend, and damaging her home. Prosecutors dropped those charges after his family paid for repairs and the girl “stopped cooperating”.
The sucker punching and beating of a black homeless man may not seem like a horrific crime to some people. But it would seem obvious that Justin Collison has a vicious and violent road ahead of him--and that Sanford police are happy to turn a blind eye, when a white man attacks a black man.
Oh, and that sergeant who refused to press charges, in spite of the damning video evidence? Just a little over one year later, Sergeant Raimondo was the first officer to show up at the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The man whose job it would be to try to save Trayvon’s life, and to correctly document the scene, and catalogue the evidence. Hmph.