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| JUROR B29 "MADDY" SAYS ZIMMERMAN "WALKED AWAY WITH MURDER" |
In an exclusive interview airing Thursday night and Friday morning on ABC, the only minority juror on the six-person panel that acquitted George Zimmerman expresses remorse that Zimmerman was found innocent on all charges, saying he “got away with murder.” But, she adds, she determined after deliberation that Florida law dictated that result. In excerpts released in advance by ABC, Juror B29, who identifies herself only as “Maddy,”
Video courtesy of ABC
The only explanation of “self-defense” in the 27-page instructions given to the jury was in the section on the “Justifiable Use Of Deadly Force,” which describes Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, and reads:
If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in anyplace where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
Juror B29 is the second to speak out since Zimmerman’s acquittal. Last week, another juror who spoke anonymously to CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 referred specifically to the Stand Your Ground law, saying the provision was a major factor in their deliberations. She also expressed more sympathy than Maddy toward Zimmerman, however, saying she felt sorry for him, and that Trayvon Martin was partly responsible for his own death. Four other jurors later issued a statement distancing themselves from these comments.
Maddy's words:
“George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can’t get away from God. And at the end of the day, he’s going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with,” Maddy said. “[But] the law couldn't prove it.”
When the jury of six women—five of them mothers—began deliberations, Maddy said she favored convicting Zimmerman of second degree murder, which could have put him in prison for the rest of his life. The jury was also allowed to consider manslaughter, a lesser charge.
“I was the juror that was going to give them the hung jury. I fought to the end,” she said.
However, on the second day of deliberations, after spending nine hours discussing the evidence, Maddy said she realized there wasn't enough proof to convict Zimmerman of murder or manslaughter under Florida law.
Zimmerman concedes he shot and killed Martin in Sanford on Feb. 26, 2012, but maintains he fired in self-defense.
“That’s where I felt confused, where if a person kills someone, then you get charged for it,” Maddy said. “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.”
As a mother, Maddy said she has had trouble adjusting to life after the verdict, and has wrestled with whether she made the right decision.
“I felt like I let a lot of people down, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Did I go the right way? Did I go the wrong way?’” she said.
“As much as we were trying to find this man guilty…they give you a booklet that basically tells you the truth, and the truth is that there was nothing that we could do about it,” she said. “I feel the verdict was already told.”
I am not sure what's more disturbing, the fact that Zimmerman walked, or to know that a juror failed to stand her ground with her guilty verdict. Certainly a lesson learned would be to have more than six jurors and certainly the jury should be as diverse are the country itself.
Clearly most Americans with an IQ above 3 agree that Florida's Stand Your Ground law is severely flawed. This miscarriage of justice is what's wrong with this "great system". I have said over and over in my blogs, "I'd never want to leave my fate in the hands of 6 people too stupid to get out of jury duty".
I have come to the conclusion that reason has no antithesis like a jury in session!
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Roger West
