Last week one of the jurors on the George Zimmerman trial, Juror
B29 who identified herself as Maddy, told Robin Roberts on ABC’s Good Morning
America that she believed Zimmerman got away with murder. The first vote she
cast during deliberations was “guilty of second degree murder”.
“A lot of us wanted to find something bad, something that
we could connect to the law. For myself,” she paused then continued with absolute
conviction, “he’s guilty. The evidence shows he’s guilty.” She spoke of her
deep sadness for Trayvon and his family and said she felt immense pain for
having had to vote the way she did, but she believed that the law gave her no
other option.
Her interview was moving, and markedly different to that of
Juror B37 who kept her identity a secret and was the first to speak out after
the trial. Anderson Cooper interviewed her. He clearly had little respect for
her and she clearly didn’t see that. She identified with Zimmerman and showed
no empathy for Trayvon Martin or sadness at the loss of his life. She intimated
that it was his fault that he was killed, as he should have walked away from
Zimmerman.
She firmly believed Zimmerman had the right to kill Trayvon.
It was quite horrifying to listen to her. Stupefying to realize that this was
one of the people who served up ‘justice’.
At the same time as the interview, she released a video of
her voir dire as part of a PR
campaign for a book she’d written. She said later that she had changed her mind
about the book – possibly because of all the negative reactions she got to the
interview.
The voir dire
exposed a lot about her personality. She showed herself to be unsocialized and
kind of proud of it, obsessed beyond balance with her many pets. She clearly
enjoyed being in the spotlight and obviously desperately wanted to be on that
jury. She said at one point that she didn’t know anything about national news –
trying to prove that she wouldn’t be influenced as a juror by media – yet a
couple of sentences later admitted that she watched national news on the TV.
It’s hard to say why the prosecution didn’t eliminate a
woman inclined to manipulate fact to paint herself in a good light, prone to
ludicrous contradictions with no awareness of them, and most interested in
being center stage. Perhaps
they just didn’t see her as a threat.
What’s clear now is that the Zimmerman case was never about
justice for her. It was an opportunity. Well illustrated by the fact that she
was the first juror to speak out. Four of the other jurors, B51, B76, E6 and
E40, immediately released a statement to the press saying “The opinions of
Juror B37, expressed on the Anderson Cooper show were her own, and not in any
way representative of the jurors listed below." Maddy wasn’t part of that
group, but her interview with Robin Roberts clearly shows which side of the
fence she was on.
What happened behind those closed doors? Juror B37 was the
only juror who positively believed and had absolutely no doubt from the start that Zimmerman was guilt
free.
Maddy wasn't alone in initially
believing him to be guilty. But she said that in reviewing the law, they all came to
realize that there wasn’t any hard evidence to prove Zimmerman acted
unlawfully. She added that it was incredibly hard for her to let Zimmerman off but
she believed she was doing what a juror is supposed to do – assess a case
according to the law.
I suspect that two things happened: one, there was an alpha
dog, a bully, in deliberations – Juror B37 – and the jurors didn’t understand
that evidence didn’t need to be hard evidence to be acceptable. Maddy said “…as the law was read to me, if you
have no proof he killed him intentionally, you can’t say he’s guilty.” But how
did she and the others who believed he was guilty, interpret that word proof? And did Juror B37 have anything
to do with them changing their minds?
There was plenty of proof that Zimmerman lied, that he had
it in for African Americans; that he profiled Trayvon and picked an unnecessary
fight. It just wasn’t CSI-type evidence and the prosecution didn’t present it
in such a way that the jurors could understand its importance.
I wonder if in the coming weeks any of the jurors will
speak out and say they were misled about the law, or just didn't really understand it, or were bullied during deliberations. I wonder if
that would be grounds for a re-trial. I think it’s time for Christianne
Amanpour to interview Maddy; to present the evidence and ask her why she didn’t
think it was valid. And what really happened during the deliberations.
