Zimmerman juror eagerly claims her fifteen minutes of fame, even while trying to protect her identity.

Courtesy of the Atlantic: 

One of the six jurors who decided to acquit George Zimmerman of the charges against him for the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin spoke to Anderson Cooper on Monday evening. In short, the juror more or less completely believed Zimmerman's version of events. It was Zimmerman's voice screaming for help heard over the 911 call, she told Cooper. And she does not believe that race played a role in Zimmerman's assessment of Martin. Overall, her take on Zimmerman himself was very sympathetic. 

Juror B37 sat across from Anderson Cooper, with her face in darkness. She told Cooper that she hadn't been following the trial, or story, "at all" before become one of the six jurors in the trial. During her interview, she referred to George Zimmerman as "George," and Trayvon Martin as "Trayvon." Overall, she found the evidence presented more interesting than the testimony. 

The first vote during deliberations among the 6-woman jury on the verdict, the juror said, was 3 not guilty; 2 manslaughter; 1 second-degree murder. The juror was one of the three not guilty votes. The juror said that she initially found the law surrounding the case "very confusing," specifically referring to the last-minute addition of manslaughter to the charges they were to consider against Zimmerman. "there was a couple in there who wanted to find him guilty of something," she said, but that neither of the options on the table, second-degree murder or manslaughter, were feasibly options given the way they read state law. 

This juror, number B37, is also the one that had, at least temporarily, a book deal.

Here are a few nuggets that came out of this interview.



On the scream for help: 

She was most convinced by the Lauer tape, which captured the whole thing. "I think it was George Zimmerman's" voice on the tape screaming for help, she said, because of the cuts and abrasions on his body after the incident, and because of one witness account identifying Zimmerman as at the bottom of the scuffle between Zimmerman and Martin. She believes that all but one juror thought it was Zimmerman's voice on the tape. 

On Rachel Jeantel's testimony:  

"I didn't think it was very credible, but I felt sorry for her. She didn't ask for this... I think she felt inadequate towards everyone because of her education and her communication skills. I just felt sadness for her...she just wasn't a good witness." The juror found it hard to understand what she was saying "a lot of the time" because she was "using phrases I have never heard before, and what they meant."

On Zimmerman's motivation: "I think George Zimmerman is a man whose heart was in the right place," the juror told Cooper, "but just got displaced by the vandalism in the neighborhoods. [He] wanted to catch these people so badly that he went above and beyond what he should have done...it just went terribly wrong." Cooper then asked her if she thought Zimmerman was guilty of anything: "I think he's guilty of not using good judgement...he shouldn't have gotten out of that car," but she thinks that the 911 operator "egged him on."

Interestingly enough Gawker has video of her selection to the jury, and it raises some rather troubling facts that perhaps should have had her watching the trial from her living room rather than the jury box.

Here are the points raised by Gawker:

- She dislikes the media in general and considers it worthless. "You never get all the information... it's skewed one way or the other." 

- "I don't listen to the radio" or read the internet, she said. Her only news about the case came from the Today show. "Newspapers are used in the parrot's cage. Not even read," she said. "It's been so long since I even read one. The only time I see em is when I'm putting them down on the floor." 

- 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. In fact, despite a great deal of salivating anticipation by the media both before and after the trial, there were no riots in Sanford, Florida. 

- She referred to the killing of Trayvon Martin as "an unfortunate incident that happened." 

- Asked by George Zimmerman's attorney to describe Trayvon Martin, she said, "He was a boy of color."

Over at Slate they watched the video as well and then asked a prosecutor/law professor what SHE thought:  

Gail Brashers-Krug, a former federal prosecutor and law professor, is currently a criminal defense attorney in Iowa. She also jumped back when B37 said, ”You never get all the information.“ “That's exactly what a defense attorney loves to hear,” says Brashers-Krug. “That's reasonable doubt, right there. If I were a prosecutor, that would make me extremely nervous about her.” She adds that B37’s devotion to animals might raise flags for her as well. “The animal thing is weird. She doesn't know how many animals she has, and she mentions her animals far, far more than her two daughters. She strikes me as eccentric and unpredictable. I never, ever want eccentric, unpredictable people on a jury.” 

Brashers-Krug has another reservation about seating B37: “She really wants to be a juror. She seems to be going out of her way to minimize the disruptive effect of a multiweek trial on her life. Jurors rarely do that. She is also taking pains to avoid saying anything particularly sympathetic to either side. Both sides tend to be very skeptical of jurors who are particularly eager to serve on high-profile cases. Often they have their own agendas, or are attention-seekers.”

From my perspective choosing this lady seems like a fairly substantial mistake  on the part of the prosecutors.

And that is not the ONLY mistake they made as evidenced by a recently uncovered My Space page of Zimmerman's.

Yeah I don't think that there was any way that Trayvon Martin was going to get any justice in that courtroom.