Zimmerman lawyer: Jurors followed law, not their hearts
Juror B29 got it right when she
said the six Florida jurors had to follow the law, rather than their hearts,
Mark O'Mara said in a statement Friday.
The 36-year-old juror, who used
only her first name of Maddy out of concerns for her safety, told ABC on Thursday that she and others on the panel felt
Zimmerman was guilty, but that wasn't enough.
"I stand by the decision because
of the law," she said. "If I stand by the decision because of my heart, he would
have been guilty." She also said, "George Zimmerman got away with murder, but
you can't get away from God."
At the beginning of
deliberations, Maddy told ABC, she wanted to convict Zimmerman of second-degree
murder. But she realized on the second day of deliberations that there wasn't
enough proof to convict him of murder or the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Zimmerman 'got away with
murder' 
Trayvon's mother: Use my
tragedy
Juror B29 said the evidence
showed that Zimmerman was guilty of killing Martin, 17, in February
2012 at a
neighborhood in Sanford, Florida.
"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," she told ABC.
O'Mara said that the defense
acknowledged Zimmerman killed Martin -- in self-defense. He said a "juror's job
is not to decide what a law should be, her job is to apply the facts presented
at trial to the laws they are instructed about."
"We do ask jurors not to reach
their verdicts based on what their hearts tell them; for the verdict, a juror
must set aside emotions and follow the law," said O'Mara. "Based on her
comments, Juror B29 accepted a tremendous burden, set her feelings aside, and
cast a verdict based the evidence presented in court and on the law she was
provided."
His statement labeled B29 as a
"model juror."
Thursday night, Martin's mother
said she was devastated after hearing the juror's comments.
"It is devastating for my family
to hear the comments from juror B29, comments which we already knew in our
hearts to be true. That George Zimmerman literally got away with murder,"
Sybrina Fulton said in a written statement. "This new information challenges our
nation once again to do everything we can to make sure that this never happens
to another child."
Maddy is the second juror to
speak about the high-profile case since the all-female jury acquitted Zimmerman
earlier this month.
She and other jurors also have
identified themselves by their numbers from the jury pool.
Opinion:
What if both were white?
Last week, the woman known as Juror B37
told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" that Zimmerman "didn't do anything
unlawful" and was "justified" in shooting 17-year-old Martin last year.
Zimmerman has been out of the
public eye since the jury found him not guilty of second-degree murder on July
13
.
Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, had
a confrontation with the unarmed African-American teen after calling police to
report a suspicious person, and he said he shot Martin in self-defense.
Juror B29 stressed that she and
the other jurors took their responsibility seriously.
"I don't want people to think
that we didn't think about this, and we didn't care about Trayvon Martin,
because we did. We're very sad that it happened to him," she said.
