The fallout of the George Zimmerman trial continues, as one of the trial jurors made some startling admissions during an ABC interview:
The only minority on the all-female jury that voted to acquit George Zimmerman said today that Zimmerman “got away with murder” for killing Trayvon Martin and feels she owes an apology Martin’s parents.
“You can’t put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty,” said the woman who was identified only as Juror B29 during the trial. “But we had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence.”
She said the jury was following Florida law and the evidence, she said, did not prove murder.
Yet, a case can be made that the intent of her statements came across very differently after the editing:
Yesterday Breitbart News noted the ABC interview with Juror B29. The big news was that Maddy–her last name was never used to protect her privacy–had told Robin Roberts “George Zimmerman got away with murder.” And indeed if you watch the Nightline edit of the interview she does seem to say that without hesitation or reservation.
However, William Saletan at Slate points out that the unedited interview seems to show something different. Maddy actually hesitates twice when answering Roberts’ question which contains the statement “George Zimmerman got away with murder.” As Saletan points out “she looks as though she’s trying to reconcile the sentiment that’s been quoted to her—that Zimmerman ‘got away with murder’—with her own perspective. So she repeats the quote and adds words of her own, to convey what she thinks: that there’s a justice higher than the law, which Zimmerman will have to face.”
Jazz Shaw at Hot Air also has an analysis:
I agree … that this was some pretty shameful editing on the part of ABC for the many instances where they used the footage, and the rest of the networks are equally culpable for lapping it up.
Here is the video, so you can judge for yourself:
On the other hand, other Americans are far more sympathetic to Zimmerman. The Department of Justice seized the gun used during his fight with Tayvon Martin, despite the “not guilty” verdict. Many citizens felt that act violated Zimmerman’s civil rights.
Subsequently, one Ohio group decided to raise funds to replace the confiscated weapon:
An Ohio firearms group has raised more than $12,000 to be spent on guns or a security system for George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer who was acquitted of all charges in the fatal shooting of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida. But the money could end up being used to pay for Zimmerman’s defense costs and fees.
The $12,150.37 check that the group has written out to Zimmerman is the result of a fundraising effort that was launched because the group believes Zimmerman’s gun rights are being violated by the U.S. Department of Justice. The department has taken all the evidence from the trial, including the gun that killed Martin, as part of a civil rights investigation.
Given the vitriolic death threats leveled against him, I am sure Zimmerman could use both a new gun and security system. I wonder if the former juror feels bad about that?
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Frankly, she strikes me as somebody who is now trying to protect herself from “outraged” Martin supporters. Her comment that Zimmerman got away with killing Martin is revealing. Did Zimmerman ever deny killing Martin? Was that the basis of the defense argument? No. He acknowledged killing Marin in self-defense and no evidence was presented that contradicted his account of the event or that poked holes in his self-defense argument.
This is a non-story by a media machine that seeks to provoke constant turmoil and even a race war. The interviewer’s loaded way of asking questions is a good example of that goal.
At a time when thousands of blacks are being murdered at the hands of other blacks, our foreign policy is in collapse, the economy does not recover, major cities are going bankrupt, there has been no resolution of the Benghazi massacre or the hundreds of murders resulting from Fast and Furious, and the IRS is being used to suppress political dissent, the media concentrates on this story. That is a disgrace.
Frankly, she strikes me as somebody who is now trying to protect herself from “outraged” Martin supporters.
I agree, and there is also the issue of groupthink and racism in minority communities in America. My wife, a beautiful black African woman who was born and grew up in Tanzania, has gotten a bit of blowback from some African American women for marrying a white man.
But ABC is also guilty of deceptive editing and trying to manipulate the juror. I long ago came to the conclusion that major media organizations such as ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, etc. have sold themselves to a radical political ideology and are not to be trusted. I don’t doubt that this juror, who has seen the open fanning of racial hatred by these media organizations, would want to try to protect herself and her family. And to be fair, she probably had some honest doubts about Zimmerman’s innocence.
What a horrible world we live in, when “civil rights” groups and much of the media are openly fanning racial hate and calling for lynchings and pogroms in service of their inhuman political ideology. Is this America or the Soviet Union?
That was my take, too. The nasty editing made it worse than it was. What is it lately with editing being used to mislead the viewer?
Graduates of the Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine) School of Agenda Journalism?
Diplomad
Hear, Hear!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324564704578629810369962152.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
JAMES TARANTO: In Praise of Juror B29: She did the right thing despite her prejudices.
—via InstaPundit
I think there is a lot to what he says.
I also think the media is not finished making myths and victims in this matter.
She did the right thing b/c high quality defense counsel left her no real choice and b/c, whatever she says to the contrary, she knew full well the world was watching.
She’d have ‘voted her heart’ if she thought she could have gotten away with it.
It was the evidence that left her with no real choice but to vote “not guilty,” not the high-quality defense counsel. (Not to knock the defense counsel, who were in fact high quality, and who did a good job explaining to the jury how the state’s evidence failed to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt).
I’m also reminded of what AllahPundit said following the Zimmerman acquittal…
(I paraphrase) “No matter how you disgusted you are with the media, it is not enough.”
She uses the prompted words, and probably would have said something less quotable otherwise. But it’s not quite the “I shot the clerk?!” from My Cousin Vinnie. She does thing that Zimmerman was to some degree in the wrong but that the unfortunate rule about the state having to prove it got in the way.
I would really like to know if she got outed in her community and is having to cover herself to live in the world. I suspect that by the end of August all the jurors will have been outed and get threats or other blowback. Look for more of this “I thought he was guilty but they-all wouldn’t hear it” refrain.
What I heard in her statement was, “I was sure he was guilty of murder when the trial started, but after seeing the evidence it just wasn’t there.”
Which, to me, implies that she lied when she said she could serve impartially on the jury.
But at least she followed the Rule of Law, not the Rule of Mob, in the end.
And, frankly, I think what Obama and his minions are trying to do to George Zimmerman is yet another impeachable offense. TO intentionally destroy a citizen’s life with falsehood after falsehood while applying the full force of the State against them — all for political gain — is well past intolerable.
Where was the DoJ when OJ was acquitted?
[…] fumbling for words so she just quoted verbatim what the ABC news wonk asked her. More on this: Zimmerman Trial | Zimmerman Juror | Apology and Gun Funds He restoreth my soul. He giveth me kung fu in the face of my enemies. Reply With […]
Lesson number 1: don’t talk to the media after being on a jury. Lesson number 2: don’t talk to the media because they can edit and manipulate the original intent. Lesson number 3: don’t talk to the media because it is a group of like minds against a novice.
On form, as the Brits say, bet on editing.
The MSM editing a video to make it something other than it was? Wow, who would have thought that possible? Isn’t there a Code of Ethics that keeps that from happening?
/sarc
Aw, cut ’em a break; this is the first time they’ve been caught doing something like this.
No, wait; it isn’t…
Look for ABC to give follow-up time to Crump and Corey as well as Sybrina/Tracy to repeat the label ‘Murderer’
Disgusting.
And sad that the public is not very discerning and discriminating.
Ah, yes, “Social Justice” denied, is justice preserved!
Yes, I agree with everyone above: the media sucks for the distortions they’ve been broadcasting and their continuing distortion of the truth; Obama and his DOJ have intentionally set out to destroy Zimmermans life, and seem to be succeeding at it, without any EFFECTIVE protest. And the false narrative of Childe Trayvon, marches on.
Sadly, that narrative (and the twisted reasoning that SYG set Zimmerman free) marches on. They, the forces of Black McCarthyism, still dominate the media with their mostly unfounded complaints. And that Black-induced narrative has indelibly established itself in the public consciousness.
A recent Washington Post-Abc News poll – here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2013/07/22/National-Politics/Polling/question_11459.xml
found that when asked if the shooting was justified or unjustified, only 26% said justified (40% unjustified, 34% didn’t know enough about it or had no opinion)
When asked if they approved or disapproved of the Not Guilty verdict, they split evenly – 41% on each side.
When asked if Zimmerman should be charged in federal court with violating Martin’s civil rights, although 46% said no, 39% were in favor of it (in regard to juror B29, females outnumbered males 44% to 33% to charge – making the not guilty verdict by the all-woman jury an even more emphatic statement of his innocence).
These poll numbers overall are discouraging. After the trial, after the clear-cut evidence presented in Zimmerman’s behalf, how can only 26% of the public say he was justified shooting Martin in self defense? After the LOUD AND CONSTANT repetition that Zimmerman was not in any way a racist, how can almost 40% of those polled think it advisable to charge him with a racial crime?
We know the answer. The media establishes our cultural myths. To reshape or alter those myth-making inclinations requires more than irate bloggers and angry commentators texting to their internet sites. For the MSM, words are like water drops off a duck’s back. But what does get their attention are marches and protests and threats — that’s why the black extortion network is winning the Trayvon/SYG narrative war – a few phone calls and church invocations, and the Black Mobocracy is mobilized.
I knew this would happen when no counter-protestors showed up after it became evident the Traybots were lying and distorting the truth. And why were there no Zimmerman supporters chanting and praying for HIM outside the courthouse? And where were the outraged counter protestors during the recent post verdict demonstration-riots? And for all the talk about George Zimmerman’s Hispanic heritage, was there even ONE Hispanic organization forcefully standing up on his behalf?
And even today, where are the counter demonstrators at the Florida Statehouse where so-called ‘Dream Defenders’ have been camped out in the Capitol building outside Gov Rick Scott’s office for nearly two weeks now, demanding the SYG law be replaced with “Trayvon’s Law” – and not one counter demonstration demanding they be evicted?
No boots on the ground equals no media respect or coverage.
In the media war – talk is cheap.
The problem is not just with the editing of the video but also the written article describing the interview. In just the second paragraph they state:
“You can’t put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty,” said the woman who was identified only as Juror B29 during the trial. “But we had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence.”
Now a quick read would leave one to assume that ‘…in our hearts we felt…’ and ‘But we had to grab our hearts…’ was referring to the jury as a whole. In fact, however, on the tape she leads into that description with the statement ‘a lot of us had wanted to find something bad, something that we could connect to the loss…’.
What does ‘a lot of us’ mean? Evidently in this situation it means more than one and less than seven. In reality it probably means 3 in this case. A ‘lot’ would not typically mean 2 out of 6 and if it had been 4 or more then the description would more likely been ‘over half’ or ‘the majority’.
The use of the term ‘we’ in the article infers that the whole jury was in a quandry over whether to to accept ’emotions’ or whether to abide by the law. Based on the other juror who has spoken publicly this was not the case. I can easily understand that the discussions may have included emotional concerns of all the jurors and a certain amount of empathy towards one or more of the jurors for the sympathetic feelings in their hearts. The inference, however, that the jury as a whole was ruled by that emotion and prevented from coming to a ‘just’ verdict by having to follow the law is typical of the media inserting its bias in even the most subtle of ways.
Consider the wapo source with a grain of salt. If they have a poll they don’t like they will cook the numbers by changing their demographics polled until they find an answer suitable to the narrative.
Watch this exchange with Brad Thor and 3 others:
Author Brad Thor offers to buy George Zimmerman gun of his choice
http://www.examiner.com/video/brad-thor-offers-to-buy-george-zimmerman-new-gun
Keep in mind that if 20-30% of black voters leave the Democrat plantation that party will be in a very deep hole it will take a long time to climb out of. They can’t keep them in line based on economic performance so they have to turn to fear mongering.
The Democrats are panicked because a new generation of conservatives are pushing back. I expect to see more of this as well as some shameless misrepresentation of the voter ID laws being enacted across the nation.
Zonation over at PJ media has some good thoughts on how e people on all sides of the debate can push back without being seen as racist. http://pjmedia.com/?s=Zo&submit.x=10&submit.y=9&search_sortby=date
B29 articulated that the law requires proof of “mens rea” (intent) to kill not just “actus reus” (the act of killing itself) for a conviction of murder.
She said she thought he was guilty of killing TM but since he didn’t “intend” to kill they couldn’t convict according to the “law.”
In a way her default stance was taking a strict liability view–intent doesn’t matter if someone winds up dead–which is actually a common-sense viewpoint that a naive juror could be expected to have.
On the other hand can it be possible that she’s never watched any police crime dramas on television, ever???? Or movies???
She’s never ever heard that someone must be guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt”??? And must have “intent” to kill to be convicted???
I don’t believe that for one second.
I also don’t believe she was such a strong juror for the State, ever. If she really believed GZ was guilty she would have held out for longer than a 9 nine hour deliberation.
I think what “really happened” is that–as in any group of several women, anywhere–a clash of personalities developed and so the nine hours was some kind of a power struggle based on personalities. Maybe because she was the only minority and felt she had to “take a stand” for the dead minority kid for the sake of principle.
This B29 actually looked reasonably intelligent and not a dummy. But seriously she wanted to get home on Saturday night, so she changed her vote. If she really had a semi-strong belief in guilt she wouldn’t have caved so quickly.
Why do I suddenly find myself wondering “who” really made those minutes on the Nixon tapes disappear?
Yeah, thought I recalled hearing that Halderman was saying that those 18-minutes were there when he gave that tape to MSNBC, or maybe it was to CNN! 😉
[…] from context and ran with them. A couple of interesting links from Legal Insurrection today: Zimmerman Trial | Zimmerman Juror | Apology and Gun Funds And they're calling this another Zimmerman case, I'm not convinced. Zimmerman Redux | Merritt […]
When I saw the title ‘Trayvon Martin – Page 75’ I was intrigued by 75 pages. That’s pretty long for some kind of post, etc. on line. Upon checking it out I found it was a forum thread (on a sports forum out of Detroit oddly enough.) I looked back to the origin of the of the thread and found it started just shortly after news started breaking about the Martin-Zimmerman event.
I read the first few pages and was amazed at what those posts revealed. Here in short posts was the unfolding creation of the myths of Martin-Zimmerman virtually day-by day. Most of the posts do not include links or sources but it is obvious what news was flowing either from the media or the net. Of course we all know that the media hyped this whole situation based on the race baiting activisits. In these pages of posts, however, you can see the impact on at least a small sub-set of the population as virtually every post takes each tidbit as proof positive that Zimmerman was the devil incarnate who took the life of a poor child. The best the opposing side could do is say ‘I’m not judging until I know the facts.’
I only went through the first 6-8 pages but I plan to read more. Of course they had the normal back and forth personal type attacks but I skipped most of that. I did read the 75th page and can say that the comments were fortunately more reasonable and balanced, but they were mostly about the Maddy’s coming out interview. I presume that over the course of the thread at least the posts became more balanced. Of course they probably tailed of after GZ was charged and picked back up when the trial started. I think it will be interesting to watch the time line unfold.
[…] Did Zimmerman juror really apologize for verdict or was interview deceptively edited? (legalinsurrection.com) […]
[…] Did Zimmerman juror really apologize for verdict or was interview deceptively edited? (legalinsurrection.com) […]
People often incorrectly refer to a “killing” as a “murder.” I understand that the juror might be expected to be able to distinguish between the two, but I wonder if she simply adopted the phrasing of Roberts’ shamelessly loaded question. In other words, maybe all she meant to say was “Zimmerman got away with killing Martin.” That’s still a pejorative phrasing (I would say “Zimmerman acted legally in firing the shot that caused Martin’s death”), but it’s far less sensational and far more correct than the words Roberts put in her mouth.
the leftist pravda lamestream media, the out-of-control prosecutors , the so-called black leaders cum professional race-baiters and the obama administration who are virtually lynching mr. zimmerman with unsubstantiated charge of murder or manslaughter couldn’t be more liable to what the biblical penal code demands: “If a malicious witness takes the stand to accuse someone of a crime…and if the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against a fellow Israelite, then do to the false witness as that witness intended to do to the other party” (deuteronomy 19:16-19). lest I might be misunderstood like in other sites where I posted messages in the same vein I do not call for violence but if the charge of murder or manslaughter means imprisonment then such penalty they intend maliciously for zimmerman should return onto their heads.
[…] demonization of George Zimmerman was but one tentacle of the beast, this is the […]
Are you kiddin’ me? Her motives were obvious. She wanted the Hero’s welcome from the Black community. She wanted the world to know…”It was MEEEEE!” In fact, she talked about her “true” intentions, even smiling at the mere thought of it, when she said, “I was the one who “was” going to hang this jury.” She couldn’t even manage to hide the pure joy of it. The word “was” is all we need to know. “I “WAS” THE ONE who intended, from the very beginning, to hang this jury. Her plan! Question: “Are you sorry that you didn’t?” Answer: “Kinda.” “But I held out…. ’til the very end.” She was so proud of that. So that makes her “less” responsible for bringing Zimmerman justice and she thinks that’s a GOOD thing? Oh brother! It NEVER was about justice, for HER. It was about HER, for her! And fame! She should be ashamed of herself. I checked out different sites to hear the reaction by Trayvon supports. Here’s what THEY had to say, “Well, you didn’t hold out long enough, Bitch.” That’s the thanks she got! I thank the other five jurors for hanging in there and not letting her get by with what she had intended to do. The network’s attempt to make it appear that she was “pressured,” backfired when they asked her if she felt “bullied” and couldn’t speak her mind. She said, “Oh I was heard; I was the loudest.” How disappointing for the blood thirsty media.