The Zimmerman trial jury paused their deliberations at around 6:00PM EST to present Judge Nelson with a question:
“May we please have clarification on instructions regarding manslaughter?”
Nelson announced the question to the parties in open court, and has now recessed court 30 minutes to address the issue with the jury.
The verdict form is here. Final Jury Instructions here.
The implications of this question can only be addressed speculatively. It does, however, strongly suggest that murder 2 has been discarded from the jury’s consideration. All six jurors may be seriously considering manslaughter, or it may be a situation in which 5 jurors believe manslaughter does not apply (presumably because the State has failed to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt) but find they are having trouble convincing the 6th jury of the same.
Update: The Court took a brief recess to allow the parties to gather case law on the issue of providing jury clarification. Parties agree it is acceptable to clarify on a specific question, if that is what the jury is struggling with, but not to provide a general overview of manslaughter. The parties are now co-drafting a question to the jury to ask whether what they seek is, in fact, clarification on a specific issue. Judge Nelson will then deliver this question to the jury.
Stay up to date with our live-stream, Twitter-scroll post:
Zimmerman Trial: Verdict Watch LIVE
Zimmerman Final Jury Instructions (2)
Andrew F. Branca is an MA lawyer and author of the seminal book “The Law of Self Defense,” now available at www.lawofselfdefense.com. “The Law of Self Defense, 2nd Edition” is also available at Amazon.com.
You can follow Andrew on Twitter on @LawSelfDefense (or @LawSelfDefense2 if I’m in Twitmo, follow both!) on Facebook, and at his blog, The Law of Self Defense.
Many thanks to Professor Jacobson for the invitation to guest-blog on the Zimmerman trial here on Legal Insurrection!
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Comments
YEAH!!!! Sorry for my dumb broads comment!
Thank you Lord
Thank God!!!
I toldja….!!!!
All along, I have believed.
Me too Rags, but I was getting worried!
I still have faith now!!!! 🙂
NOT! HoooRahhhh!
YAY!!!!!!!
Beat of luck George!!!
And thank you ladies of the jury’!!!!!!!
You are free George! Now get the hell out of that stinking courtroom!!!!
I was wrong. I thought the jury would throw Zimmerman to the wolves.
Did they give Martins a heads up? They are not there
” I am woman, here me roar!”
Thank you jurors.
NOT GUILTY!!!
Ive never been happier to be wrong
MSM is so unhappy. No big reactions for them, no exciting anything. The police now need to put a guard on the jurors.
Sometimes you just need to have a little faith in people and not freak yourself out. I’m relieved by not surprised.
Loved the look on the prosecution faces. Now I’m going to file a bar complaint. And I hope Zimmerman files suit for abuse of process.
I am so happy for George Zimmerman, and for the restoration of my faith in my fellow Americans.
I wish that the Martins will eventually find peace for themselves in the loss of their son.
I was scared they would give the concession verdict of manslaughter. But I wouldn’t judge the women jurors – I have faith in women being rational and deliberate. I had no faith in this judge who kept info from the jurors oR the peosecution, who should be investigated.
Shame on them.
Good for the jurors.
Angela Corey is such a lying bitch.
Can you guys believe the bunch of crap she’s saying?
I hope she’s banned from EVER practicing law again.
They got all the facts out?!? Wtf? Didn’t get out the deleted texts and pictures!
I just muted Angela Corey. I don’t even know what to say about her. What prosecutor wears giant costume pearls and the feather boa, has her hair pinned up like a 10 year old middle school cheerleader and keeps happily yammering on about how wonderful she and her team are that just got their ass kicked in court(not to mention wasted millions of state dollars prosecuting an obvious self defense case. She seems just so perky and happy about how this is exactly what a prosecutor is supposed to do.
I swear she is Nancy Pelosi’s lost sister at birth, she is as much of an actress.
OK, so now the media is looking for looting and whatever. Hopefully everyone has just had enough of this and goes home for the day.
Now that it’s over, here’s my thoughts on all the speculation here.
As a father of two successful, intelligent daughters and a wonderful wife of 43 years, I found the comments about women juries offensive. I didn’t say much, because I felt people were venting their frustration with how long the process was taking.
I hope that some who commented will think twice before allowing their emotions to overrule their reason and make such offensive comments in the future.
Some of the concern about the all female jury stemmed from the concern for safety reasons on the part of the jury.
Yes, women, and especially mothers, IMHO, would view many things differently than men. I’m not saying it’s wrong or right, just that it is different. That said, male or female, our own unique life experiences form our worldview. All of that was reasonable to take into consideration when viewing how the possible outcomes for this case. We hoped (and I was one who believed they’d come in with “not guilty”), but I would have understood if if fear or the political/social pressure had been too great. They are, after all, only human. And right now, the race baiting media, America’s modern lynch mob is out fueling the flames of anger and agitation, just like they’ve done for the past 15 mos.
IMO, this was all done to help agitate black people and win this president reelection in 2012. It was always about race, and nothing else.
Millions spent, riots stirred up, more hate to come … when the police had the right decision to not prosecute from the start.
Hard to call that “justice” exactly, since it was political theater of the absurd and malicious …
But I’ll drink to those that fought the fight … and thanks to those that covered it here, and the non-billable hours of commentary from professionals. 🙂
CHEERS
Prosecution wins on these four points:
1 – Most convincing arguments (IF you just ignore the facts)
2 – Most skillful histrionics, including arm-waving and shouting
3 – Shiniest head
4 – Presented best case for the Defense
Judging from the headlines, the media now are hoping for riots.
I am surprised they did as the punishment seems to be in FL just a little different as for 2nd degree and did so especially after the prosecution added a smorgasbord of pleas to tempt them with and did so at the last moment. I applaud this jury. They based their decision on evidence and facts presented; not the emotional BS the MSM wants them too. I swear HLN and other BSers are in mourning. The lawyers there should know better than to motivate emotions rather than evidence and facts. The jury signed an oath to do so. This trial was not about race. It is about the destruction of America for all its people of all colors.
OK, so what happened with the question.
(I know what the verdict was.)
BTW, the verdict made the newsbriefs here in Israel.