Judge’s ruling hurts defense
Jury may weigh less serious charge
SANFORD, Fla. — The jury at George Zimmerman’s seconddegree murder trial was given the option Thursday of convicting him on the lesser charge of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, drawing a loud protest from Zimmerman’s defense.
Judge Debra Nelson’s ruling was a setback for Zimmerman because it gives jurors another, less serious, charge to consider. Legal experts agree that will make it easier for the jurors to convict Zimmerman if they cannot decide whether the fatal encounter rose to the level of murder.
Zimmerman attorney Don
West argued for an allor-nothing strategy, saying the only charge that should be put before the jury is second- degree murder.
“The state has charged him with second-degree murder. They should be required to prove it,” West said. “If they had wanted to charge him with manslaughter ... they could do that.”
To win a second- degree murder conviction, prosecutors must prove Zimmerman showed ill will, hatred or spite. The defense says prosecutors have failed to meet that test.
To get a manslaughter conviction, prosecutors must show only that Zimmerman killed without lawful justification, a much lower standard.
David Hill, an Orlando defense attorney with no connection to the case, said West had good reason to protest the ruling.
“From the jury’s point of view, if they don’t like the second-degree murder — and I can see why they don’t like it — he doesn’t want to give them any options to convict on lesser charges,” Hill said of the defense attorney.
Because of the way Florida law imposes longer sentences for crimes committed with a gun, manslaughter could end up carrying a penalty as heavy as the one for second-degree murder: life in prison.
It is standard for prosecutors in Florida murder cases to ask that the jury be allowed to consider lesser charges that were not actually brought against the defendant.
And it is not unusual for judges to grant such requests.
Prosecutor Richard Mantei also asked that the jury be allowed to consider third- degree murder, on the premise that Zimmerman committed child abuse when he shot the underage Martin.
Zimmerman’s lawyer called that “bizarre” and “outrageous,” and the judge sided with the defense.
Zimmerman, 29, got into a scuffle with Martin after spotting the teen while driving through his gated townhouse complex on a rainy night in Febru- ary 2012. Zimmerman, who was a neighborhood watch captain, has said he fired in self-defense after Martin sucker-punched him and began slamming his head into the pavement.
Prosecutors have disputed his account and portrayed him as the aggressor.
In the prosecution’s closing argument Thursday, Bernie de la Rionda portrayed Zimmerman as an aspiring police officer who assumed Martin was up to no good and took the law into his own hands.
“A teenager is dead. He is dead through no fault of his own,” de la Rionda told the jurors.
“He is dead because a man made assumptions. ... Unfortunately because his assumptions were wrong, Trayvon Benjamin Martin no longer walks this Earth.”
“He assumed Trayvon Martin was a criminal,” de la Rionda said. “That is why we are here.”
Defense attorney West will make his closing argument Friday.
Afterward, the six female jurors who are hearing the case could begin deliberating.