A total of 20 potential jurors have been retained so far in the George Zimmerman trial, after 10 more were questioned Wednesday. Individual questioning will continue this morning.
Jury selection in the 3rd day of the murder trial for state of Florida v. George Zimmerman is about to go into the next phase with a total of 20 jurors from a pool of 500 will be retained thus far.
From within that pool of 500 potential jurors, a total of 75 jurors have been booted from the selection process for various reasons which has not been revealed to the media. As we reported earlier, there are only 6 jurors needed to be selected to sit on the jury panel and from what we have saw in court yesterday, attorneys from both sides are using every tool at their disposal to weed out jurors who may have an agenda to be picked to decide the fate of the man accused of killing Trayvon Martin.
What we also learned from yesterday’s jury selection process is that there were very few who knew very little about the crime and some even admitted that their biases would be a problem for them to serve on the jury.
HHE’s Dennis Byron spoke with Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump during a recess and he was asked about how he felt the process has gone thus far.
DB: How do you feel about how the jury selection process is going?
BC: Never in the history of the American Justice System have I seen the killer of an unarmed child get so much consideration.
DB: Do you believe that it is unusual that the defense is asking potential jurors a lot of questions about the involvement of civil rights leaders in this case?
BC: I will just say that the defense continues to try to do things to bring out biases of people and play on their biases and that has been evident from the inception of the matter with their handling but especially with the release of irrelevant information trying to play on the biases of people.
In particular, defense attorney Mark O’ Mara has spent a substantial amount of time questioning Black potential jurors and his questions seem to be focused around identifying if there is any racial biases among them, something that appears to be making some of the potential Black jurors uncomfortable.
Does it really matter if someone participated in a protest rally if they believed that Sanford police failed to handle the matter properly? Does that alone make a potential Black juror biased or unable to serve as a juror because they want to see justice in the death of Trayvon Martin?
Yesterday’s selection process didn’t go without incident as one juror in particular identified as E7 was asked by the defense if he ever posted anything on his Facebook page about the George Zimmerman case and he stated that he did not.
Both defense and prosecution both concluded their questions of him and he had left the courtroom. Within minutes, Judge Debra Nelson then asked the court bailiff to bring him back out to the courtroom and she asked E7 about his earlier denial about posting on Facebook and she handed him a piece of paper to read which was in fact a Facebook posting.
We actually were able to find E7’s Facebook post and his issues were with the Sanford police department and how they had handled the initial investigation. In one quote from his Facebook post he said:
“The OnLY reason this corrupt city police dept. was stonewalling was because since they KNOWINGLY worked with self-appointed “Neighborhood Watch” security…& knew he carried a weapon…they knew they AND the Homeowners Association were liable for HUGE $$$ damages in court…MINUTES after the shooting occurred.”
While we do know the real identity of this juror we have decided not to publish his name.
Stay tuned to our Twitter account @hiphopenquirer for more updates as they occur.
I've NEVER seen a KILLER of an unarmed CHILD get so much consideration! All fuckery goin on in Sanford FL!