A
juror in the George Zimmerman trial said today that Zimmerman "got away
with murder" for killing Trayvon Martin, feeling she owes an apology to
Martin's parents.
"You can't put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he
was guilty," Maddy, the woman identified only as Juror B29 during the
trial, said to ABC's "Good Morning America."
A nursing assistant and mother of eight children, the 36-year-old was
a Chicago resident when Martin was killed and was selected as a juror
five months after moving to Seminole County, FL. She was the only
minority juror, being of Hispanic descent. However, the juror says that
the case was about race, at least in her eyes.
"We had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the
evidence," she said. "George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you
can't get away from God. And at the end of the day, he's going to have a
lot of questions and answers he has to deal with."
Once deliberations began, Maddy favored convicting Zimmerman of
second-degree murder, which could have put him in prison for the rest of
his life. However, the jury was also allowed to consider the lesser
charge of manslaughter. On the second day of deliberations Maddy said
she realized there wasn't enough proof to convict Zimmerman of murder or
manslaughter under Florida law. Zimmerman maintained he shot and killed
Trayvon Martin in an act of self-defense.
"I was the juror that was going to give them the hung jury. I fought
to the end," said Maddy. "That's where I felt confused, where if a
person kills someone, then you get charged for it, 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. I felt like I let a lot of people down, and I'm
thinking to myself, 'Did I go the right way? Did I go the wrong way?' As
much as we were trying to find this man guilty, they give you a booklet
that basically tells you the truth. And the truth is that there was
nothing that we could do about it. I felt the verdict was already
told."
Maddy believes she owes Trayvon Martin's parents an apology because she felt that she "let them down."
"It's hard for me to sleep, it's hard for me to eat because I feel I
was forcefully included in Trayvon Martin's death. And as I carry him on
my back, I'm hurting as much Trayvon's Martin's mother because there's
no way that any mother should feel that pain," she said.
Maddy is the second juror to speak in a televised interview, and the first to show her face.
Juror B37, whose face and body were hidden, also appeared last week
on Anderson Cooper's CNN show, and said she believes Zimmerman's "heart
was in the right place" when he became suspicious of Martin and that the
teenager probably threw the first punch. However, four other jurors
refused to support B37's remarks and released a statement saying B37's
opinions were "not in any way representative" of their own.--Andrew Asare
Photo Credit: The Chicago Tribune
No comments :
Post a Comment