A juror in the George Zimmerman trial said Monday that the actions of the neighborhood watch volunteer and Trayvon Martin both led to the teenager’s fatal shooting last year, but that Zimmerman didn’t actually break the law.
She also revealed that during initial deliberations, half of the jurors wanted to convict Zimmerman. In the first vote of the jury in the George Zimmerman murder trial, three voted not guilty, two voted manslaughter and one voted second-degree murder, but none of the jurors believed race played a role in the incident, a juror said on CNN Monday.
The woman known as Juror B37 told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Zimmerman made some poor decisions leading up to the shooting, but that Martin wasn’t innocent either.
“I think both were responsible for the situation they had gotten themselves into,” said the juror, who is planning to write a book about the trial. “I think they both could have walked away.”
The juror said Sanford Police Detective Chris Serino made a big impression on her, because he would have been accustomed to dealing with murders and similar cases. He would have known how to spot a liar, and yet he testified that he believed Zimmerman, the juror said.
“It made a big impression on me,” the juror said. “He deals with this all the time. He deals with murder, robberies. He’s in it all the time and he has a knack to pick out who’s lying and who’s not lying.”
The juror was not impressed by the testimony of Rachel Jeantel, who was talking with Martin by cellphone moments before he was fatally shot by Zimmerman in February, 2012.
“I didn’t think it was very credible, but I felt very sorry for her,” the juror said. “She didn’t want to be there.”
The juror also commented on defense attorney Don West’s knock-knock joke about knowing who Zimmerman was during opening statements.
“The joke was horrible. Nobody got it,” she said.
The interview came two days after the six-woman jury acquitted Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch activist, of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Martin in a gated community in Sanford, Fla.
