Judge mulls whether to release Zimmerman on bond

SANFORD – George Zimmerman‘s defense attorney was expected to do the predictable thing: beg the judge’s forgiveness and ask him to again let the Neighborhood Watch volunteer go free until his trial on a second-degree murder charge.

Instead, Mark O’Mara swung for the fences. He put on a dramatic three-hour murder defense and submitted a pile of evidence designed to prove Zimmerman’s innocence.

It left the judge with hours of evidence to review and no chance to make a quick decision. It is not clear when Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. will announce his ruling.

The bottom line, according to O’Mara, is that Trayvon Martin beat and bloodied his client, pounded his head into a sidewalk and wound up “shot and killed because of his own doing.”

But according to prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda, 28-year-old Zimmerman was to blame for the violence that night. On Feb. 26, he acted like a wanna-be cop who saw someone in a hoodie, assumed Trayvon was a criminal and chased him down, de la Rionda said.

Zimmerman, at the center of one of the most prominent civil rights criminal cases in the country, sat silently next to O’Mara at the hearing.

For a time, it appeared that he would apologize to the judge and explain why he said nothing when his wife testified at an April 20 bond hearing that the couple was broke when they really had $130,000 in just-donated money from online supporters.

“I will submit him to your questioning,” O’Mara told the judge.

No you won’t, said the judge. You can put the defendant on the witness stand, Lester explained, and let him say what he wants, but then prosecutors will be free to cross-examine him.

After a brief whispered session, O’Mara announced that Zimmerman had nothing to say.

He would have been the last witness in a string that O’Mara hoped would convince the judge that Zimmerman had a legitimate fear for his life the night he killed Trayvon, an unarmed 17-year-old.

Kevin O’Rourke, a Sanford firefighter, said when he and his crew arrived, 45 percent of Zimmerman’s face and head was covered in blood.

“We spent a good five minutes cleaning him up,” said O’Rourke.

O’Mara played key pieces of audio and video for the judge. One was the 911 call in which someone can be heard screaming for help in the background.

Who was crying for help, O’Mara asked the defendant’s father.

“It was absolutely” his son, said Robert Zimmerman.

Why turn a bond hearing into a mini-trial, O’Mara was asked.

Because when the judge revoked Zimmerman’s bond four weeks ago, Lester wrote “… the evidence against him is strong.”

“With that thought in mind, I present to you the state’s weaknesses,” O’Mara said.

Prosecutors put on no evidence. De la Rionda relied on argument. Zimmerman’s injuries were not life threatening, he said; the voice crying for help was Trayvon’s, according to his mother; and some of Zimmerman’s statements to police cannot be true, De la Rionda said.

One example is Zimmerman’s claim that Trayvon had covered the defendant’s mouth and nose with his hands. That’s not possible, de la Rionda said, if Zimmerman really was the one crying for help.

He asked that the judge leave Zimmerman in jail.

O’Mara asked that he be released on the same $150,000 bail that Lester had ordered earlier.

Trayvon’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, sat through the hearing. When O’Mara played the 911 call with the screams, Tracy Martin shook his head.

Sybrina Fulton had left the courtroom, but when O’Mara played it again a few moments later for Zimmerman’s father, she was back but showed no reaction.

After the hearing, Tracy Martin said his son was not the one who started the fight.

“We just feel he didn’t instigate anything,” he said. “We just feel he was minding his own business, walking from the store.”

Zimmerman’s money

The early part of the bond hearing was dominated by details about George and Shellie Zimmerman’s finances.

Shellie Zimmerman is now awaiting trial on a charge of perjury, accused of lying while testifying at her husband’s first bond hearing.

Prosecutors alleged that while Zimmerman was in jail in April, he and his wife conspired to hide money by transferring it between accounts and stashing a wad of cash in a safety deposit box.

A defense accountant, Adam Magill, testified that the Zimmermans transferred nearly $150,000 out of George Zimmerman’s account into those of relatives but after the bond hearing, transferred most of it back.

Was that an attempt to hide it, de la Rionda asked.

Yes, said Magill.

No, said O’Mara. The money was returned to George Zimmerman’s account on April 24 because the couple was preparing to turn it over to him, which they did the next day with a $122,000 check made out to O’Mara’s law firm.

It has since been put into a legal defense fund which neither O’Mara nor the Zimmermans has direct access to.

O’Mara said it currently has a balance of $211,000. Source

 

President Obama on Fast and Furious: “I certainly was not” aware of gunwalking

President Obama today said he had complete confidence in Attorney General Eric Holder and his efforts to stop gunrunning along the southwest border.

 

Mr. Obama was responding to a question about the ATF Fast and Furious scandal in which suspected traffickers purchased thousands of weapons, and were allowed to send them to Mexican drug cartels. The idea was to try to take down a major cartel.

Memos contradict Holder on “Fast and Furious”

 

Mr. Obama said that Holder has indicated he was not aware of the controversial tactic known as “letting guns walk.” The president added, “Certainly I was not (aware).”

Gunwalking scandal uncovered at ATF

Agent: I was ordered to let guns “walk” into Mexico

 

The president also said that both he and Holder would have been “very unhappy” if somebody had suggested that guns were allowed to cross the border, and that could have been prevented.

 

Earlier this week, CBS News reportedHolder was sent memosmentioning Fast and Furious as early as July, 2010.

 

Read the documents

Read the July 5, 2010 memo  Source

 

No criminal prosecution of Holder for contempt

Republicans say Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department are concealing details on Fast and Furious

 

Washington (CNN) — The White House and the Justice Department made clear Friday what had been expected all along: Attorney General Eric Holder will not face criminal prosecution under the contempt of Congress citation passed by the U.S. House.

Legal experts noted this week in the runup to Thursday’s House vote that President Barack Obama’s assertion of executive privilege in the case would prevent a criminal prosecution under a practice dating to the Reagan administration.

The House also cited Holder for civil contempt to give it the option of filing a lawsuit compelling Holder to turn over documents sought by Oversight Committee investigators linked to the failed Operation Fast and Furious weapons crackdown. Such a case was expected to take years to complete.

A letter Friday from the Justice Department to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, who led the investigation that brought the contempt charge against Holder, explained that “across administrations of both political parties, the longstanding position of the Department of Justice has been and remains that we will not prosecute” in such a circumstance.

“The department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the Attorney General,” concluded the letter from Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the same thing Friday, saying “it is an established principle, dating back to the administration of President Ronald Reagan, that the Justice Department does not pursue prosecution in a contempt case when the president has asserted executive privilege.”

A spokesman for Issa’s committee and another top congressional Republican, veteran Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, complained Friday that the refusal to prosecute showed a lack of independence by the U.S. attorney who would handle the case.

“It is regrettable that the political leadership of the Justice Department is trying to intervene in an effort to prevent the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia from making an independent decision about whether to prosecute this case,” said Frederick Hill, the panel’s director of communications.

Obama asserted executive privilege on some documents sought by Issa’s committee in its investigation of Operation Fast and Furious. The executive privilege assertion prevented the documents from being turned over on the grounds that they include internal deliberations traditionally protected from outside eyes.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives launched Operation Fast and Furious out of Arizona to track weapons purchases by Mexican drug cartels. It followed similar programs started in the Bush administration.

However, Fast and Furious lost track of more than 1,000 firearms it was tracking, and two of the lost weapons turned up at the scene of the 2010 killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

Issa, R-California, and Republicans contend that Holder and the Justice Department are concealing details of how Fast and Furious was approved and managed.

Democrats argue that Issa and his GOP colleagues are using the issue to try to score political points by discrediting Holder and, by extension, the president in an election year.

The showdown between Issa and Holder over the program dates to subpoenas issued last year by the House committee seeking a wide range of documents and other materials. Eventually, the committee reduced its demand to focus on documents involving decision-making after the Fast and Furious program was shut down.

In particular, the committee wanted internal documents relating to the period after February 2011, when the Justice Department sent Congress an erroneous letter — later withdrawn — that said top officials knew nothing about Fast and Furious until early that year.

On Wednesday, Issa conceded that investigators lack any evidence that Holder knew of the failed weapons-tracking tactics of Fast and Furious. The contempt citation, he said, was for Holder’s failure to comply with subpoenas seeking specific documents.

“It’s not for what the attorney general knew about Fast and Furious,” Issa said. “It’s about the attorney general’s refusal to provide the documents.”

Carney said Friday that Issa’s comment showed the contempt citation was about politics.

“Remarkably, the chairman of the committee involved here has asserted that he has no evidence that the attorney general knew of operation Fast and Furious or did anything but take the right action when he learned of it. No evidence,” Carney said. “So if you have no evidence, as he’s stated now about the White House and the attorney general, what else could this be than politics?”

In Thursday’s vote on criminal contempt, House Republicans were joined by 17 Democrats in citing Holder, while dozens of Democrats walked out in protest  Source

 

Zimmerman trustworthy, deserves bond, his lawyer argues

George Zimmerman has acknowledged killing Trayvon Martin in a shooting that highlighted U.S. race relations and gun laws.

CNN)— Even though he misled the court about his finances, George Zimmerman should not be jailed as he awaits trial for the death of Trayvon Martin because the state’s case is weak and his claim of self-defense is strong, defense attorney Mark O’Mara argued Friday.

O’Mara asked that Zimmerman be released on the same $150,000 bond granted by Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. in April after Zimmerman’s wife and family testified they had little money. In reality, Zimmerman and his wife had collected more than $150,000 in donations from the public.

Lester revoked Zimmerman’s bond on June 1, after learning that the defendant and his wife had failed to disclose the donations. The judge did not immediately rule on O’Mara’s new bond request, which prosecutors opposed.

Lester did not say when he would rule, but O’Mara told reporters after the hearing that he expects the judge to spend the weekend reviewing the evidence before ruling.

Zimmerman has acknowledged shooting Martin in a February incident that put national attention on the state of race relations and gun control laws in the United States. The shooting sparked weeks of protests and rallies across the country, leading up to Zimmerman’s eventual arrest.

He has argued self-defense, telling police that Martin attacked him. But the special prosecutor in the case alleges the former neighborhood watch volunteer unjustly profiled and killed Martin.

He is charged with second-degree murder.

During Friday’s hearing, O’Mara argued that Zimmerman, 28, was scared and confused when he failed to disclose the money. But it was the only time he had failed to fully cooperate with authorities, O’Mara said.

“I would suggest that he’s evidenced that you can trust him many other times,” O’Mara said.

Prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda countered that Zimmerman should remain in jail without bond. Zimmerman was complicit in lying to the court and can’t be trusted, he said.

“He quite frankly was manipulating the whole thing, he was using his wife as a conduit,” de la Rionda said.

Zimmerman did not testify, although O’Mara offered to allow Lester to question him without the possibility of de la Rionda cross-examining him.

Lester refused, and O’Mara declined to say what Zimmerman would have told the judge.

At times, the hearing took on the appearance of a mini-trial, with the defense calling the paramedic who treated Zimmerman and replaying a 911 call that came in at the time of the shooting in an effort to highlight what O’Mara called Zimmerman’s “extraordinarily strong argument for acting in self-defense.”

O’Mara said he put on the evidence to counter what he said were suggestions by the judge that the prosecution’s case was strong. One of the considerations a Florida judge can use in determining bond is the strength of evidence in a case, O’Mara said.

He said evidence submitted in the case is weak and suggests that Martin “got shot and he was killed because of his own doing.”

De la Rionda reiterated that prosecutors believe Martin was an innocent victim accosted by Zimmerman without provocation.

The hearing also dealt with the contributions Zimmerman collected from the public via a website he had set up to help fund his defense and his life in hiding following the Martin shooting.

Forensic accountant Adam Magill testified that thousands of dollars in donated funds flowed into and out of Zimmerman’s account in the days before the first bond hearing.

But Magill discounted allegations that Zimmerman and his wife were trying to avoid federal financial disclosures by moving less than $10,000 in funds at a time.

Instead, Magill said, those limits were imposed by PayPal, the online payments processor that Zimmerman chose to handle donations from the public.

Magill did say under cross-examination by de la Rionda that it appeared Zimmerman and his wife were speaking in code during recorded jailhouse telephone conversations about the amount of money involved. He also said transferring funds between accounts could have been done to make it appear that Zimmerman had less money available for bond than he did.

O’Mara said Zimmerman was sorry that he did not speak up when his wife said the family had little money during the April bond hearing.

“He certainly regrets not doing that,” O’Mara said.

In a written motion seeking bond filed before the hearing, O’Mara acknowledged that Zimmerman had misled the court but said he still should be allowed to leave jail on bond.

“Mr. Zimmerman’s failure to advise the court of the existence of the donated funds at the initial bail hearing was wrong, and Mr. Zimmerman accepts responsibility for his part in allowing the court to be misled as to his true financial circumstances,” O’Mara wrote. “Counsel, however, points to Mr. Zimmerman’s voluntary disclosure of the fund and immediate surrender of any interest in the donated money through transfer of the fund to counsel for deposit in trust.”

The money is now “under the control of an independent trustee and is not accessible to Mr. Zimmerman or his family,” the motion said. “Any expenditure on behalf of Mr. Zimmerman must be approved by the fund administrator.”

Authorities arrested Zimmerman’s wife, Shellie Zimmerman, on a perjury charge on June 12. She is accused of lying about the couple’s finances at her husband’s bond hearing. She left jail later that day after meeting the conditions of a $1,000 bond, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office said.

Prosecutors alleged the couple had about $135,000 in donations at their disposal when they both told the court, under oath, they were indigent.

O’Mara said his client ended up netting a total of $204,000 via PayPal accounts — about $150,000 of which is now in an independently managed trust after $30,000 was used to pay for “life in hiding.” About $20,000 has been kept liquid for “ongoing living expenses.”

At her husband’s April 20 bond hearing, Shellie Zimmerman testified she didn’t know how much had been raised through the website her husband had set up before charges were filed.

Asked whether the couple had money available to assist in his defense, she replied, “Um, not — not that I’m aware of.”

In the recording of a jailhouse phone conversation, Zimmerman asks his wife, “In my account, do I have at least $100?” She answers no, and then tells him he has more like “$8, $8.60.”

“So total everything, how much are we looking at?” Zimmerman asks his wife.

“Like $155,” she responds.

Prosecutors say the husband and wife were speaking in code about their available funds, an assertion Zimmerman’s lawyer said the defense has “never contested.”

The couple also discussed how much money could be accessed and what to do with it, including transferring funds that were raised online for his defense to accounts belonging to Zimmerman’s sister and wife, prosecutors said in court filings. Source

 

Zimmerman will be back in court Friday to seek bail

SANFORD — The judge who threw George Zimmerman back in jail four weeks ago, stopping just short of calling him and his wife liars, will listen again Friday to Zimmerman’s plea to be freed.

Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. is expected to say yes, but it’s not clear how much bail he’ll ask Zimmerman to post. Last time, the judge set bail at $150,000 but that was before he learned about an online fundraising campaign raking in $1,000 a day. Source