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Defense Wraps Up Its Case

Aired July 12, 2013 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MARK O'MARA, GEORGE ZIMMERMAN'S DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Now the state wants you to say this mastermind criminal, this guilty beyond a reasonable doubt second-degree murderer knew at that precise moment that he darn well better say that he was the one screaming. Because after all, if he'd killed the guy who was screaming in the state's theory, right? So he knew he took real care of that problem. The real problem with that theory, unless the mastermind knew, when Singleton mentioned in your interview that Trayvon Martin had passed? George was affected.

I guess he could be part of the mastermind criminal behavior that he learned in community college. I guess it could have been, but let me tell you, if you have a doubt as to whether or not that's true and you need to tell the state, don't ever come back before us again with a case like this. Don't ever do this to us because what we really have is what I said a while ago. We have factual innocence.

You could do back there right now. Look at the facts of this case and say we're going to flip the standard upside down. We're not going to allow Mr. O'Mara to get an acquittal for his client simply because the state hasn't proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt. We're only going to allow Mr. O'Mara to get his acquittal if he proves to us beyond a reasonable doubt that his client is innocent. And he could to prove to you that he acted in the self defense.

Not the standard, of course. So let's talk about the standard to see how far it feels from that very standard that the state is supposed to take on what they actually had accomplished. I'm going to focus (inaudible) on the witnesses, real quick we're going through it as quickly as I can. There's like 50 of them and I could have (inaudible) just a bit your honor and hopefully this will work.

Chad Joseph. I'm just going to go through them. Didn't have much to say you could throw about a football field but that said as you know him to be the sort of stepson of Trayvon Martin (SIC).

Andrew Gaugh, 5'10". That's important. And we're going to get to that in a second. You say, you saw him stand next to me. I do that on purpose to show you that I'm a few inches bigger than he is. And he was 5'10" in the shoes he had on that day. Oh he really said he didn't know much about that event.

Sean Noffke, what has he said? Interestingly because the first time that somebody was talking about talking to George was this guy. And what did he say? No anger, no animosity, no hatred, no anything in George's voice quite matter of fact. A person who's trained by the way to deal with stressful situations and to understand and to dynamically interact with people on the other line because sometimes these things turn serious quickly

And what did he say? No. He even accepted the reality that George may have misunderstood when he said, which way is he running that George Zimmerman may have thought, I should go find out. He acknowledged maybe it was imprecise or whatever.

Next witness Ramona Rumph, she brought in records custodian for the five calls. She also -- you'll know see the affidavit I think signed by her of the six calls; listen to it if you want, nothing to do with burglaries. Just as George -- George Zimmerman being George Zimmerman.

Wendy Dorival, interesting witness, a lady who set up the neighborhood watch a few months before, because, as she said, they looked at the crime stats for that neighborhood and it was being assaulted by burglaries and something needed to be done.

So she went in and she did something and she told us you know who might be suspicious from her experience and training. Remember, this is her love, not her job. She does this as a volunteer, because she likes the idea of people being involved in the neighborhood and helping keep crime out of your own home and out of your neighborhood. Somebody you don't know could be a reason for suspicion, a person walking in the area who don't belong -- maybe. Someone walking in the rain without purpose.

I don't want to just have you acquit my client because I can show you that Trayvon Martin did something bad, but I'm also not going to allow you or the state to ignore the realities of what actually happened that night.

And described Mr. Zimmerman to her knowledge as meek. The other interesting thing about this cop wannabe, they have the citizens on patrol program, where you get a uniform, you get a car, little yellow lights on it. They can't be blue lights like we have for true law enforcement, but you get little yellow lights and you get to drive around and act like a cop.

And he said to that opportunity to be a cop wannabe in a cop uniform in a cop car with cop lights and probably a little cop computer in his car, or at least a cop clipboard, no. Thanks, but no. I'm just -- I'm done, I'm working, I'm going to school, I have my wife, I don't want your cop car, I don't want your lights and I don't need your uniform.

But this is the guy that the state is telling you yet ill-will and hatred out of his cop-want to be-ism? Really? Have seriously have they proven that to you? Have they come even close? Except for speculations. How many times did you hear an objection on the stand to speculation, well because we are not allowed to that in court, you can't be a witness up there and say what do you think? Maybe, because it's not evidence. That's why. It's not evidence for you because you can go back and go well, John Doe speculated and the judge allowed it, I guess we speculate. Absolutely not, absolutely not.

Donald O'Brien, HOA guy, talking committee. George helped him with parking. Cop wannabe? It doesn't seem -- he doesn't want the cop car. Involved citizen? Sure. Any complaints by the way that the state brought to you about him just telling calls away, picking any people and knock on and get your car off that yellow, anything like that to -- to foster their argument to you that he was doing something wrong? Presumably not to sue, so where is the evidence?

And they talked about the 17-year-old burglar getting caught and thank God the stucco guy caught him. And now George -- so Mr. De La Rionda says to you that George Zimmerman was frustrated ooh, I wanted that one. Damn, Darn. (AUDIO GAP) -- not real good. Are you kidding me? Are you actually kidding me that the state attorney's office representing the state is making that allegation to you? That that's ill will, because somebody else caught a burglar ok, great. Just tie it together, please. You've got two dots, and they're this far away. Just give me a line. Give me something.

Stucco guy caught him, George is frustrated. Anything in between that ties speculation, assumption or idiocy, anything?

Sgt. Raimondo, I would want him coming to a car accident that I was involved in, what a guy. What a cop. Did everything he could and did it without even thinking about it. Great cop -- likes his job.

Diane Smith, a little bit of just problems with the evidence the rain, or talk about that but weather conditions wouldn't allow her to process the items, touch DNA could wiped away, firearm not given to her -- I don't know that it turns out to be a big deal but there is lack of evidence here. And we'll talk about maybe why that's there and who gets the benefit again of lack of evidence? George Zimmerman.

Selene Bahadoor, you'll be -- you have an opportunity and instructions will tell you, you assigned credibility to the witnesses. You decide what to believe and who to believe, and whether or not they're credible. I would suggest that along this theme as we're going check out this woman's credibility before you accept what she said. You saw her, you heard her, you saw her review all of her statements as I showed them to her. First time, talked to Mr. De La Rionda last week, first time in court what shows up, oh, yes, left to right.

Well, here's a thought. Trayvon Martin was running from left to right when he came back towards the area where George Zimmerman was walking. There is the possibility. It could have been so I don't know where she fits in. Quite honestly I don't know what she saw, if she saw and how she saw it or why she said it. And you're in half into it rather than any other previous conservations with law enforcement or with me but whatever -- fit it in however you can.

Jayne Surdyka, you know, so she heard three pops. Is she lying? Oh my gosh, she's lying because she heard three pops? No. Let's get off this lying theme, because you have slight inconsistencies. She heard or thought she heard what she thought she heard. Ok. Whatever with her aberrations, fright, upset, who cares. She got it wrong. What else she got wrong where she thought the big guy was on top. And of course actually what she really thought was that Mr. Martin -- Trayvon Martin hadn't moved, because she saw the whole thing clean as a shot which of course doesn't comport with her 911 call, that again just stressful time for everybody. She seemed particularly affected by stress that he was on the ground, never moved, saw the shot. The shot was from the top, the shot was through the back and that he never moved. It just doesn't make sense. That's ok. The vantage point that Mr. (inaudible) talk about that movie, have you ever seen it, but it's a great movie. Because it really does, in one event happens of the President getting shot by a marksman and then there's eight different people, seven different people watching it and everyone has a completely different story. They all viewed the same event but they viewed it with their history, with their life experiences, what they were going through that day, and with what perspective they have. And it's just different. That's ok. This happens.

Miss Manalo, she heard voices 20, 30 feet to the right. Seems to be consistent with a strolling at the T Intersection and of course, what she did was what we all do. And I'm not going to assail her for that, but what she did was make some assumptions based upon some facts that she saw afterwards. They're in evidence -- it will take me about five minutes to find them. She was looking at pictures of Trayvon Martin when he was 12. I think she said that. So I'll tell you right now if you looked at me when I was 12 and compared me to anybody, I'm the guy getting beat up. No questions asked.

But the reality is that she just had this vantage point of a child at 12 years old getting, I guess, the heck beat out of him by the other guy who was on TV, this big, heavy picture of George Zimmerman. And she acknowledged, you know, now that you showed me the other picture -- now here is the ones that I did look at and find out or think that it was Trayvon Martin being the small guy, now show me these other pictures, I could have been wrong. Lying, perjury, no, no, come on, just vantage point, just perspective.

And then that's why you're here because you get to figure it out.

Rachel Jeantel, let me give you my perspective of Rachel Jeantel. She didn't want to be involved in the case. She didn't want to be involved in the depositions. She didn't want to be involved in the trial. I think what happened and this is just conjecture. I'm not supposed to conjecture too much. I think her mom got with Ms. Fulton and said, go tell that lady what happened with her son. And she didn't really want to do that. That's why she wrote the letter. When she didn't -- she did have or didn't have a conversation -- I don't think she -- don't forget, it only reunited Trayvon Martin and Rachel Jeantel like two weeks before. The phone records already you know that they knew each other from school, but never really hung out.

Two or three weeks before was when they started talking again, so it wasn't what it was perceived to be as the girlfriend/boyfriend. We don't agree with that and she just didn't think it was much that night. Interesting to me just the one thing about Miss Jeantel, you know, if you asked me right now to explain to you the phone call that I had three weeks ago with my wife, or four weeks ago with my sister or last week with Mr. West I can give you the idea, and then my wife would say, well, we talked about dinner -- ok, you're right. I'm sorry (inaudible).

No way do you have the recall. But if you're asked to have the recall, tell me what happened? This happened? Did this happen? Didn't you say this? Didn't you say that? Well, he didn't say "What are you talking about?" He said "What are you doing here", right? Oh, yes. That, too.

Ms. Jeantel didn't want to be here, and I am -- I don't want to talk and ask for sympathy. I'm sorry that she had to involve her life in our lives in a way that she never wanted to be involved. Unfortunately, she was a witness and we had to deal with it. And some of her frailties came out in the courtroom, on TV, and I'm sure she never wanted that.

And probably every other witness. You know witnesses wanted to be anonymous, you know that. They were concerned, and she's one of them. Some of the stuff she said was, you know, that he was close to the Dad's place -- I actually think probably she meant close as compared to the 7-Eleven. It took him 45 minutes to go from the 7-Eleven home, probably was just hanging out at some mailbox. I'll show you the map between the two.

It doesn't make any sense to you hanging out at the mailbox at the (inaudible) T circle but whatever. And heard, "What are you following me for?" Somebody said, "What are you talking about?" Then it changed. I think that change occurred because of the way her initial interview was handled by one of the attorneys. Horribly inappropriate to not get this person to law enforcement; almost as bad as to have the mom on the couch next to you cry crying when the state does the first interview with you. Their call, but wow, to do it that way.

Of course she even acknowledged that she was concerned about Miss Martin's feelings, which is why she sort of modified or smoothed over some of the more colorful and the events that happened. It's ok. You're supposed to just tell the absolute truth here, but I'm not going to ask a -- someone like Miss Jeantel to come in and just not acknowledge the sensitivities, and why she may have made it sound a bit better when telling the story of her son's passing to Miss Fulton.

Mr. MacDonald came over. Miss Lauer, (inaudible) because she sort of without knowing about it she gave us some pretty good information which she talked about this three-part exchange. She already said before she had no -- any idea about this actually happening. And what she said was he said something, you know, blue car, red car, blue car. Blue car, red car, blue car -- and yes, something like that, a little agitated, and then movement down -- that's where we got the movement down in the animation, by the way.

She said, T intersection, down to the path, and of course, John Good says it happened in the front, and that there was only one person yelling for help. That's significant. Because there is no evidence, none to suggest there was more than one person yelling for help. And if so -- Mr. Guy would remind you of it, if I had forgotten, there's no evidence that more than one person was yelling for help. She was talking about her knowledge, lack of knowledge about the street signs.

Miss Mora we talked about, she heard what she heard and then saw what she saw. By the time she saw it and ran around, that's what happened.

Greg McKinney, records custodian.

John Good, we talked about him a lot. I think he's a significant witness, because he watched it for 8 to 10 seconds, and he was the basis for the animation, the information that came to you through the animation.

Manalo, Jonathan Manalo, same thing. It looked like he got his butt beat and staggering to the ground.

Ricardo Ayala, SPD, the hands under the body, you know, if that is a concern of yours that my client dared to testify in his statement that he took his hands out, out of fear for a weapon, and that that is contraindicated because Trayvon Martin's hands -- look at the picture, by the way, one hand's not really under him but the other hand seems to be, that that is some inconsistency for which you should impute ill will, hatred or spite. That's absurd.

And Dr. Di Maio said it was, 10 to 15 seconds of talking or movement or whatever. Not only is it possible, it's probable.

Stacy Livingston, the EMT who was there, you heard all about the injuries and what she did.

Timothy smith important because -- you remember him -- he was the person on the scene; took George Zimmerman into custody for his own protection. He's the one who George Zimmerman talked to twice about screaming for help before he knew that there was any the 911 call suggesting it.

Lindzee Folgate, you know about the medical reports. She was the first one to mention MMA style.

Hirotake Nakasone, we know about him. Basically he said, can't tell you, can't help you, don't do it, don't even try. Unfortunately even the FBI couldn't help us out with that voice. So now it is sort of up to you on that.

Dora Singleton, initial activity with him -- with the interview. And I think what was significant about that was George Zimmerman's response to the Christian issue, and to the fact that she was the first person telling him that Trayvon Martin had passed away, and the statements are what the statements are.

Chris Serino, again, what he stated was in his opinion, and again he's the law enforcement officer in charge of the investigation, that there aren't any significant inconsistencies in what he heard from George Zimmerman. Were there some? Yes. Were they significant in his mind as to what -- that they were lies? No, not even when he did the challenge interview.

Let's talk about that challenge interview for a second. The state said to you, George Zimmerman knew those video cameras were not working so aha, it wasn't a bluff. It was, again, super cop, knowing everything, and just deciding I can get away with this. Really? Really? So when Chris Serino -- there seems to be a problem with this -- let me look at it for a second. Chris Serino said -- I lost my train of thought -- I'm going to catch up in just a second here. What he had said was the inconsistencies did not matter to him, and did not change his opinion. And when the confrontation interview occurred and when George Zimmerman said, "Thank God there may be a video tape," the state wants you to believe the perfect super-cop bluff response, because he knows (inaudible) -- he took a couple of classes a couple years ago at a community college. Absurd.

I would suggest to you to make the suggestion to you that in that moment, when confronted with the potential of an actual video by Mr. Martin, that my client would do anything other than say thank God it may be there, and it's not evidence of innocence.

Mark Osterman, good buddy. I don't think he would lie for his friend, but was the one who testified about the self defense. I think you remember his testimony a little bit animated, but sort of told you about everything he could about George Zimmerman that night, that he wrote a book about it. That his story is a little bit different from George's other stories. Figure it out and figure out how significant it is, and whether or not it suggests second degree or anything.

Dr. Rao, I don't know what to say, a minimum of four hits. You see the pictures. If you think George Zimmerman was only hit four times, fine. Let's take a moment on those four hits. You're going to get the statute and you're going to get jury instructions. Here's what they're going to tell you about the extent of the injuries that you have to find my client suffered at the time he decided to shoot. The significance of those injuries, how life-threatening those injuries were, how soon my client presumed he was going to die from the injuries already inflicted upon him, are you ready? Zero. Zero. No injuries necessary to respond with deadly force. Not a cut on a finger.

The statute is clear -- reasonable fear of bodily harm. Captain Carter told you, whoa, you can get reasonable fear of bodily harm when you're already getting your butt beat, that's certainly indication, but do you need a cut on your finger? No. Of course getting cut on your finger doesn't allow you to just shoot somebody, unless you're in reasonable fear of ongoing great bodily injury. So the injuries icing on the cake of self-defense, has nothing to do with the substance of self-defense. Nothing.

You will not hear a word about inflicted injuries. You'll only hear that you must look at George Zimmerman's state of mind when he did what he did. So even if I said to you I'll take Dr. Rao's testimony, though you can tell I wasn't taking Dr. Rao's testimony, but let's just say I was. It doesn't matter.

Miss Benson, print expert, there wasn't a lot. Absence of prints doesn't mean no fingerprints or no touching, just that it's not there. Environmental factors such as rain could remove them.

Lt. Scott Kearns, the application that was denied because Mr. Zimmerman didn't have good credit. Captain Carter, criminal litigation coursework -- he actually turned out to be a good expert to tell you what self-defense is and how getting your butt beat is really probably a good indication that great bodily injury is coming, because it's already started. And he says not a good idea to wait until it actually you get attacked.

Jim Krzenski, records custodian.

Gordon Pleasants, we talked about it -- taught the course online to Mr. Zimmerman.

Amy Siewert, firearms, she mentioned the full round of bullets full of complementary bullets, I think we had good testimony about that.

Anthony Gargone of FDLE talking about DNA. You know the problem with part of the DNA is they got some, I think they missed a bunch or at least some because of the way it was packaged. Significant? I don't know. I don't think it was that significant they have been more blood. I don't think that George Zimmerman was bleeding a lot that night. I don't think he was bleeding out that night. I think he was probably bleeding in. And then when he stood up after the attack was over, yes, it started coming out of his nose.

Not a lot of blood on Trayvon Martin, probably not a lot to be expected, and there was no injuries on Trayvon Martin until the gunshot, so you wouldn't imagine there would be any blood on George, George Zimmerman's hands or any place else in his body because when Trayvon Martin was finally shot, he went up and over. So DNA, we can go over some particulars about it, and I have some precise points about what was found on Mr. Trayvon Martin's cuffs and what not, but generally speaking, not all that significant.

Miss Fulton, people asked why you even questioned her. How dare you question the mom of a passed away 17-year-old?

Doctors cut people sometimes when they do their work. That was something I had to present to you, to something about the way it happened and how it happened. And, you know, the impact and just how moms think about these things, both sides. Because I know that both moms believe with their heart, with their soul that that was their son's cry for help. You have to. You want to, and it's just the way you get through it.

Jahvaris Fulton, the brother, he really had no -- like he told you in his testimony when he was talking to the NBC affiliate. It could have been him, not certain, might have been -- I think it was. Now he's more certain. Again, I'm ok with that. I'm ok with people wanting to hear what they want to hear.

Dr. Bao -- that was the state's decision to bring him before you as a medical examiner -- really not actually a decision. He was the one who did the autopsy. Although there was some interaction there that might have best been just redone, the reality is the only injuries were the injuries that we know about on Trayvon Martin, and that the wet clothes should not have been -- should not have been bagged in paper, and that the hands should have been bagged. We'll talk about the hands in a little bit.

Mrs. Zimmerman, she told you that it was her son, as I'm sure you expected, before she ever got on the stand.