George Zimmerman: In Technicolor
Posted on Mon Dec 03, 2012 at 02:50:06 PM EST
Tags: George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin (all tags)
This is the photo Sanford Police Officer Mike Wagner took of George Zimmerman sitting in the patrol car the night Trayvon Martin was shot.
The state finally turned it over to the defense. Previously, it sent them a black and white xerox of the photo. The defense had to file motions and argue in court for the production of the original photo. [More...]
Also, the defense has filed a motion asking for the original interview of Trayvon Martin's phone friend "Dee Dee", whom Team Crump has described as 16 years old since March 20, the day they played a phone conversation between her and Crump. Why? It seems when the state interviewed her on April 2, they asked her how old she was and she said "18." The state redacted both the question and the answer from the recording initially provided the defense (and the media version).
Footnote 2 of Zimmerman's Motion to Compel, seeking an order directing Benjamin Crump "to produce the original recording and the original recording device used in the telephone interview of Witness 8 on or about March 19, 2012 and surrender same, without alteration, to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement."
Witness eight is 18 years old and was 18 at the time of Mr. Crump's interview of her according to her sworn statement to the prosecutor on April 2, 2012. Her unedited statement to the prosecutor was not released to the defense until September and only after repeated requests. Her age was edited out of the interview in a previous disclosure.
The state provided O'Mara with "Dee Dee's" real name but not her address.
Dee Dee's age was part of Crump's narrative of her from the get-go. On March 20, when he held his press conference in Fort Lauderdale to play his recording, which CNN was airing live, legal analyst Sunny Hostin told Kyra Philips as they were waiting for the conference to begin that she had spoken to Martin Family lawyer Natalie Jackson that morning:
CNN legal analyst, Sunny Hostin joining, me now with more on all of this.
Why don't we go ahead and start with Trayvon's cell phone friend? I understand you actually have a copy of her sworn affidavit. Give us the details, Sunny. We'll kind of unfold the conversation from there.
SUNNY HOSTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Good morning, Kyra. I do not have a copy, though, of the sworn affidavit, but I did speak to one of the Martin family attorneys this morning for at least half an hour and she and I discussed this phone call.
Apparently Trayvon Martin on that night had been trading phone calls with a 16-year-old friend, a girl, and as they traded phone calls, one of the last phone calls, was at about 7:04.
The press conference had not yet begun. A bit later, Kyra Phillips says:
PHILLIPS: OK. And we'll be talking about it this afternoon. Sunny, thanks so much. I know you will be with us as well. We ask all of you to stay with CNN. We are going to bring you the live coverage of the news conference which Trayvon Smith's father, Tracy. Also their family attorney will be joining him. That's coming up any minute now. We will take that live as soon as it happens.
Benjamin Crump referred to her as 16 on March 21 on the Today Show (NBC News Transcripts March 21, 2012 Wednesday):
LAUER: Mr. Crump, though, as an attorney, does it worry you that really what this is, is hearsay evidence?
Mr. CRUMP: It really doesn't because she is a 16-year-old teenager who just lost a person very special to her. Her parents are very concerned. They did not want her to get involved. And it wasn't till Mr. Martin found the phone records and saw that she called him at 7:12--the police got on the scene 7:17. He was shot and dead on the ground. Five minutes.
Who is Dee Dee? Please don't speculate because the Court has ordered her identity protected.
Who has spoken to Dee Dee as much or more than Crump? ABC's Matt Gutman. On March 28, he used that name in his ABC News Report. And told Lawrence O'Donnell on the Last Word on 3/28 (transcript available on Lexis.com):
GUTMAN: Again, it was another contradiction of Zimmerman`s version of events. For minutes it seemed Trayvon Martin knew he was being followed by this unidentified person behind him. At one point he said there`s this crazy white dude behind me. I don`t know why he`s following me.
And this continues. He tries to run, and then he walks. And then he thinks he loses Zimmerman. And Zimmerman catches up to him. And then they had this confrontation, Trayvon Martin asking Zimmerman, why are you following me? Zimmerman responding, what are you doing here? And the next thing that this 16-year-old girl says, Dee Dee, that she heard was a scuffle. Trayvon`s treasured phone falls to the ground. She hears the rustle in the grass, and then the phone cuts out.
Matt Gutman told O'Donnell that night he'd been speaking to her for days:
More on Dee Dee here.O`DONNELL: Matt, quickly before you go, you talked to her. What`s your assessment of her credibility?
GUTMAN: I think she`s credible. I don`t think she has anything to hide here. We`ve been talking to her for days now. This is not the first time that I`ve heard her speak. I have no reason to believe that she`s lying.
(To be continued, I have to get back to work.)
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