Juror In George Zimmerman Trial Speaks Out About Verdict
BOSTON (CBS) - When the jurors in the George Zimmerman trial first got the case, three voted not guilty, two wanted manslaughter and one thought he was guilty of second degree murder. That revelation came from juror B37, who told Anderson Cooper she hadn't really followed the case before she was picked.
Her identity concealed, she also said she found some witnesses good and some in her words, "not so good." As for Rachel Jeantel, the friend Trayvon Martin was talking to when George Zimmerman approached him, she said she felt sorry for her and didn't find her very credible. But when it came to the 911 tape where someone could be heard yelling help, she was sure she knew who it was. "I think it was George Zimmerman...because of evidence he was the one that had gotten beaten," she said.
She says the jurors were emotional especially after they gave their verdict to the bailiff. In the end, though, she felt George Zimmerman thought his life was threatened. "It is a tragedy that this happened, but it happened," she explained fighting back tears.
On the same day we gained new insight into the deliberations, we heard from a saddened and disappointed Governor Deval Patrick. "I felt like there were a whole bunch of conversations that parents of black boys are having with their kids that parents of white boys don't have to have with their kids," Patrick said of his reaction to the verdict.
Related: Local Leaders React To Verdict
But Patrick, a former head of The Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, isn't sure there's anything the federal agency can do now. Questions about what needs to happen next, he said, needed to be asked to Attorney General Eric Holder whose department is looking into the case. "I've been at the department and I know that there are options are limited but frankly I think that the solution was never going to be in the courts alone," he explained. "We're going to have to deal with what we know was motivating. By all accounts what was motivating George Zimmerman which had to do with suppositions that he associated with Trayvon that had nothing to do with the character of Trayvon or his actual behavior and that is what makes me so sad," Patrick said.
The case has sparked a heated debate nationwide about race and profiling. But juror B-37 says she never thought of it that way. She also said Zimmerman had the right to carry that gun and protect himself.
