Zimmerman juror to ABC: He 'got away with murder'
juror in the George Zimmerman
trial says she feels the man who killed
Trayvon Martin "got away with murder."
"George Zimmerman got away with murder,
but you can't get away from God. And at the
end of the day, he's going to have a lot of
questions and answers he has to deal with,"
Juror B29 told ABC, according to an article
posted on the network's website Thursday.
"(But) the law couldn't prove it."
The juror, who used only her first name of
Maddy out of concerns for her safety, told
ABC that she and others on the panel felt
Zimmerman was guilty, but that wasn't
enough.
"You can't put the man in jail even though in
our hearts we felt he was guilty," she said.
"But we had to grab our hearts and put it
aside and look at the evidence."
Thursday night, Martin's mother said she was
devastated after hearing the juror's
comments.
"It is devastating for my family
to hear the comments from
juror B29, comments which we
already knew in our hearts to
be true. That George
Zimmerman literally got away
with murder," Sybrina Fulton
said in a written statement.
"This new information
challenges our nation once
again to do everything we can
to make sure that this never
happens to another child."
Maddy is the second juror to
speak about the high-profile
case since the six-person, all-
female jury acquitted
Zimmerman earlier this month.
She and other jurors also have
identified themselves by their
numbers from the jury pool.
Opinion: What if both were
white?
Last week the woman known as
Juror B37 told CNN's
"Anderson Cooper 360" that
Zimmerman "didn't do
anything unlawful" and was
"justified" in shooting 17-year-
old Martin last year.
Zimmerman has been out of
the public eye since the jury
found him not guilty of second
degree murder on July 13. His
parents told ABC News last
week that their family has
received an "enormous amount
of death threats."
He fatally shot Martin in the
Sanford, Florida, neighborhood
where Zimmerman and
Martin's father lived in
February 2012. Zimmerman,
who is Hispanic, had a
confrontation with the
unarmed African-American
teen after calling police to
report a suspicious person, and
he said he shot Martin in self-
defense.
The case became a flash point
in debates over racial profiling,
and thousands attended vigils
across the country over the
weekend, decrying the verdict.
Martin's father goes to Capitol Hill
Maddy, 36, is Puerto Rican and a mother of
eight children, ABC said. She was the only
minority to deliberate in the case. She told
ABC that the case was never about race to
her.
At the beginning of deliberations, she told
ABC, she wanted to convict Zimmerman of
second-degree murder. But she realized on
the second day of deliberations that there
wasn't enough proof to convict him of murder
or the lesser charge of manslaughter.
"I was the juror that was going to give them
the hung jury. I fought to the end," she said,
according to ABC.
Juror B37 told CNN that the jury was initially
split -- three and three along the line of
guilt. Juror B37 was among those who
believed Zimmerman was not guilty from the
start.
She stressed that she and the other jurors
took their responsibility seriously.
"I don't want people to think that we didn't
think about this, and we didn't care about
Trayvon Martin, because we did. We're very
sad that it happened to him," she said.
Juror B29 told ABC that the decision is still
weighing heavily on her, and she thinks she
owes Martin's parents an apology.
"It's hard for me to sleep, it's hard for me to
eat because I feel I was forcefully included
in Trayvon Martin's death," she told ABC.
"And as I carry him on my back, I'm hurting
as much (as) Trayvon Martin's mother
because there's no way that any mother
should feel that pain."
