George Zimmerman Juror B29 Says He 'Got Away With Murder' of Trayvon Martin [VIDEO]
Juror B29, the only person of color on the all-female jury in the George Zimmerman trial, broke her silence Friday, claiming Zimmerman "got away with murder."
The woman, identified only as Maddy, spoke to Good Morning America about the difficulty she had serving on the jury. "I was the juror that was going to give them the hung jury. I fought to the end," she said.
Initially, Maddy said she voted to convict Zimmerman of second-degree murder, the more serious charge facing the defendant. Later after hours of deliberation with the other jurors, she advocated a sentence of manslaughter. Eventually, the other jurors convinced her that, whatever their feelings about the circumstances of the case, the law said Zimmerman was not guilty.
"You can't put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty. But we had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence," she said. "The truth is that there was nothing that we could do about it. I feel the verdict was already told."
Maddy is Puerto Rican, a 36-year-old mother of eight who had recently moved to Florida from Chicago. She said serving on the jury in the controversial case has taken a toll on her. "It's hard for me to eat because I feel I was forcefully included in Trayvon Martin's death. And as I carry him on my back, I'm hurting as much as Trayvon's Martin's mother because there's no way that any mother should feel that pain," she said.
After the interview aired, Martin's mother Sybrina Fulton made her approval known. "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."
Zimmerman's lawyer Mark O'Mara, however, praised Maddy, calling her a "model juror."
"Based on her comments, Juror B-29 accepted a tremendous burden, set her feelings aside, and cast a verdict based the evidence presented in court and on the law she was provided," he said. "Any juror that follows Juror B-29's process will deliver a fair and just verdict."
Maddy called the trial itself a "publicity stunt" that never should have happened. "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. The law couldn't prove it."