One of the most damaging moments for the prosecution in the trial of George Zimmerman trial was the inexplicable decision to lead with Rachel Jeantel, a friend of Trayvon Martin’s. Jeantel proceeded to admit to previously lying and then gave conflicted and at points unintelligible testimony. Her statement that Martin called Zimmerman a “cracker” further helped the defense in balancing the derogatory statements of Zimmerman. After the verdict, Jeantel has made statements that seem unhinged and again raise the question on why the prosecutors would place her so prominently in their case in chief. The latest controversy is a new allegation from Jeantel that she warned Trayvon that Zimmerman might be a gay rapist. She is not the only person associated with the trial who seems to be courting the press in the case with disastrous results.
In an interview with Piers Morgan, she said “People need to understand, he didn’t want that creepy ass cracka going to his father or girlfriend’s house to go get — mind you, his little brother is there. Mind you I told you, I told Trayvon, [Zimmerman] might have been a rapist.”
In a truly bizarre interview, Morgan asks Jeantel to school him on the correct spelling and meaning of such terms as “cracka” and “nigga.”
Jeantel called the verdict “BS” and said “Well, the jury, they see their facts. My thoughts of the jury, they old, that’s old school people. We in a new school, our generation, my generation. So –”
Morgan then appears to turn into a cultural anthropologist and asked clinically:
“Let’s talk about ‘creepy ass cracka.’ People have said that that is a phrase used by black people, cracka, to describe a white person. Is that true?
JEANTEL: No! Like I said —
MORGAN: How do you spell it, first of all?
JEANTEL: Cracka.
MORGAN: There’s no ‘e-r,’ right?
JEANTEL: No, it’s an ‘a’ at the end.
MORGAN: C-r-a-c-k-a.
JEANTEL: Yeah. And that’s a person who act like they’re a police [officer], who, like a security guard who acting like — that’s what I said to them. Trayvon said creepy ass cracka.
MORGAN: It means he thought it was a police or a security guard?
JEANTEL: Yeah, he acting like the police. And then he keep telling me that the man is still watching him. So, if it was a security guard or a policeman, they would come up to Trayvon and say, ‘Do you have a problem? Do you need help?’ You know, like normal people.
Once again, it is unclear why Jeantel did not emphasize the concern over a male rape on the stand. One could almost feel the prosecutor cringing at the interview with so many questioning their judgment in relying so heavily on Jeantel.
While on the subject of people behaving badly from the case (a rather long list), there is juror B-37 who announced in an interview that she was going to write a book and had enlisted an agent. She even named her agent as Sharlene Martin. After an outcry over the effort to profit from the case (not to mention a pretty limited foundation for a book). Martin tweeted that juror B37 had regained her sanity and dropped the plans for a book (that was going to be co-written by her attorney husband). She explained that the isolation of being sequestered “shielded me from the depth of pain that exists among the general public over every aspect of this case.”
Really? It took this long to figure out that there was pain over the verdict. What tipped you off after you arranged for an interview, went to the interview, and announced your book? Was it the mass protests in various cities or continuing coverage on television. Ironically, she actually proved the accuracy of West’s disastrous joke in his opening statement: “Knock, knock. Who’s there? George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman who? Congratulations, you’re on the jury.” The joke was bizarre first because you should never cut jokes in a murder trial opening statement with a dead teenage boy. Second, if the jury got the joke, they would realize they were the punch line. The point is that only morons or cave-dwelling recluses would not know anything about the case. Well then walked in juror B-37.
Source: Real Clear Politics
pete, Thanks.
Blouise,
It ain’t easy bein’ green!
nick
at the time of the shooting the sanford fl chief of police was white
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/20/justice/florida-martin-case-police-chief
Elaine,
Good question … he used to be green!!
Gene H.
1, July 16, 2013 at 8:29 pm
Are you going to call me Spock now, Elaine?
Just because some men choose not to lead with their emotions or to put them firmly in the backseat to reason doesn’t mean they don’t have them or are afraid to express them. It’s a choice. When I choose to let emotion lead, I’m usually very clear about it.
*****
I made a comment about Mike. It was an observation that I had made about him. I didn’t mean it to be taken in any other way. Besides, you don’t have pointy ears and you don’t have Vulcan blood running through your veins…or do you?????
That would make it tough on the Feds. I think Holder is just preachin’ to the choir right now. I doubt any civil rights suits will be brought.
I saw a church service after the verdict. I am pretty sure the Chief of Police in Sanford is black[male].
Blouise, If that’s what the Feds are looking @ then the action would be civil rights action would be directed @ the police, not Zimmerman. I’m sure you know that.
SWM, Thanks. I’m sorry I missed that, and I’m sorry Malisha is gone.
Gene,
“I think there’s a more than reasonable argument that it’s a distraction from the issue at bar” … perhaps, until one admits that the locals never intended it to be at bar. That is the aspect of this case that I find most intriguing … what drove the initial, local, decision making process. I strongly believe that is exactly what the feds are looking at.
Don’t mess with the narrative Professor, don’t mess with the narrative.
What mespo said gene…
mespo,
Oops. My bad. Mea maxima culpa. Good to know that though.
And my condolences.
______________
Blouise,
It doesn’t have to be, but for many it is simply because the topic of race in this country is intrinsically loaded. The first step in avoiding value loading is to be aware of the potential and compensate for it in detached clinical analysis. I haven’t seen a wealth of that in this case or much of the commentary. To me, the death of an unarmed young man doing nothing illegal and minding his own business at the hands of a vigilante is troubling regardless of the race of either victim or perpetrator. As race was attached to this case though? I think there’s a more than reasonable argument that it’s a distraction from the issue at bar, both played by the media for ratings and by Zimmerman’s own family as a distraction from the favoritism. The pending (if there is one) civil rights violation case is a different matter before the bar and race has a more substantive role in that matter than it did in the homicide charge(s).
Gene,
drop “The possibility that” and the sentence makes sense. Sorry … I edit and edit and then fail to edit ….
Gene,
You might want to consider that attaching racism to the Zimmerman case is not an exercise in emotionalism. Keep in mind that the 2005 law in Florida gives great leeway to police and prosecutors in determining the justifiability of a homicide under the SYG law and the question as to what role race plays in that decision making process and how race affects the enforcement of stand-your-ground laws is not an emotional one.
The possibility that the self-defense doctrine, intermingled with issues of race and vigilantism is thorny but not emotional.
“That’s what civil rights statutes are there for, when, in fact, local law enforcement fails to protect the rights of citizens, especially when race seems to be implicated, as it certainly is in this case,” says Bob Cottrol, a law professor and gun rights expert at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C.”
Gene H:
Sad to say that’s Orange County, VA
Bettykath stated more than once that her notifications seemed to be re-set and she did not re-set them. I am thinking that she may think her leaving was helped along by such swift disposal of her notification setting. One might also think it was a WordPress thing.
From article: “Once again, it is unclear why Jeantel did not mention her warning of a male rape on the stand. One could almost feel the prosecutor cringing at the interview with so many questioning their judgment in relying so heavily on Jeantel.”
I replayed a video of the Ms. Jeantel testimony regarding the ‘cracker/rapist’ remark and the video ended before the testimony did. She was interrupted with requests to repeat, talk louder, repeat, clarify, slow down, repeat, to the point that it was irritating and distracting to me. I don’t know if it was brought out in further testimony that she told Mr. Martin because the video ended with more similar requests before that testimony thread was seen to wrap up- unless it just wrapped up by going elsewhere. I have every suspicion that she thought that she did say that on the stand but was so confused on the stand that she did not.
Also, I didn’t hear ‘racist’, I heard ‘rapist’. I didn’t have any trouble understanding her. The defense was trying to confuse her as well as impress on people that there was something wrong with the way she spoke. She was being painted as alien to the language and to the culture.
As to her lies, she lied twice, once about her age and once about why she didn’t attend the service. Neither of those things were of substance to the case. That so many people bring up her lies when calling her a terrible witness as if she was fabricating material facts- facts material to the case, is disingenuous at best.
The narrative as crafted is that the prosecution overcharged and that Ms. Jeantel lost the case by being a bad witness. Not true regarding Ms. Jeantel. She was consistent. She was also treated very badly. if the prosecutor did his job she was instructed to keep her answers short on cross. That and the fact that she didn’t want to be thrown into that meat-grinder to begin with and was uniformly treated as some kind of strange, alien life form by constant interruption and calls to ‘repeat’ became characterized as sullenness very early on. She knew what was up and it was obviously making her angry and frustrated. It was driving her nuts that she was being treated as if she could not speak intelligibly and it showed.
What struck me was that the people that should have objected didn’t. I dealt with a lot of people like Ms. Jeantel and I never let them be picked at and harried like she was. I did dozens and dozens and dozens of arbitrations and hearings in various appeal forums with many witness’ and appellants that were somewhat lacking in sophistication and/or education. It was my job to insure that the weight of their testimony and their value to the hearing was as great, and respected as valuable, as any other participant including whatever big-dog flown in from HQ or called as experts got thrown at them. On a couple of occasions the arbitrator stepped in and called a halt to tactics meant to confuse and demean them. [I would give them a couple of free shots just so I could use words like ‘persistently’ and ‘repeatedly’. It made for a stronger objection and was normally met with a favorable outcome.] I was amazed at the way she was treated.
Because it’s an itch that won’t go away: I don’t think a foreign born white guy, say a French person, with a thick accent, a nice suit and an impressive job title, would have been treated that way from the get go. There was an image being played upon, as well as crafted with Ms. Jeantel.
You make me sad Mr. Turley, are witnesses required to be lily white and speak the way YOU want to be valid? Yes, this is a legal blog , but I guess I was wrong about it also being concerned with justice. Have you addressed any of the post-verdict moronic comments from the murderer’s side?
Robert Zimmerman, Sr. is a former Orange County Florida magistrate judge according to various Web sources.
AY,
If I recall, he was a local magistrate of some sort in Florida, but it may have been a foreign jurisdiction.