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
Blouise,
What if Zimmerman had been hit by a truck and killed the day before?
Regression is useful in analysis only so far, but infinite regression presents the same problems all infinities do.
Elaine,
Juror B37 wanted fame …
Is demum miser est, cuius nobilitas miserias nobilitat. (Unhappy is he whose fame makes his misfortunes famous.) – Lucius Accius, Telephus
Gene,
But if Zimmerman didn’t consider him suspicious … no following …. no murder … no case at bar … all in the hypothetical of course.
Why Did They Let Her on the Zimmerman Jury?
The strange, strange case of juror B37.
By Dahlia Lithwick|Posted Monday, July 15, 2013
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/07/zimmerman_trial_juror_b37_why_did_prosecutors_let_her_on_the_trayvon_martin.html
Excerpt:
Less than two days after a Florida jury found George Zimmerman not guilty in the death of Trayvon Martin, juror B37, one of the six members of the anonymous panel, signed with a literary agent to shop her book about the trial.
The news comes with a bonus video: juror B37’s entire voir dire captured on film and promoted Monday by Gawker. The process by which counsel on each side of the case interviews prospective jurors is revealing in all kinds of ways and a useful lesson in the strengths and weaknesses of the jury system. In the case of B37, it is also a master class on how to not know anything about something everyone else knows about.
Start with the general observations already raised in Gawker: B37 consumes no media beyond the Today show—no radio, no Internet news, and no newspapers used for anything but lining her parrot’s cage. Perhaps because she does not consume any media, she was under the false belief that there were “riots” after the Martin shooting. She also described the Martin killing as “an unfortunate incident that happened.”
But the tape raises another question that should be debated in every trial advocacy class in America: What were the lawyers, especially the prosecutors, thinking when they seated her? Why didn’t prosecutors use one of their peremptory challenges to nix her? She’s contrarian, she raised serious ontological doubts about the nature of truth-seeking, and she was only ever truly animated on the subject of rescue birds. Both lawyers were visibly cowed by her. I asked several prosecutors, former prosecutors, and public defenders to watch the video and report on the red flags it raised for them.
Almost all of them start with the same caveat: Jury selection is not jury selection. “It’s de-selection” explains Howard Lidsky, a board-certified criminal-law attorney in Florida. “It’s impossible to make a judgment about jury selection unless you’re seated in the room,” he says. “You have 18 people in the box and just six strikes. You may dislike a juror, but you might like the person sitting next to him even less.” Ken White is a former prosecutor and criminal defense attorney at Brown White and Newhouse in Los Angeles. He blogs at Popehat.com. He makes the same point: “Even if one prospective juror seems bad, you have a limited number of peremptories, and they may have judged the others as even worse. What was the alternative?”
Robert Weisberg teaches criminal law at Stanford Law School, and he immediately wonders what it meant when juror B37 asserted that “You never get all the information. How do you form an opinion if you don’t have all the information?” Weisberg sums up his lawyerly concerns in one sentence: “She thinks the world is one big reasonable doubt.”
Gail Brashers-Krug, a former federal prosecutor and law professor, is currently a criminal defense attorney in Iowa. She also jumped back when B37 said, ”You never get all the information.“ “That’s exactly what a defense attorney loves to hear,” says Brashers-Krug. “That’s reasonable doubt, right there. If I were a prosecutor, that would make me extremely nervous about her.” She adds that B37’s devotion to animals might raise flags for her as well. “The animal thing is weird. She doesn’t know how many animals she has, and she mentions her animals far, far more than her two daughters. She strikes me as eccentric and unpredictable. I never, ever want eccentric, unpredictable people on a jury.”
Brashers-Krug has another reservation about seating B37: “She really wants to be a juror. She seems to be going out of her way to minimize the disruptive effect of a multiweek trial on her life. Jurors rarely do that. She is also taking pains to avoid saying anything particularly sympathetic to either side. Both sides tend to be very skeptical of jurors who are particularly eager to serve on high-profile cases. Often they have their own agendas, or are attention-seekers.”
Blouise,
You know as well as I do that motive is relevant in a capital murder case and then only to intent. This was never a capital murder case. It was a manslaughter case (poorly handled by the prosecution).
And that’s good news on the NRA/Koch front.
Gene,
Ah, but given that hypothetical (Martin being white) would Zimmerman have considered him suspicious enough to follow and confront?
This is a mental exercise we could engage in all night along with the inevitable semantics.
The reality of the situation won’t change.
BTW … the NRA and ALEC have suspended their sponsoring of SYG laws pending further developments.
Has ‘Caucasian’ Lost Its Meaning?
By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: July 6, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/sunday-review/has-caucasian-lost-its-meaning.html?_r=0
Smom,
I’m not sure “white privilege” applies to man of Jewish/Hispanic origin since neither are Caucasian. That being said, I am not claiming such things don’t happen. Crackers are notoriously bad about not judging people by the content of their character much less their accomplishments. I’m only saying that Zimmerman’s father wearing black probably had a whole lot more to do with the initial preferential treatment than the victim being black did. If Martin had been white, I still say I have no doubt in my mind this would have initially unfolded the same way.
The witness looks completely different than what the picture of Rachel in this article shows.
See it all the time around here, Gene, but maybe it is different in Louisiana. Somehow I doubt it. It is worse.
Sure there is Gene but because of white privilege many white people think they are superior to a black person even if the black person is much more accomplished.
Blouise,
Also, it is no surprise that one exclusionary social ill fosters and is compatible with another.
Blouise,
That whole brotherhood in blue extends to the brotherhood in black.
___________
Smom,
So what? That only proves some people disagree with me. Not that I’m wrong. However, if you (in the generic sense of you) think there isn’t a distinct trend of elitism in the political class and LE in this country, I suggest you might not be paying attention. Distracted perhaps.
Gene, I have not read one article written by a black person that agrees with what you just said.and I have read many over the past few days. Holder spoke today about an incident he had in Georgetown when he was already a prosecuting attorney. If one spends any time around middle or upper middle class black people one gets a totally different picture from that which you just presented.
Gene,
You know I’m going to agree with the elitism point you make 100% (though why anyone would consider someone from Orange County Virginia as elite beats me, no offense, mespo) and only counter with how perfectly elitism plays into and covers racism.
SwM,
Up thread I mentioned a quote to you that I found most insightful and attributed said quote to leejcaroll but I have been searching all day and finally decided to try another insightful poster and bingo … found!
“This is not the first time that i have seen the law subvert justice.
Our society will be poorer for it, once again, as those who once put their trust in the ‘system’ will now look elsewhere . Groundswells like the ones that form almost immediately surrounding events like this are occurring more and more rapidly around the occurrance…soon they will break like a wave and the ‘law’ will be cut out of the equation altogether. What has been accomplished? No one has disproved that Trayvon Martin was stalked, accosted and (even giving GZ the benefit of the doubt…) may have in that unwitnessed moment, objected to being stalked, and accosted for being black, wearing a hoodie, having the unmitigated gall to go to the corner market without a cadre of witnesses to buy skittles and a drink. In the phucking rain.” (Woosty’s still a Cat)
Elaine,
I refuse to comment on the color of my blood or the shape of my ears.
Live long and prosper.
__________
Blousie,
The Feds are indeed looking at that angle and may pursue it, but I still think in this case that it had more to do with elitism and the preferential treatment of a judge’s son than it did with race – which in itself is shameful, wrong and against the foundational principles of this country in putting the Rule of Law first. If Zimmerman had been black? I have no doubt in my mind this would have initially unfolded the same way. No man is above the law and we’ve seen a distinct rise of a political oligarchy seemingly immune from the law since Nixon. As bad as racism is, I think this kind of elitism is a far greater danger to our society and posses a greater threat to domestic tranquility. It not only displays a flagrant lack of accountability from the political class, it pisses on egalitarianism, the Rule of Law and Equal Protection.
pete,
Look up thread to see her last post. She was very upset and we lost her.
what happened to Malisha?
nick,
I never commented much on Zimmerman before the verdict … I just read the posts and studied the links and videos others submitted for consideration. And no, if you are referring to the chief who was in place when the initial decisions were made, he is white but it’s the “capias request” that went to the state’s attorney because the local, lead investigator wanted Zimmerman arrested for manslaughter, that starts to muddy the waters. It really is most intriguing.
(Sonofthunder and I have our own little scenario going)
As to Holder … what did you expect?