George Zimmerman, the defendant in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, was forced to surrender himself back to the court within 48 hours today, after it was uncovered that he had more funds available than what he had previously told the court, as well as a possible second passport that he had not handed over. ABCnews.com reports:
Prosecutors claim Zimmerman had $135,000 available that had been raised by a website he set up. Zimmerman’s wife, Shellie, testified at the bond hearing in April that they had limited funds available since she was a nursing student and Zimmerman wasn’t working.
“He can’t sit back and obtain the benefit of a lower bond based upon those material falsehoods,” said Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester when he made his ruling.
Zimmerman, via his lawyer, claims that there was no purposeful deceit of the court, and also that they had just forgotten to hand the second US Passport over.
Lawyers on both sides also continue to request that the court proceedings remain private. FoxNews.com explains:
At Friday’s hearing, De la Rionda and O’Mara also asked a judge to stop the public release of witness names and statements made by Zimmerman to police officers. Those documents normally are part of the public record under Florida law.
“What’s occurring, unfortunately, are cases are being tried in the public sector as opposed to in the courtroom,” De La Rionda told Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester. “We are in a new age with Twitter, Facebook, and all these things I’ve never heard of before in my career. Everybody gets to find out intimate details about witnesses that never occurred before. Witnesses are going to be reluctant to get involved.”
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What do you think? Should the funds being raised by the “Free George Zimmerman” website and other sources have been considered and presented to the court in determining bond?
Should the witness names be kept private? Or do we, as a nation, have a right to know who’s saying what in a case so public?
Photo:AP
How can you ‘forget’ the second passport? Even for argument’s sake, if you forget where it is, how can you forget to declare its existence? When defence funds like this are established, they should go into trust and have a neutral administrator, to ensure they are only used for the purposes for which they were raised (this could be helpful in many different scenarios). The media frenzy – well it’s a catch-22 with some cases. On the one hand, the court of public opion should never detract from or cloud the actual evidence in a case. On the other, sometimes… Read more »
Personally I think media frenzy doesn’t help the wheels of justice. I haven’t seen many cases where media coverage helped justice, and quite a few cases where it hindered it.