When she went public in an on-camera interview with ABC News, the juror in the George Zimmerman trial previously known only as B29 addressed a lot of questions including the most obvious one: should she have stuck to her convictions if she believed Zimmerman was guilty of murder?
Zimmerman was acquitted of the charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. He said he shot Martin in self-defense after the teen attacked him.
Related: Trayvon Martin’s parents “devastated” by Juror B29 revelations
The 36-year-old certified nursing assistant and mother of eight identified as “Maddy” says she “was the juror that was gonna give them the hung jury,” and that she “fought to the end.” Ultimately, however, she says she couldn’t find any justification in Florida law to convict Zimmerman, who she now says “got away with murder” in the killing of Trayvon Martin, adding, “but you can’t get away from God.”
Was she confused about the law?
On the surface, some of Maddy’s statements seem contradictory. She told ABC News Anchor Robin Roberts: “For myself, he’s guilty, because the evidence shows that he’s guilty, [of] killing Trayvon Martin. But as the law was read to me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can’t say he’s guilty.”
In fact, Florida’s second degree murder statute does not require that a killing be intentional, but rather is defined as: “The unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual.”
And under Florida law, manslaughter, the leaser included charge Zimmerman faced, is defined as: “The killing of a human being by the act, procurement, or culpable negligence of another, without lawful justification according to the provisions of chapter 776 and in cases in which such killing shall not be excusable homicide or murder.”
However, the jury instructions in the Zimmerman trial read differently. Jurors were told they could find Zimmerman guilty of second degree murder if:
-Trayvon Martin is dead.
-The death was caused by the criminal act of George Zimmerman.
– There was an unlawful killing of Trayvon Martin by an act imminently dangerous to another and demonstrating a depraved mind without regard for human life.
And they could find him guilty of manslaughter if they found that:
– Trayvon Martin is dead.
– George Zimmerman intentionally committed an act or acts that caused the death of Trayvon Martin.
However the jury was instructed that “Zimmerman cannot be found guilty of manslaughter if the killing of a human being is excusable, and therefore lawful, under any one of the following circumstances:
–When the killing is committed by accident and misfortune in doing any lawful act by lawful means with usual ordinary caution and without any unlawful intent, or
–When the killing occurs by accident and misfortune in the heat of passion, upon any sudden and sufficient provocation.”
In addition, the jurors were given an explanation of the “justifiable use of deadly force:
“An issue in this case is whether George Zimmerman acted in self-defense. It is a defense to the crime of Second Degree Murder, and the lesser-included offense of Manslaughter, if the death of Trayvon Martin resulted from the justifiable use of deadly force.
‘Deadly force’ means force likely to cause death or great bodily harm.
A person is justified in using deadly force if he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself.”
Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney for the southern district of Florida, says instructions and legal language can be confusing to a jury.
“Jury instructions can create confusion,” he says. “And it’s incumbent on jurors to seek clarification if possible.”
In fact, after nine hours of deliberations on Saturday, July 14th, the Zimmerman jury sent a note to the judge asking for clarification of the manslaughter statute. After consulting with the lawyers for both sides, the judge sent the jurors a reply that said the court cannot engage in “general discussions” on the charge, and added, “If you have a specific question please submit it.” The jury never did. The next time the court heard from the jury was to render the verdict a few hours later.
Coffey says that while jury deliberations can be a high-pressure situation, jurors are asked to weigh the evidence and that as a juror, “you’re not supposed to surrender your beliefs.”
Next: Was she bullied?
Maddy told Roberts, “I don’t know if I was bullied. I trust God that I wasn’t bullied,” saying she was “the loudest one, my voice was heard.”
She was the only juror who wanted to convict on second-degree murder at the beginning. (According to Juror B37, who spoke with her identity concealed to CNN two days after the trial ended two other jurors initially wanted manslaughter, while she and two others voted to acquit from day one.) However Maddy told Roberts she wasn’t the only juror who wanted to hold Zimmerman accountable.
“A lot of us had wanted to find something bad, something that we could connect to the law,” she told Roberts.. “We felt he was guilty. But we had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence.”
Zimmerman defense attorney Mark O’Mara said on his blog Friday, “We do ask jurors not to reach their verdicts based on what their hearts tell them; for the verdict, a juror must set aside emotions and follow the law. 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.”
Former prosecutor Lisa Bloom, who analyzed the trial throughout for MSNBC, said she feels compassion for Maddy, and that while Maddy said race was never discussed, the fact that she was the only non-white juror could easily have affected the dynamics of the deliberations.
“Look at the way it played out, with the one minority juror being the one who voted for second degree murder early in the deliberations.” Lisa Bloom said. She added; “and that’s why we need more people of color on juries, because there is a cultural dynamic to the relationships and the factions that are formed, particularly when a jury is sequestered,” Bloom said. “It’s not that all white people think the same, or all black people or Hispanic people think the same, but there clearly are differences.”
To the extent that race played a role, Maddy insisted the issue was never brought up during deliberations. But in the aftermath of the verdict, it appears to play a part in her view of her own role. Asked by Roberts if she has any regrets, Maddy said, “Kind of. I mean I’m the only minority. And I feel like I let a lot of people down.”
Pressure on jurors can be intense
Michael Silva served on the 2007 jury that acquitted one member of the Liberty City Seven — a group of Haitian-American men accused of plotting terrorism after being ensnared by an FBI informant posing as a representative of al- Qaida. The men, who were members of an obscure religious group, claimed they were trying to scam the informant out $50,000.
The jury hung on the other six. A subsequent jury hung on identical charges against the six remaining defendants in 2008, though five of them were later convicted on terrorism-related charges, and one acquitted, in 2009. The convictions were upheld by an appellate court in 2011.
Silva, who is African-American, says his 12-member jury, which was about one-quarter minority, endured nine hours of deliberations in which some jurors put constant pressure on the group to simply come to an agreement and go home. His jury wasn’t sequestered, but Silva said the pressure was intense nonetheless.
“We sat for nearly 10 weeks [during the trial] I think, so it was a very long period of time,” he said. “And when I watched the Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman situation, when the case went to the jurors, I thought to myself, somebody’s gonna say, ‘I want out. I don’t want to be here anymore.'”
Silva, a broadcast consultant and former radio executive, said that as in any organization, stronger and weaker negotiators emerge in a jury setting. “It’s a matter of saying, you know what? In order for me to go home today, I need to give in to something.”
He says that Maddy “could have held out and caused a hung jury, but you have people who have strong personalities and people who have weak personalities, and if you don’t hold your ground in there, you’ll succumb.”
Silva says the rules against jurors talking about the case outside of deliberations are impossible to enforce.
When you put 12 people in the room, what are the gonna do? Talk. What do they have in common? The case. Nobody there knows each other. Nobody’s created any friendships because people are walking on eggshells and trying to be cautious,” he says. “The ‘how’s your day, how’s your weekend’ stuff lasts about a day.”
The jurors in the Zimmerman trial were sequestered, but they had some alone time, and time to talk with family members. They also went on outings together, to the movies, bowling and to the nail salon. Whether they formed bonds, or factions, is impossible to know.
And while Maddy told Roberts she thinks she made the correct decision under the law, she added that she wished in her heart that she could have done otherwise, even saying she was “forcibly included in [Travon’s] death,” and adding, “I carry him on my back.”
Coffey says it’s not that unusual for jurors to have recriminations after a particularly difficult trial.
“It’s not the first time there’s been juror’s remorse” in a case like this, says Coffey. “It can be a real dilemma for a juror to weigh the duty to listen to others while also having a duty to adhere to their own beliefs. It’s not extraordinary for a juror to look back at a verdict and believe there are things they wish they had better understood. But the system doesn’t permit any reopening [of the case] based on this juror’s I’m sure sincere and honest statements.”
Next: Hung juries are rare
In fact, “juror’s remorse” may be more common than hung juries.
A 2009 study by Nicole L. Waters of the National Center for State Courts and Valerie P. Hans of Cornell Law School found that an average of only 6-7 percent of criminal trials result in hung juries (though there is tremendous regional variation, with the rate approaching 20 percent in some California counties and the District of Columbia. and just 1 percent in Oregon, which relies on 10-2, rather than unanimous verdicts.) However, more than one-third of the 3,500 jurors surveyed for the study stated that if the decision was up to them alone, as a “one-person jury,” they “would have voted against their jury’s decision.”
The researchers classified jurors as “majority” voters, “conforming dissenters,” who disagreed at first but ultimately voted with the majority, and “holdouts,” who hung their jury. The study found that, depending on whether a more conservative or liberal measure is used, between 38 percent to 54 percent of juries included at least one juror “who reported an individual verdict preference contrary to the jury’s verdict.”
Jurors holding a dissenting opinion going into deliberations “have a range of options,” the researchers wrote. “They could embark on an uphill battle to convince the majority faction to adopt their viewpoints; they could acquiesce to the majority faction; or they could hold out and hang the jury.”
The study found that the factors most predictive of whether a jury can find unanimity can include larger panels (it’s easier for a smaller group to reach consensus), juror perceptions of the quality of the evidence and witnesses, and whether an initial poll is taken in the deliberation room. It found that when a large majority favors either conviction or acquittal when deliberations start, final verdict matches the initial vote nearly 90 percent of the time. And the study found that the presence of a few dominant jurors, and the size of the dissenting minority, were key factors in whether the dissenters ultimately held out.
“When there was a disparity between jurors’ one-person verdict and the jury’s verdict, most often the minority faction consisted of one or two jurors,” the researchers wrote. “When the jury acquitted or convicted, typically the most common dissenting faction size was one. However, when the case resulted in a hung jury, the minority faction was often larger.”
The study found that “conforming dissenters” most often made their decision to acquiesce to the majority during jury deliberations, not during either the prosecution or the defense’s case in chief, as a result of the judge’s instructions, or during closing arguments. And it found that dissenters preferring an acquittal held out 35 percent of the time, while dissenters favoring a conviction did so just 12.5 percent of the time.
According to Juror B37, initial split in the Zimmerman trial was reportedly three for acquittal, two for manslaughter conviction, and one — juror B29 — for second degree murder.
As for race and ethnicity, the study found African-Americans and Hispanics more likely to hold out to acquit than white jurors, but suggested further study in the area of ethnicity and jury deliberations was needed.
The study concluded: “In terms of other factors that might persuade an individual to acquiesce to the majority verdict preference, we suggest that jurors’ role expectations are important. First, the dissenting juror may be adhering to the formal letter of the law, even though that is at odds with his or her common sense of justice. Judicial instructions provide jurors with a legal framework to apply the evidence they heard. Jurors may believe the legally correct outcome to be unfair, but choose to follow the instructions and thus acquiesce to the legally correct majority preference, even though they, personally, wish for the opposite result. Jurors are not voting in line with their personal preferences (or conscience) but they are following their interpretation of the law.”
Blame the juror, or blame the prosecutors?
MSNBC legal analyst Bloom is sympathetic to Maddy’s plight.
“I can see that she has a lot of compassion for Trayvon Martin’s family,” Bloom said. “I really blame the prosecutors and not the jurors. They’re taken out of their lives and into this situation, a high profile trial where they’re doing the best they can.”
Bloom, a former prosecutor herself, adds that, “When both sides are arguing reasonable doubt, there’s only one possible outcome, I don’t think we can expect jurors to piece it together. It was so interesting to me to hear her, because she clearly feels that Zimmerman did something wrong, but she wasn’t able to piece it together to make the law match what was in her gut.”
Though Juror B29 insists that the law gave her no choice but to acquit George Zimmerman on either second-degree murder or manslaughter, plenty of people online, and in social media expressed that they wished she had held out for ethical reasons. Among them, Silva, the former Liberty Seven juror, who says that in his opinion, Maddy simply gave in.
“Holding out means you don’t give in. She quit. She quit on Trayvon Martin, she quit on herself, and she quit on the system,” Silva says. “She had the ability to make the system work, but she took the easy way out.”
In her interview with Roberts, Maddy seemed to grapple with the question of Zimmerman’s moral accountability versus his accountability under Florida law. But despite her moral dilemma, she stands by the verdict.
“Did I go the right way? Did I go the wrong way?” she wondered out loud, in response to Roberts’ question about whether she feels she did the right thing. “I know I went the right way, because by the law and the way it was followed is the way I went. But if I would have used my heart, I probably would have [gone for] a hung jury.”
Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @TheReidReport.