In the second half of Anderson Cooper’s interview with the first Zimmerman juror to go public, which aired Tuesday night, Juror B-37 elaborated on her sympathetic feelings toward the defendant, and said she didn’t feel she knew Trayvon Martin as well. “There wasn’t as much said about him,” she explained. “All we really heard about Trayvon was the phone call that he had and the evidence they had found on him. We basically had no information on what kind of a boy Trayvon was, what he did.” Yet, she is convinced that Martin “played a huge role in his death.” “When George confronted him, and he could have walked away and gone home,” she said. “He didn’t have to do whatever he did and come back and be in a fight.”
Not that the jurors weren’t “very sad that it happened to him.” “I feel bad that we can’t give [Trayvon’s family] the verdict that they wanted, but legally we could not do that,” she said. It seems the rest of the jurors disagree with that account, since they issued a statement late on Tuesday distancing themselves from Juror B-37.
Four of the six jurors released this statement through the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit’s public information office:
We, the undersigned jurors, understand there is a great deal of interest in this case. But we ask you to remember that we are not public officials and we did not invite this type of attention into our lives. We also wish to point out that the opinions of Juror B-37, expressed on the Anderson Cooper show were her own, and not in any way representative of the jurors listed below.
Serving on this jury has been a highly emotional and physically draining experience for each of us. The death of a teenager weighed heavily on our hearts but in the end we did what the law required us to do.We appeal to the highest standards of your profession and ask the media to respect our privacy and give us time to process what we have been through.
The jurors offered no clues as to what they found objectionable in Juror B-37’s version of events. Juror B-29, who NBC News reports is black or Hispanic and the only non-white woman on the jury, did not sign the letter and has not spoken publicly.
