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April 3, 2014|By Jeff Weiner and Rene Stutzman, Staff Writers

The names of the six-member jury panel that acquitted George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin have been made public for the first time, after a new court order, records show.

Circuit Judge Debra Nelson, who had previously ordered the jurors' identifying information be kept confidential, granted access to the names in a ruling March 21.

Zimmerman's defense asked the judge in June to keep the names secret until six months after the verdict. The judge set no timeline then, but noted in her new order they have been withheld more than eight months.

Attempts to reach the jurors by phone and in-person Thursday were unsuccessful. The Sentinel typically does not name jurors unless they've agreed to be interviewed.

In Florida, the names of jurors usuallyarepublic and are announced and used by the judge and attorneys during jury selection.

Nelson's order follows an inquiry last month by the Sentinel.

In a letter, Sentinel attorneys asked Nelson for a specific ruling on how long she planned to maintain the jurors' anonymity, noting it was already "well past the six month 'cooling off' period requested by the defense."

The defense, in its motion, argued a delay was needed beyond the trial to allow "for any community passions to cool."

The Sentinel and other media outlets opposed that delay.

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George Zimmerman jury: Names of jurors released by court ...

posted at 7:01 pm on April 5, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

This one immediately earns the tag of what could possibly go wrong? It seems that in Florida, it is common for the names of jurors to be released to the public once the trial is over. (Some of you lawyers in the crowd can help out by letting us know how common this is.) In cases where there might be substantial danger to the jurors or their families because of emotions running high in the community, that release may be delayed for a time, but not indefinitely. There was such a delay regarding the case of George Zimmerman in the Sunshine State, but now the clock has run out.

The names of the six-member jury panel that acquitted George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin have been made public for the first time, after a new court order, records show.

Circuit Judge Debra Nelson, who had previously ordered the jurors identifying information be kept confidential, granted access to the names in a ruling March 21.

Zimmermans defense asked the judge in June to keep the names secret until six months after the verdict. The judge set no timeline then, but noted in her new order they have been withheld more than eight months.

Attempts to reach the jurors by phone and in-person Thursday were unsuccessful.

Ill bet attempts to reach them were unsuccessful. If I was one of those jurors and had been watching the treatment that Zimmerman, his family and anyone who failed to condemn him sufficiently have received, Id be on my way to another state under an assumed name, if not another country. If this trial revealed anything useful about our society, its that there is no shortage of people who dont feel particularly bound to the constitutional idea of trial by jury, and will endeavor to set things to rights if a decision doesnt go the way they feel it should have.

Zimmermans own parents have been learning that lesson the hard way, and are now looking at having to sue television personality Roseanne Barr because of it. Wait what?

George Zimmermans parents are suing Roseanne Barr for tweeting their home address, which they say forced them to go into hiding for years.

Robert and Gladys Zimmerman have filed a lawsuit against Barr, accusing the comedian and actress of posting an open and obvious call for vigilante justice, which she intended to cause a lynch mob to descend on their Lake Mary, Florida, home.

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George Zimmerman jurors names released to public Hot Air

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) George Zimmerman's wife pleaded guilty Wednesday to a misdemeanor perjury charge for lying during a bail hearing after her husband's arrest, and she was sentenced to a year's probation and 100 hours of community service.

Shellie Zimmerman, 26, had been charged with felony perjury after she lied about the couple's assets during a bail hearing following her husband's arrest for the fatal 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, was acquitted last month of second-degree murder. Shellie Zimmerman had been charged with a felony and, if convicted, had faced up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. She had given her bail-hearing testimony by telephone last year because of safety concerns for Zimmerman's family.

As part of the deal, Shellie Zimmerman wrote a letter of apology to Judge Kenneth Lester, who presided over last year's bail hearing.

"By lying under oath, I let my God down, I let your Honor and the court down, I let my family and friends down, and, most of all, I let myself down," Shellie Zimmerman wrote in the letter.

Shellie Zimmerman misled the court because she had been told by others to say "maybe that's not my money," her attorney, Kelly Sims, said after the hearing.

"But in her heart, you know, if it walks like a duck and looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck," Sims said. "She was calling from a phone. She was scared. Her husband was locked up. She didn't know what was going on. So, she stood by her man, like Tammy Wynette says. She's accepting responsibility."

Prosecutor John Guy said he agreed to the deal because Shellie Zimmerman didn't have a prior criminal record and the misdemeanor plea would allow her to pursue her nursing career.

"The important thing is that she apologized to Judge Lester for what she did," said Guy, who helped prosecute Zimmerman unsuccessfully. "The proof is not in question in this case. It was only a matter of what should be done as far as the disposition."

Court records show that in the days before the bond hearing in June 2012, Shellie Zimmerman transferred $74,000 broken into eight smaller transfers ranging from $7,500 to $9,990 from her husband's credit union account to hers. It also shows that $47,000 was transferred from George Zimmerman's account to his sister's in the days before the bond hearing. Amounts of over $10,000 would have been reported to the Internal Revenue Service.

Four days after he was released on bond, Shellie Zimmerman transferred more than $85,500 from her account into her husband's account, records show. They also show that the jail recorded George Zimmerman instructing her on a call to "pay off all the bills," including an American Express and Sam's Club card.

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George Zimmerman's wife pleads guilty to perjury

Its often said that the best lies contain just enough of the truth to make them believable. That probably explains why Ive seen so many people falling for the latest viral hoax from a satirical site called The News Nerd.

Its an image of George Zimmerman proudly displaying a painting he made of Trayvon Martin set against the backdrop of an American flag and the words God one nation with liberty and justice for all. As youll be able to surmise, being a person in possession of the most basic of media literacy skills, this is a obviously a Photoshopped fake. Unfortunately, there seem to be fewer and fewer of those sorts of people left out there in the land of social-shame sharing.

This is disgusting, Im sickened by this, and so on, is how most of the people sharing the news that he sold the painting for $30,000 have presented it. It is sickening, but not for the reasons they mean.

Granted, had Zimemrman in fact made such a painting, then, yes, it would be one of the most egregiously offensive things I can imagine. Thats the reason why we share a story like this in the first place, as, unfortunately, Ive had to say over and over again about these types of hoaxes. We want them to be true so badly, to confirm something we believe, or to bolster our sense of outrage, or to serve as a point of contrast to our tidy understanding of how things should be, that we skip the crucial step in figuring out if its actually real or not. And once confronted with the hoax, we dismiss the revelation as a triviality. Ive seen dozens of people react to the debunking here with something along the lines of, well, its close enough.

-RELATED: Did Zimmerman Copy a Stock Photo for His Original $100k Painting?

Even worse, in this case, is how unnecessary the invention even is. Zimmerman has, in fact, been attempting to cash in on his infamy. Back in December, CNN reported that bids on a piece he had made, with the same text as the supposed Martin painting, had topped $100,000.

Everyone has been asking what I have been doing with myself. I found a creative, way to express myself, my emotions and the symbols that represent my experiences, the description of the painting on Ebay read. My art work allows me to reflect, providing a therapeutic outlet and allows me to remain indoors.

Not complaining about that last part there.

As if that wasnt bad enough, he even did a painting of one of the people involved in his case, Florida attorney Angela Corey, who prosecuted him in the shooting death of Martin. The AP filed a cease-and-desist, claiming the work was a copy of one of their photos.

The point is, the actual things Zimmerman has done are bad enough, we dont need to make new ones up in order to shuffle our outrage back into a new news cycle. Every time we fall for something that seems just real enough to believe, we drift further away from the truth, in both the specific story at hand, and as an overarching concept in general.

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No, George Zimmerman Did Not Sell a Painting of Trayvon Martin for $30K

Shaking hands with George Zimmerman
Not surprised.

By: Jabbaro123

Link:

Shaking hands with George Zimmerman - Video