Zimmerman defense team offers insights to panel at UB-sponsored mock trial eventBy James Staas | News Staff Reporter
on November 7, 2013 - 7:41 PM
Two lawyers who represented defendant George Zimmerman in the high-profile Trayvon Martin murder trial talked Thursday about their trial techniques and strategies that helped lead to an acquittal.
Attorneys Mark O’Mara, who was Zimmerman’s lead counsel, and Don West, a 1980 graduate of the University at Buffalo Law School, discussed the Florida case before about 250 law students at a panel discussion as part of the 10th annual Buffalo Niagara Trial Competition.
West may be best remembered for the knock-knock joke that fell flat with jurors during his opening statement. But O’Mara credited West for his work in persuading the judge not to allow the jury to consider a lesser murder charge.
A key moment came near the end of the trial when both sides suggested what the judge should include in her instructions to jurors before deliberations. Prosecutors for the first time suggested that the judge allow jurors to consider the less serious charges of manslaughter and third-degree murder based on child abuse, arguing that since Trayvon was 17 when Zimmerman fatally shot him during a confrontation, he was a minor, or child.
“It was a brilliant strategy to give the jury something to hang their hat on,” offering jurors a compromise verdict if they couldn’t convict Zimmerman of murder, West said.
“It was the ultimate in sandbagging,” he said of the last-minute prosecution strategy in the case.
West argued against it, and “the court ultimately did the right thing” in rejecting it, he said.
“That saved the case,” West said.
“We wanted to avoid a compromise verdict,” O’Mara said.
O’Mara recalled West’s outrage at the prosecution’s move.
....more at linkhttp://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/ ... t-20131107
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