With her lawyer David Chico at her side, George Zimmerman trial juror B-29 speaks
with Robin Roberts on ABC in an exclusive interview.
Saying she owes an apology to the parents of Trayvon Martin, the second juror to go public in the trial of George Zimmerman
said in an interview with Robin Roberts at ABC News:
"George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can't get away from God. And at the end of the day, he's going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with."
She also said she felt as if she had "let down" Travyon's parents.
Parts of the interview will run on World News with Diane Sawyer at 6:30 PM ET Thursday, with additional bits on Nightline, and the full interview appearing on Good Morning America Friday.
None of the jurors have been publicly named yet, and ABC only addresses Juror B-29 in the interview as "Maddy." She is the only racial minority who served on the six-woman Florida jury that acquitted Zimmerman in the slaying of Martin. Of Puerto Rican heritage, she works as a certified nursing assistant in an Alzheimer's ward, is married and has eight children.
She said she was deeply conflicted about the case:
[O]n the second day of deliberations, after spending nine hours discussing the evidence, Maddy said she realized there wasn't enough proof to convict Zimmerman of murder or manslaughter under Florida law. [...]
"That's where I felt confused, where if a person kills someone, then you get charged for it," Maddy said. "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." [...]
"I felt like I let a lot of people down, and I'm thinking to myself, 'Did I go the right way? Did I go the wrong way?'" she said.
"As much as we were trying to find this man guilty…they give you a booklet that basically tells you the truth, and the truth is that there was nothing that we could do about it," she said. "I feel the verdict was already told."
Maddy said said she didn't think the case should have gone to trial because she "felt like this was a publicity stunt."
She said she feels she owes an apology to Trayvon's parents:
"It's hard for me to sleep, it's hard for me to eat because I feel I was forcefully included in Trayvon Martin's death. And as I carry him on my back, I'm hurting as much [as] Trayvon's Martin's mother because there's no way that any mother should feel that pain," she said.
Another juror, B-37, was interviewed last week with her face in the shadows by Anderson Cooper on CNN. She did not indicate any conflicting feelings about the acquittal, saying among other things that she thought Zimmerman's heart was "in the right place." Four other jurors since issued a statement saying B-37's comments did not represent theirs.
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varii has a discussion of the interview here.