George Zimmerman (MCT /Landov)
(
)
SANFORD, Fla. — In an unmistakable setback for George Zimmerman, the jury at the neighborhood-watch captain’s second-degree-murder trial was given the option yesterday of convicting him on the lesser charge of manslaughter in the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Judge Debra Nelson issued her ruling over the objections of Zimmerman’s lawyers shortly before a prosecutor delivered a closing argument in which he portrayed the defendant as an aspiring police officer who assumed Martin was up to no good and took the law into his own hands.
“A teenager is dead. He is dead through no fault of his own,” prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda told jurors. “He is dead because a man made assumptions . . . Unfortunately because his assumptions were wrong, Trayvon Benjamin Martin no longer walks this earth.”
Because of the judge’s ruling, the six jurors will have three options when they start deliberations as early as today: guilty of second-degree murder, guilty of manslaughter and not guilty.
Defense attorney Don West had argued for an all-or-nothing strategy, saying the jury’s only options should be guilty of second-degree murder or not guilty.
“The state has charged him with second-degree murder. They should be required to prove it,” West said.
To win a second-degree murder conviction, prosecutors must prove Zimmerman showed ill will, hatred or spite. To get a manslaughter conviction, prosecutors must show only that Zimmerman killed without lawful justification.
Zimmerman, 29, got into a scuffle with Martin after spotting the teen while driving through his gated town-house complex on a rainy night in February 2012. Zimmerman has claimed he fired in self-defense after Martin sucker-punched him and began slamming his head into the pavement.
Prosecutors have portrayed Zimmerman as the aggressor.