Link to CNN Interview with Juror B37
A female juror identified as Juror B37 was interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN (7/16/2013). Excerpts from the interview appear below.
(Juror B37 was one of the three jurors (out of six) who believed from the start of deliberations that Zimmerman was not guilty.)
Juror B37:
"I think George Zimmerman is a man whose heart was in the right place, but just got displaced by the vandalism in the neighborhoods, and wanting to catch these people so badly that he went above and beyond what he really should have done. But I think his heart was in the right place. It just went terribly wrong."
"If anything, Zimmerman was guilty of not using good judgment...When he was in the car, and he had called 911, he shouldn't have gotten out of that car."
"Anybody would think anybody walking down the road, stopping and turning and looking -- if that's exactly what happened -- is suspicious....I think all of us thought race did not play a role. We never had that discussion."
"I think George got in a little bit too deep, which he shouldn't have been there. But Trayvon decided that he wasn't going to let him scare him ... and I think Trayvon got mad and attacked him."
"He had a right to defend himself. If he felt threatened that his life was going to be taken away from him, or he was going to have bodily harm, he had a right."
"There was a couple of them in there that wanted to find him guilty of something and after hours and hours and hours of deliberating over the law, and reading it over and over and over again, we decided there's just no way, other place to go."
"It's a tragedy this happened. But it happened."
"And I think both were responsible for the situation they had gotten themselves into. I think both of them could have walked away. It just didn't happen."
"Now that I am returned to my family and to society in general, I have realized that the best direction for me to go is away from writing any sort of book and return instead to my life as it was before I was called to sit on this jury."
"I realize it was necessary for our jury to be sequestered in order to (protect) our verdict from unfair outside influence, but that isolation shielded me from the depth of pain that exists among the general public over every aspect of this case."
A female juror identified as "Maddy" was interviewed by Lisa Bloom as part of research for her book on the Zimmerman trial,
Suspicion Nation: The Inside Story of the Trayvon Martin Injustice and Why We Continue to Repeat It.
(Maddy was one of the jurors who initially was inclined to find Zimmerman guilty)
Maddy:
"I felt naive and dumb from the beginning."
"I went in there wholehearted. I listened to the lawyers and they said don't use your heart. That to me meant he was not guilty."
"All the other women were talking a different language...All their points were so educated. It didn't matter what I said."
"They told me not to look at the beginning, just the fight...You are able to use force when force was used...The evidence is there. He profiled him because he was black, but the law says at the end of the day all that mattered is who was on top and who was on the bottom."
"I felt in my heart he was guilty to the end, but I couldn't prove it...I feel that I was forcibly included in Trayvon Martin's death. I carry him on my back...I'm the only minority, and I felt that I let a lot of people down."