By Chris Francescani
NEW YORK, July 14 (Reuters) – After his acquittal on murder
charges for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman
may go to law school to help people wrongly accused of crimes
like himself, close friends told Reuters on Sunday.
The 29-year old was found not guilty late Saturday for
shooting the unarmed black teenager in a case that sparked a
national debate on race and gun laws. One of his first calls was
to defense witness John Donnelly and his wife Leanne Benjamin.
They got to know Zimmerman in 2004 when he and a black
friend opened up an insurance office in a Florida building where
Benjamin worked. They grew close and the couple spent time with
him during the trial.
Over dinner with Zimmerman recently, Benjamin said he told
them he would like to go to law school.
“I’d like to help other people like me,” she quoted him as
telling them.
Zimmerman, an insurance investigator, attended community
college and was a credit shy of an associate’s degree in
criminal justice but was kicked out of school because he posed a
danger to the campus, according to family sources.
“Everybody said he was a cop-wannabe but he’s interested in
law,” Benjamin said. “He sees it as a potential path forward to
help other people like himself.”
Zimmerman’s defense attorney Mark O’Mara agreed.
“He wanted to be a cop for awhile, but he’s talked [more
recently] about going to law school,” O’Mara told Reuters on
Sunday.
“He has a real interest in the law and … prosecuting
appropriately – not like what he got – is something he’s very
interested in. I will not be surprised if he ends up in criminal
law,” O’Mara said. “His dad was a judge, and he wants to be a
prosecutor or a lawyer.”
Experience shows that re-building life after a major trial
may prove difficult, even for those acquitted of headline-making
crimes.
Casey Anthony, the young Orlando mother acquitted in 2011 of
killing her 3-year-old daughter Caylee, remains hidden and
unemployed while her lawyers fight civil lawsuits seeking
monetary damages from her.
Former NFL star O.J. Simpson was acquitted in 1995 of
killing his wife and an acquaintance, but his life fell apart.
He lost a $33 million wrongful death civil suit in 1997, moved
to Florida where he was arrested and eventually sent to prison
in 2008 for up to 33 years for robbery and kidnapping.
THREATS TO HIS LIFE
Even O’Mara and Zimmerman’s brother, Robert, admitted his
life would never be the same after the trial, which has forced
him to go out in disguise and wear bullet proof vests because of
threats to his life.
Donnelly told Reuters that Zimmerman was hurt very deeply by
prosecutors’ portrayals of him as a racist vigilante who
targeted and pursued Martin simply because he was black.
“The person they are talking about is somebody completely
different,” Donnelly quoted Zimmerman as telling him recently.
“Sometimes I have to go look at a mirror. They are talking about
a totally different human being. They are talking about a
racist. I’m not a racist.”
He said Zimmerman was anything but.
“He’s been mentoring young black kids for years, he launched
a campaign to help a homeless black man who was beaten up by a
white kid, and he still just can’t believe all the things that
have been said about him in the media.”
Other friends of Zimmerman who spoke exclusively to Reuters
remain angry at what he has endured since the shooting.
“I knew the man was innocent the whole time,” said Jorge
Rodriguez. “He called me yesterday to thank me … for believing
in him. He was just so relieved.”
Rodriguez is deeply frustrated by civil rights activists
like Al Sharpton, who he feels pressured prosecutors into
charging Zimmerman with a crime he didn’t commit.
“Everybody asked for justice, and they got it,” Rodriguez
said. “Everybody asked for George to be arrested, and they got
it. Everybody asked for George to be tried, and they got it.
Everybody asked for a fair trial, and they got it.”
He dismissed criticism of the prosecution, the six female
jurors and calls by civil rights groups for a federal civil
rights investigation. The Martin family is also considering a
wrongful death civil suit.
“Now can’t we leave George Zimmerman alone?”, Rodriguez
said. “It was nothing about racism. It was about the community
being robbed and broken into, and one man stood up. The state
should be giving this man an award, and instead they took him to
trial.”
(Additional reporting by Barbara Liston in Sanford; Editing by
Dina Kyriakidou, Bernard Orr)
