SANFORD, Fla. — A neighbor of George Zimmerman who had perhaps the best view of the struggle between the neighborhood watch volunteer and Trayvon Martin has taken the witness stand in Zimmerman’s murder trial.
Jonathan Good was the second person to take the witness stand on Friday, the fifth day of testimony.
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Good says he heard a noise in back of his townhome in February 2012, and he saw what looked like a tussle when he stepped out onto his patio to see what was happening.
He says he yelled, “What’s going on? Stop it.”
Zimmerman is charged with second degree murder in Martin’s fatal shooting. He is pleading not guilty, claiming self-defense.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
In testy exchanges, George Zimmerman’s defense attorney insinuated that the young woman who was on the phone with Trayvon Martin shortly before he was fatally shot was not believable because of inconsistencies in her story.
But 19-year-old Rachel Jeantel held firm in her testimony about what she heard over the phone while talking with Martin the night the unarmed teen was shot and killed by Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer.
Testimony in the case was entering its fifth day Friday with jurors having already been exposed to some of the state’s biggest pieces of evidence, including the 911 call featuring cries for help prosecutors believe came from Martin, as well as the sound of the gunshot moments later which killed him.
In her testimony, Jeantel contended that it was Zimmerman who confronted Martin. Zimmerman, who claims the shooting was in self-defense, has said he opened fire only after the 17-year-old jumped him and began slamming his head against the concrete sidewalk.
“We’re in the middle of it,” defense attorney Mark O’Mara said. “They’ve got a lot more to show. These things build up slow, and it’s sort of like pieces of a puzzle. People say, `wait a minute, I can’t see the picture yet.’ They’re very good prosecutors, they’re gonna do very good job, and they’re gonna put on their evidence. We’ll see how it goes. We’re certainly ready to respond to it.”
During Jeantel’s testimony, O’Mara’s co-counsel Don West insisted Thursday that Martin injected race into the confrontation. Jeantel has said Martin told her he was being followed by a “creepy-ass cracker” – implying Martin was being followed by a white man because of his race.
Zimmerman identifies as Hispanic. Race has permeated nationwide discussions of the case since the February 2012 shooting, which prompted nationwide protests and claims from critics that police took too long to arrest Zimmerman.
West also zeroed in on slight differences among three different accounts of what happened before Martin’s killing, in an apparent effort to discredit her. Jeantel has described what she heard over the phone in a deposition; a letter to Martin’s mother; and an interview with the Martin family attorney. Among the differences highlighted by West:
_ In some accounts, she said race was an issue but not in others.
_ Jeantel testified Wednesday that her friend’s last words were “Get off! Get off!” before Martin’s phone went silent. But on Thursday, under cross-examination, she conceded that she hadn’t mentioned that in her account of what happened to Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton. She had left out some details to spare Fulton’s feelings, and also because neither Fulton nor the Martin family attorney asked her directly about them, Jeantel said.
_ After Martin asks why he is being followed, Zimmerman responds, “What are you doing around here?” in one account by Jeantel. In another account, according to West, she says Zimmerman said, “What are you talking about?”
Zimmerman, 29, could get life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder. Zimmerman followed Martin in his truck and called a police dispatch number before he and the teen got into a fight.
Zimmerman has denied the confrontation had anything to do with race, as Martin’s family and their supporters have claimed.
Jeantel testified Thursday that she thought race was an issue because Martin told her he was being followed by a white man.
But West responded, “It was racial because Trayvon put race in this?”
She answered no.
The exchanges got testier as the day progressed.
When asked by West if she had previously told investigators that she heard what sounded like somebody being hit at the end of her call with Martin, Jeantel said, “Trayvon got hit.”
“You don’t know that? Do you? You don’t know that Trayvon got hit,” West answered angrily. “You don’t know that Trayvon didn’t at that moment take his fists and drive them into George Zimmerman’s face.”
Later in the morning, West accused Jeantel of not calling police after Martin’s phone went dead because she thought it was a fight he had provoked.
“That’s why you weren’t worried. That’s why you didn’t do anything because Trayvon Martin started the fight, and you knew that,” West said.
“No sir!” Jeantel said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
At one point, West handed her a letter she had written with the help of a friend to Martin’s mother explaining what happened. She looked at it but then said she couldn’t read cursive handwriting. Jeantel later explained she is of Haitian descent and grew up speaking Creole and Spanish.
After Jeantel left the witness stand, a mobile phone manager testified about Martin’s cell phone records and a former neighbor of Zimmerman testified she heard yelps for help outside her townhome on the night Martin was shot. Jenna Lauer said she couldn’t tell who was screaming.
“They were being hurt,” Lauer said, describing the person screaming.
Before court recessed for the day, O’Mara asked another former neighbor to recreate for jurors how she reacted when she heard what turned out to be a gunshot and ran out of her town-house to see what was going on. The request had Selma Mora in the unusual position of standing up from the witness stand and pretending to be in her kitchen in front of the judge’s bench.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongFeb. 19, 2012/strong — Trayvon Martin, 17, and Tracy, his father, travel from Miami Gardens to Sanford, Fla., to visit the elder Martin’s fiancee in her townhome at The Retreat at Twin Lakes.
emPhoto courtesy of a href=”http://www.globalgrind.com” target=”_blank”globalgrind.com/a/em
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongFeb. 26, 2012/strong — Trayvon Martin is walking to the home of his father’s fiancee after purchasing items from a 7-Eleven store in Sanford. George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, spots Martin at approximately 7 p.m. and calls police. “We’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there’s a real suspicious guy,” Zimmerman tells police.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongFeb. 26, 2012/strong — Roughly seven minutes after Zimmerman’s call to police, authorities receive a 911 call from an individual reporting a fight. During the call, the dispatcher hears a gunshot in the background and sends police units to the location. Responding officers discover that Martin has been shot in the chest. The teen is unresponsive and pronounced dead at the scene.
Police find no identification on Martin and label him a John Doe.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongFeb. 26, 2012/strong — Questioned by police, Zimmerman informs them that Martin attacked him and he fired his gun in self-defense.
Authorities confiscate Zimmerman’s 9 mm semi-automatic pistol and take him to the Sanford Police Department for further questioning.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongFeb. 27, 2012/strong — Following a lengthy interview, George Zimmerman is released from the police station at approximately 1 a.m.
Hours later, Tracy Martin contacts police to report his son missing. Investigators soon connect the dots and inform the elder Martin of his son’s death.
After receiving treatment from a family doctor, Zimmerman meets with investigators and reenacts the events of the shooting at the crime scene.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 8, 2012/strong — Tracy Martin holds a press conference, during which he criticizes the investigation into his son’s slaying.
“We feel justice hasn’t been served,” Martin tells reporters.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 9, 2012/strong — Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump tells the Miami Herald he is filing a lawsuit for the release of public records in the case.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 10, 2012/strong — Members of the New Black Panther Party, contending there has been a “miscarriage of justice,” rally outside the Sanford Police Department.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 12, 2012/strong — Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee holds a press conference, at which he claims that investigators were unable to arrest Zimmerman because he was protected by Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which allows residents to shoot someone if they reasonably believe they are being threatened.
“There is no evidence to dispute Zimmerman’s assertion that he shot Martin out of self-defense,” Lee says.
In response, Martin’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, post a petition on the Change.org website calling for State Attorney Angela Corey to prosecute Zimmerman. The petition quickly garners support from multiple celebrities and receives nearly 900,000 signatures the first week.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 13, 2012/strong — In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the NAACP expresses doubt in the Sanford Police Department’s ability to appropriately handle the investigation, asking the Department of Justice to review the case.
“The NAACP has no confidence that, absent federal oversight, the Sanford Police Department will devote the necessary degree of care to its investigation,” the letter says.
Sanford police announce the completion of their investigation and turn the case over to the State Attorney’s Office for Brevard and Seminole Counties.
“Trayvon Martin and his family, interested persons, and the public-at-large are entitled to no less than a thorough, deliberate and just review of the information provided, along with any other evidence that may or may not be developed in the course of the review process,” State Attorney Norm Wolfinger’s office says in a statement.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 14, 2012/strong — Mary Cutcher, a woman listed in police reports as a witness who heard Martin’s shooting, a href=”http://www.wftv.com/news/news/witness-sanford-police-blew-us-teen-slaying/nLSqk/” target=”_blank”tells WFTV.com that police took only a short statement from her/a following the shooting.
“[The police] blew us off, and I called back again and I said, ‘I know this was not self-defense. There was no punching, no hitting going on at the time, no wrestling,'” says Cutcher.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 15, 2012/strong — Sanford police issue a statement calling Mary Cutcher’s TV interviews “inconsistent” with her sworn testimony.
Meanwhile, Zimmerman’s father, Robert, tells the Orlando Sentinel that his son has been unfairly portrayed as a racist.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 16, 2012/strong — Sanford police release eight 911 recordings in the case. One of the recordings includes a voice in the background screaming, “Help, help!” The screams are followed by the sound of a gunshot.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 19, 2012/strong — The Justice Department and the FBI announce they have opened an investigation into the shooting.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 20, 2012/strong — State Attorney Norm Wolfinger announces that a Seminole County, Fla., grand jury will review the circumstances of Martin’s death.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 21, 2012/strong — The Sanford City Commission votes “no confidence” in Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee and calls for his resignation.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 22, 2012/strong — Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee holds a press conference and announces he is temporarily stepping down as police chief because his presence is a “distraction.”
State Attorney Norm Wolfinger recuses himself from the case and Florida Gov. Rick Scott announces that another state attorney, Jacksonville-based Angela Corey, will be replacing Wolfinger as special prosecutor in the investigation.
Meanwhile, Rev. Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III and other civil rights leaders and politicians hold a justice rally at Sanford’s Fort Mellon Park. They demand an arrest in Martin’s shooting. An estimated 10,000 people attend the event.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 23, 2012/strong — President Barack Obama tells reporters that the nation needs to do some “soul-searching to figure out how something like this happens.”
He adds, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 24, 2012/strong — Members of the New Black Panther Party offer a $10,000 reward for the “capture” of Zimmerman.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 25, 2012/strong — Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks in Eatonville and encourages revisions to Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law.
“If it’s a moment, we go home. If it’s a movement, we go to war,” says Jackson.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 26, 2012/strong — Police release new details of the investigation, saying Zimmerman told them Martin punched him and slammed his head into the sidewalk several times.
Acting Police Chief Darren Scott takes over as chief of the Sanford Police Department.
Thousands of people gather in Sanford to mark one month since Martin was killed.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 29, 2012/strong — Zimmerman’s brother, Robert Zimmerman Jr., tells CNN that medical records will prove his brother was attacked and his nose was broken.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongApril 3, 2012/strong — Florida State Sen. Chris Smith (D-Fort Lauderdale) announces the formation of a task force to review the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongApril 8, 2012/strong — George Zimmerman launches the website “The Real George Zimmerman” to raise money for his defense.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongApril 9, 2012/strong — State Attorney Angela Corey announces her decision not to use a grand jury in the Martin investigation. The move eliminates the possibility of a first-degree murder charge.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongApril 10, 2012/strong — Zimmerman’s attorneys, Hal Uhrig (right) and Craig Sonner, announce that they will no longer be representing him.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongApril 11, 2012/strong – State Attorney Angela Corey announces the charging of George Zimmerman with second-degree murder. Zimmerman turns himself in to police and is booked into the Seminole County Jail. Mark O’Mara announces his role as Zimmerman’s new attorney.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongApril 23, 2012/strong — George Zimmerman’s new lawyer, Mark O’Mara, enters a not-guilty plea on his client’s behalf. Zimmerman is released from jail on a $150,000 bond. Per the conditions of his release, Zimmerman is required to wear a GPS monitoring device.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongApril 24, 2012/strong — George Zimmerman shuts down his website. According to his attorney, the site raised $200,000.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongApril 27, 2012/strong — Mark O’Mara launches the website GZLegalCase.com as the official site for Zimmerman’s legal case.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMay 8, 2012/strong — At Zimmerman’s arraignment, Seminole County Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. accepts his not-guilty plea.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMay 17, 2012/strong — Prosecutors release police reports, witness statements, surveillance videos and other evidence in the case.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongJune 1, 2012/strong — Judge Lester revokes Zimmerman’s bond, stating that his ruling is based on concerns that Zimmerman and his wife did not fully disclose their finances at the bond hearing.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongJune 3, 2012/strong — Zimmerman is returned to jail.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongJune 12, 2012/strong — George Zimmerman’s wife, Shellie, is arrested on one count of perjury.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongJune 20, 2012/strong — The Sanford city manager fires Bill Lee from the police force.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongJune 21, 2012/strong — George Zimmerman’s legal team releases discovery evidence on their client’s website.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongJune 29, 2012/strong — Zimmerman’s second bond hearing is held. The judge does not immediately issue a ruling.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongJuly 5, 2012/strong — Judge Lester grants Zimmerman a higher bond of $1 million.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongJuly 6, 2012/strong — Zimmerman is again released from jail.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongJuly 19, 2012/strong — George Zimmerman relaunches his personal website.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongJuly 27, 2012/strong — George Zimmerman’s wife pleads not guilty to perjury.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongAug. 29, 2012/strong — An appeals court grants a request by George Zimmerman’s defense team to dismiss Judge Lester from the case.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongAug. 30, 2012/strong — Circuit Judge Debra S. Nelson is assigned the case.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongOct. 19, 2012/strong — Judge Nelson grants a defense motion requesting access to Trayvon Martin’s school records and social media posts. The state is also granted access to Zimmerman’s medical records.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongNov. 14, 2012/strong — Gov. Scott’s “Stand Your Ground” task force concludes its final meeting and recommends no sweeping changes to the law.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongNov. 20, 2012/strong — Former Casey Anthony attorney Jose Baez announces that he is representing Sanford police Detective Chris Serino, the lead investigator in the shooting.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongDec. 3, 2012/strong — A new photo is released showing George Zimmerman with a bloody, broken nose on the night of the shooting.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongFeb. 5, 2013/strong — On this day, Trayvon Martin would have turned 18.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongFeb. 26, 2013/strong — Martin’s parents hold a rally in his memory to mark the one-year anniversary of his death.
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Key Dates In The Trayvon Martin Case
strongMarch 26, 2013/strong — Zimmerman’s defense team releases its witness list of 134 people, including Sanford police officers and 56 unnamed witnesses.
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De la Rionda notes that some of Zimmerman’s head bumps and other wounds could have been there before the shooting. Folgate confirms that is posible.
De la Rionda is now questioning Folgate.
O’Mara continues to use images of Zimmerman’s injuries in his questioning of Folgate, working toward the point that the defendant’s wounds are consistent with being hit on concrete.
Folgate notes that Zimmerman’s medical records, taken months prior to the shooting, state that he’d recently “started to exercize intensely with MMA.”
Following a lengthy sidebar, physician’s assistant Lindzee Folgate has returned to the witness stand. The jury has arrived.
The judge and attorneys are discussing the possible admittance of Zimmerman’s medical records prior to the shooting. The defense objects to the records being admitted. The jury and Folgate have been asked to leave the courtroom.
Lindzee Folgate, physician assistant at Altamonte Family Practice
Smith is excused.
Almost immediately after turning toward the patrol car, Smith recalls Zimmerman “stated to me that he was yelling for help and that nobody would come help him.”
Continuing with Officer Smith’s testimony, O’Mara is emphasizing the point that Zimmerman was compliant with officers when they handcuffed him at the scene. Smith says that he did not seem angry, frustrated or spiteful.
O’Mara is now cross examining Smith regarding what happened when he arrived at the shooting scene.
The jury has seen the video of George Zimmerman arriving at the Sanford Police Department.
The judge has called a 15 minute break.
Zimmerman’s weapon, placed in a cardboard box used to preserve firearms as evidence, is shown to Smith who is asked to identify the gun for the jury.
Officer Smith is describing how he first approached Zimmerman and how Zimmerman held his gun at the time. Smith said that he asked Zimmerman if Martin was shot and who shot him, to which Zimmerman repled that “he did and he was still armed.”
Smith explains the rainy weather conditions and how he came to the scene.
Officer Smith is a member of the Sanford Police Department who responded to The Retreat at Twin Lakes complex on the night of the shooting.
Livingston Is Excused
Now questioning Stacy Livingston, starting with a discussion of images showing a bleeding Zimmerman.
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