welcome all of you. good to see you. all right. let me start with a question for all of you. is there any of you that think the verdict will come back second degree murder? show of hands. manslaughter? 1, 2, 3, 4. 5? yes or no? hopeful. you are hopeful for that? yeah. how many of you think it will be not guilty? all right. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. hung jury? yes. [ laughter ] hung jury. two hung juries. all right. i felt today how many would agree with me that the jury instructions were really important today? peter, you are a great attorney. they are absolutely critical. it s so important that we understand that it is not actual feelings. it s not actual harm. it s the perception of harm. perception of serious injury or death in terms of justifiable homicide. and that s key to this case. what george zimmerman was
grabbing or getting to the gun. what the prosecution does have going for them is the prestory, the following. the actual fight is where the reasonable doubt really renowns to the defense . which is why the piece of cement was brought in. that was another piece of evidence that apparently the jurors paid a lot of attention to. wouldn t it have been great if the prosecution brought in a square of fake grass and put it down because george zimmerman and trayvon martin at the end were clearly on the grass a good distance from the cement. for self-defense to have applied, george zimmerman would have had to have been in imminent fear of his life. head banging on the grass probably not imminent fear of great bodily harm. and also photos was something
the grainy photo, the big guy bring in the 7-eleven photo. anything that brings him back to being a boy, being a kid, that takes away completely from the defense argue mment. i think the autopsy photos bring home the gravity of what you re dealing with and they show you the size relative to george zimmerman. that was another point at which they weren t as emotional, apparently, the members of the jury but they were paying very close attention and took a lot of notes when these pictures came up of the injuries. this is clearly one of the defense s strongest exhibits are these photos of george zimmerman s injuries, though this in particular was undercut by the testimony that if you wipe away a blood, we re only talking about two very small cut. you can have a small cut and it can bleed a lot and drip down your head.
already would be a better indication for me i kind of would presume what direction they were going in. so i would be a little bit relieved and now i would be concerned about what if anything the judge was going to do in terms of giving them direction. i would be very surprised in a case like this if the judge came out and gave them any more clarification other than the jury instructions, which they ve already been provided for. this is the hard part for everybody, it s the waiting. we were talking a little bit earlier about exactly what we know, about what seemed to keep the jury s attention, when were they seemingly riveted, when were they taking a lot of notes? part of it was in some of the demonstration and the evidence but part of it as well as were particular kinds of witnesses. one of the things we ve been told was they seemed to being taking a lot notes when officials were on the stands
conflicting evidence, let s move on and sort of put this aside? this manslaughter charge they re stuck on begins with the portion that you read a few moments ago, chris, and it goes on for a page and a half out of about 27 1/2 pages of jury instructions. it is confusing to non-languages, with a lot of language about homicide, justifiable homicide, negligent homicide. if you didn t go to law school you might say i kind of, maybe, sort of understand it. as you pointed out, this is often something judges will no clarify. they say make your own determination, use your common sense. the judge can tinker with the language a little bit but once