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It was “murder.”
A Florida prosecutor went for George Zimmerman’s jugular yesterday, charging him with second-degree murder for gunning down unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.
“Zimmerman is in custody of law enforcement in our state,” announced Angela Corey, the special prosecutor who filed the charge that could send the 28-year-old man of white and Hispanic descent to prison for life.
“It is the search for justice that led us here to this moment,” Corey said at a press conference at her Jacksonville office, where she spoke of having prayed with “our victim” Martin’s “sweet parents” upon first meeting them three weeks ago.
“I can tell you, we did not come to this decision lightly.”
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Zimmerman is slated to appear before a magistrate today and plead not guilty to the murder charge.
Corey repeatedly refused to cite the specific evidence or witness statements on which she based the murder charge against Zimmerman, who surrendered at an undisclosed location.
He was being held without bond at the Seminole County Courthouse in Sanford last night.
Corey also refused to say why she believes the Feb. 26 shooting of 17-year-old Martin in a gated community in Sanford was not justifiable under Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law.
In Florida, second-degree murder charges are typically brought in cases when there is a fight or other confrontation, but involves no premeditation to kill.
The arrest appeased Martin’s parents and their supporters, who assembled for a press conference yesterday in Washington, DC.
They spent weeks lobbying, providing interviews and marching with activists demanding that Zimmerman be prosecuted for killing the high-school student, who was wearing a hoodie.
“We simply wanted an arrest,” said Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton.
“We wanted nothing more, nothing less. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus.
“I just want to speak from my heart,” Fulton said, addressing the audience.
“A heart has no color. It is not black, it is not white, it is red. And I just want to say thank you, from my heart to your heart.”
Asked what she would say to Zimmerman, Fulton responded, “I would probably give him an opportunity to apologize.
“I would probably ask him if there were another way that he could have settled the confrontation that he had with Trayvon, other than the way it ended.”
Martin’s father, Tracy Martin, said of Zimmerman, “It feels good knowing he’s off the streets.”
He added, “This is just the beginning. We have a long way to go, and we have faith.”
The family’s lawyer, Benjamin Crump, said, “We’re on first base in this game of justice.”
Crump said future “bases” would include overturning the stand-your-ground law.
The Rev. Al Sharpton met with the family yesterday at his National Action Network’s convention in Washington.
“We do not want anybody high-fiving tonight,” Sharpton said flatly. “This is not about gloating. This is about pursuing justice.
“We have not won anything. We will not be gloating around here. We are still mourning with this family
“This is not a night for celebration,” Sharpton went on. “It is a night that should never have happened in the first place.”
Zimmerman — whose first two lawyers dramatically quit Tuesday after expressing concerns about his emotional health and his failure to speak to them for days — hired a new attorney just 90 minutes before Corey’s press conference.
“He’s OK. I’m not concerned about his mental well-being right now,” said the new lawyer, Mark O’Mara. “He seems very lucid.”
O’Mara said Zimmerman will plead not guilty when he appears in a scheduled court appearance today. Zimmerman will also be eligible to ask for bail.
O’Mara added that the case has become so emotionally charged, Zimmerman “is concerned about getting a fair trial.
“We need to calm this down, and it needs to be tried in a courtroom,” he told ABC News.
Zimmerman is “troubled by everything that has happened and I cannot imagine living in George Zimmerman’s shoes in the past couple of weeks,” O’Mara added.
The lawyer said he advised his client to “stay calm and listen to my advice.”
Zimmerman’s brother, Robert, said on CNN last night that his sibling had no choice when he confronted Trayvon.
“Our brother literally had to save his life by taking a life. And that’s a situation nobody wants to be in, ever,” Robert said.
Corey’s announcement followed weeks of angry demands that Zimmerman be arrested for Trayvon Martin’s killing nearly seven weeks ago.
Fueling those demands were suspicions that Zimmerman had focused on Martin because of his race — and the fact that he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt.
There was outrage that Sanford police and Seminole County prosecutors let Zimmerman go without being charged, apparently because of arguments that he had the right to kill Martin under the stand-your-ground law, which allows the use of violence in self-defense if one is in fear of one’s life or serious injury.
On March 23, Gov. Rick Scott named Corey, the state attorney for Jacksonville, as the special prosecutor in the case.
Armed with a handgun, Zimmerman began following Martin after becoming suspicious of the teen’s presence in the gated community where Zimmerman lived and acted as a neighborhood watch volunteer.
Zimmerman called 911 to report Martin, and then kept following him. The dispatcher told him, “We don’t need you to do that.”
Zimmerman claims he shot Martin in self-defense after the teen violently confronted him.
Eric Matheny, a Florida defense lawyer and former prosecutor, said a jury at Zimmerman’s trial would automatically be allowed to consider convicting him of a lesser offense, such as manslaughter.
After the murder charge was announced, Sanford Mayor Jeff Triplett, who is white, appealed for calm and spoke of a “path toward healing” in the wake of the arrest.
“There is a little bit of relief,” Triplett said. “This is an event that touched many hearts and many lives and started conversations, but we hope that the atmosphere of civility will continue.”
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