The #zimmermantrial jury decided to call it night after three and half hours of deliberations. Local 10’s legal analyst Lee Stapleton opines: “This has been a hard-working jury, and I was very surprised when they chose to quit at 6 o’clock tonight. To me, it’s a sign of perhaps trouble that the foreperson took a vote – who’s taking what position and there’s already discord; like somebody said lets ‘sleep on it, and decide what were going to do tomorrow morning; then we’ll go back to work. An unlikely possibility is that this jury has reached a verdict. It would seem not very possible, considering they asked for the evidence list. But maybe they decided to go back to the hotel, pack their things, and wear their Sunday best and go back in and give the verdict tomorrow. The closing arguments are not very likely to have made a huge difference in what the jurors have decided to do; by now, they’ve probably made up their minds – they have their opinions, and what the lawyers said -- undoubtedly reinforces what they already believe. So John Giesser’s emotional rebuttal, or Mark [O’Mara]’s great closing, or that’s probably not going to change anybody’s mind. It’s a big assumption to think that these 6 people are going to agree right away. We don’t know what their backgrounds are – we know their broad outline, but we don’t know what their opinions are. This is the first chance they’ve had to air their opinions, and it’s possible that they can’t, or don’t at this point, agree. So a hung jury, it’s a little early to be calling that after 3 hours of deliberations, but a hung jury is always a possibility.” Judge Nelson instructed the jury today, that they have to have a unanimous verdict – if things are starting to break apart early on, it may be that before people get too far out w/ their opinions – they may have decided that it’s been a long day—they’re tired, they’re going to go back to the hotel, sleep on it, and go back to work at 9’oclock tomorrow. It’s possible that these 3 hours were used to elect a foreperson, get a sense of how things are with the jurors, and to come up with a process of how they’re going to do this – how they’re organize the evidence, and how they are going to make their decision.”
Posted on: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 02:08:23 +0000