These, however, were minor journalistic oversights compared to the most damning oversight of all: the failure to confirm who was crying out for help. By the end of March, the media had full access to the 9-1-1 calls from the eyewitnesses. As covered earlier, on the 9-1-1 call from Witness 11, one hears in the background roughly forty seconds of screaming. The man on the tape yells, “Help!” at least fourteen times. No one could deny the fear and desperation in his voice. The case hinged on that discovery, and yet not a single major media commentator thought to question Crump’s concocted analysis of the screams.

  “Logically, it makes sense that Trayvon Martin was the voice you heard crying on that tape,” Crump insisted at the press conference. As to why those screams should be Martin’s, Crump would have been better off saying nothing. Instead, he volunteered, in his reliably mangled syntax, “You can conclude who is the person crying out for help presumably when they see a gun.”

  Crump wanted the media to believe that Zimmerman chased Martin down, held him at gunpoint, caused him to wail like a banshee for forty seconds at the sight of the gun, and then shot him down in cold blood, knowing the police—whom Zimmerman himself had summoned—were minutes away.11

  If that were not enough, Witness 6, the eyewitness with the best perspective on the incident, had talked on camera to the local TV station the day after the shooting and told the reporter what he told the Sanford police the night before, namely, that there was a “black man in a black hoodie on top of either a white guy . . . or an Hispanic guy in a red sweatshirt on the ground yelling out help,” and that the black man on top was “throwing down blows on the guy kind of MMA [mixed martial arts] style.”12

  There was no excuse for the media not to incorporate this account into their reporting and not to connect it to Zimmerman’s busted nose and bloodied head, but in the hysterical month of March 2012, the media were much too eager to convict the “white Hispanic” Zimmerman of an imagined hate crime to quibble with something as pedestrian as the truth.

  23

  LOOKING FOR CAUSE

  THE DEE DEE PRESS CONFERENCE added new energy to the case. Two days later the state of Florida took it over from the local prosecutor, and the day after that President Obama added his “If I had a son” imprimatur. The only problem was that what worked in the court of public opinion would not work in the court of law. Unless Team Trayvon could provide, as the song says, “a real live girl,” there was still not much of a case.

  On March 27 Florida state attorney general Pam Bondi offhandedly shared with CNN’s Piers Morgan the challenges the state faced in this regard. Morgan, no friend of due process, asked the attorney general why she just did not say publicly, “You know what? This guy should be arrested.” Bondi explained the delay, saying, “We need to get Trayvon’s girlfriend to cooperate, which I don’t know if it was happening previously.” She added that the “wonderful lawyers” Crump and Parks, with whom she worked on the misbegotten Martin Lee Anderson case before her election as attorney general in 2010, may have had good reason for the delay. But, Bondi reassured Morgan, the girlfriend now seemed to be “cooperating.”1

  Finally, Team Trayvon promised the State that the girl would be available on April 2. That morning, state attorney Bernie de la Rionda and investigator T. C. O’Steen flew from Jacksonville to Miami for a series of interviews. At 3:40 p.m. they interviewed Sybrina Fulton and at 4:30 Tracy Martin, both at Sybrina’s Miami apartment. Despite the fact that the Team Trayvon attorneys—Crump, Parks, and Jackson—were all present, the star witness did not show.

  After some delay, a frustrated de la Rionda and two cars full of his allies drove to nearby Broward County, found the young woman known formally as Witness 8, and drove her back to Sybrina’s apartment for the interview. There he interviewed 8, with Sybrina sitting next to her on the couch, and recorded the interview. Lacking a defense attorney to restrict him, he plied her with one leading question after another, for instance, “He was a good guy, right?” It was hard to answer questions like that in the negative. He also led her to repeat the canard about her falling ill upon hearing of Martin’s death. “Okay did you end up going to the hospital or somewhere?” de la Rionda asked her. “Yeah. I had, like, um, high blood pressure,” she answered. As to whether she and Martin were boyfriend and girlfriend, Witness 8 answered, “We were getting there.”2 Witness 8 proved a difficult interview. She was soft-spoken, reticent, and inarticulate. Even if he had not intended to, de la Rionda had to prod her for answers, and these were rarely clear even to de la Rionda.

  The story Witness 8 told tracked with the story Crump played on March 20, with a few notable exceptions. In the April 2 interview, Witness 8 gave a more specific account of how Martin first became aware of Zimmerman. As she told it, a white man was watching Martin from a car while he spoke on the telephone. Then Martin approached the car. This corresponded with what Zimmerman had told the dispatcher on the night of February 26. After Martin walked past the car, Witness 8’s account was inconsistent. Either the man was following Martin or he was “still watching, like, from the car.”3 In reality, Zimmerman stayed in the car for about forty-five seconds after Martin first approached. The closing of the car door on the dispatcher tape marked the time of Zimmerman’s exit with some precision.

  “I told him to run to that house,” Witness 8 instructed Martin. “That house” was Brandy Green’s condo, about four hundred feet away from Zimmerman’s truck. Martin knew the way. He had been in Sanford for five days before the shooting and, according to Brandy Green’s testimony, had visited Sanford seven or eight times before that. Green also noted that this was the first time Martin had stayed at her place without his father being present, further testament to the unanchored drift of his recent life.4

  Martin told Witness 8 he was going in the back way—meaning up the dog walk behind the houses—because it was “more easier,” which, in fact, it was. “You could tell he was running,” Witness 8 told de la Rionda. She took her cues from the sound of the wind and from Martin’s breathlessness. On the dispatcher tape, Zimmerman offered confirmation. “Shit, he’s running,” Zimmerman said at the 2:08 mark. Seconds later, he left the truck to maintain a visual on the suspect. Martin apparently headed east on the cut-through and south on the dog walk between the backs of the buildings, cutting off Zimmerman’s line of sight. When the dispatcher asked Zimmerman which way Martin had gone, he replied, “Down towards the other entrance to the neighborhood.” Green’s town house was in that direction.

  “He said he lost him,” Witness 8 told de la Rionda. Martin should have lost Zimmerman easily. Even if he were jogging slowly, Martin would have reached Brandy Green’s town house at about the 2:40 mark of Zimmerman’s call to the police. At one point, according to Witness 8, Martin claimed to be “right by the house,” presumably Green’s.5 This would have been just about the time Zimmerman yielded to the dispatcher’s suggestion to stop following Martin. If Martin had reached the house, he did not stay there long. Zimmerman stayed on the line with the SPD for nearly two minutes after Martin took off for a destination about four hundred feet away. Zimmerman did not see him during that time, but he was concerned that Martin may have been lurking about. When the dispatcher asked for his home address, Zimmerman answered, “Oh crap! I don’t want to give it all out. I don’t know where this kid is.” By this time, Martin should have been eating Skittles with Brandy’s son, but he wasn’t, and Zimmerman may have sensed it.

  Witness 8’s testimony about the sequence of events should have alerted de la Rionda to the possibility that Martin had no intention of going home. In one exchange, she tried to sum up what happened. “He said he lost the guy,” she said patiently, “and then he ran for the back, said he lost him. He started walking back again. I told him, ‘keep running.’” At this point, de la Rionda tried to interpret the witness’s words to fit the State’s preconceptions. If Trayvon were, in fact, “walking back” to confront Zimmerman, he would have no case against Zimmerman. “So Trayvon said he started walking because he thought he lost the guy?” de la Rionda asked. The easily led witness answered yes.6

  With the possibility of “walking back” dismissed, de la Rionda led the witness on in their shared attempt to portray Martin as the helpless victim of Zimmerman’s relentless pursuit. As Witness 8 told de la Rionda, she kept urging Martin to run, but he couldn’t “because he out of breath.” Tired and scared, Trayvon told her that “the guy was getting real close to him.”7 The affidavit accommodated this fiction by claiming that Zimmerman “disregarded” the dispatcher’s request that he stop following Martin. Instead, according to the affidavit, he “continued to follow Martin who was trying to return to his home.”

  If Martin were, in fact, trying to run to Green’s townhouse, it is hard to imagine how Zimmerman could have caught him and “confronted” him as the prosecutors charged. He was four inches shorter than Martin and fifty pounds heavier. In the prosecution’s most favorable scenario, Martin had a twenty-second head start to a destination no more than twenty seconds away. In reality, however, Martin had at least a two-minute head start to run the four hundred feet to Green’s town house. That’s how long Zimmerman was on the phone with the dispatcher after Martin started running. What is more, in separate interviews Brandy Green and Tracy Martin hinted that Trayvon had made it back to the town house. “He was sitting on the porch and this man killed him,” Green had told a local reporter the day after the shooting. A few weeks later, after the story broke nationally, Tracy told a local reporter, “I don’t know the exact path he took, but he did come in that back gate, and I knew he was going to the back of the house. He was sitting out there.”8

  Zimmerman’s call to the dispatcher ended four minutes and change after it started at 7:13:39. According to Zimmerman’s written narrative: “The dispatcher told me not to follow the suspect & that an officer was on the way. As I headed back to my vehicle the suspect emerged from the darkness and said, ‘You got a problem?’” When Zimmerman answered, “No,” the suspect said, “You do now.”

  As Witness 8 told the story, the pursuer was “getting real close” to Martin and apparently caught him. Martin said to him, “Why are you following me for?” Again, according to Witness 8, the “old man” answered, “What are you doing around here?” He then “bumped Trayvon.” This exchange took place no more than a few feet from the T intersection of the dog walk and the cut-through, less than halfway to Brandy Green’s town house from Zimmerman’s truck. Zimmerman fired the fatal shot at 7:16:59, a little more than three minutes after he ended his call with the dispatcher. The first officer on the scene arrived less than a minute after that.

  The prosecutors had to suspect that Martin circled back, but if so, they weren’t about to air their suspicions. On April 11, Angela Corey’s office drew up an affidavit of probable cause for second-degree murder. The affidavit was loaded. Martin was walking back to the town house “where he was living” when Zimmerman “profiled” him, this despite the fact that Martin was unarmed and “not committing a crime.” Zimmerman “assumed Martin was a criminal.” He called the police. The affidavit cited Martin’s phone “friend” to attest, “Martin was scared because he was being followed by an unknown male and didn’t know why.”9

  Again, according to the affidavit, and this was critical: “Zimmerman confronted Martin and a struggle ensued.” Martin’s mother then “identified the voice crying for help as Trayvon Martin’s.” Zimmerman admitted shooting Martin, and that apparently was good enough for the prosecutors. “The facts mentioned in this affidavit are not a complete recitation of all the pertinent facts and evidence in this case,” the affidavit concluded, “but only are presented for determination of Probable Cause for Second Degree Murder.”10

  On the evening of April 11, Angela Corey took center stage at the Jacksonville state attorney’s office to announce the outcome of that investigation.11 A stocky, broad-shouldered woman in her late fifties, Corey compensated for her lack of height with the command presence of a pit bull. Like Zimmerman on his fateful night, Corey wore a red jacket, but as would soon become clear, that was hardly a signal of solidarity.

  Zimmerman already knew his fate. Coincidentally, he was driving to Sanford that day to pick up Shellie and head back up north for a long weekend. When his friend Mark Osterman heard news of the impending arrest, he texted Shellie, who promptly called George. He got the call while about two hours north of Sanford, near Jacksonville. He called a contact with the FDLE and agreed to meet him at a McDonald’s in Jacksonville. At that point Zimmerman did not have a lawyer. An Orlando defense attorney named Craig Sonner had claimed to be representing him, but Zimmerman did not like the terms of the contract Sonner offered and never signed it. After arranging to meet with the FDLE agent, Zimmerman put in a call to another local attorney who came well recommended, Mark O’Mara, and O’Mara agreed to take the case.12

  Zimmerman met the agent at the McDonald’s and then followed him to the local FDLE office. Ten minutes before Corey began speaking, an officer placed Zimmerman in leg irons and told him he was under arrest for second-degree murder. At the same time Corey was speaking, special FDLE agents were transporting Zimmerman to the Seminole County Jail, where he would remain until his bond hearing a week later.13

  If Zimmerman’s supporters did not know initially where the presser was heading, they could have guessed by sentence three. After a quick introduction, Corey spoke of Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton as Martin’s “sweet parents” and told of her promise to them that “we would get answers to [their] questions no matter where our search for the truth led us.” Sometime between March 22 and March 26, Tracy had rendered himself sweeter by covering what appeared to be a “CaT” (Crippin all the Time) tattoo on the right side of his neck with a pair of praying hands.14 Homage to God played better with the media than loyalty to a street gang, namely the Crips. As to Trayvon Martin, Corey classed him among those “precious victims” for whom her office was dedicated to seeking justice.

  “We do not prosecute by public pressure or petition,” Corey told the assembled media and seems to have convinced herself that she meant what she said. She repeated this point throughout the press conference in one variation or another. She and her team were “not only ministers of justice, but seekers of the truth,” she assured the audience members, reminding the Hamlet fans among them of the player queen who did indeed “protest too much.”15

  Like a politician running for office, which she indeed was, Corey made every effort to compliment the Sanford Police Department and other agencies involved. And yet on the question as to whether the police investigation had been thorough, Corey gave the game away. “Before the investigation could be finished,” she insisted, “there was a lot of outcry about this case, and then it changed course, and we got appointed to take over the investigation.”16 To the dispassionate observer, an “outcry” that changed the course of the investigation sounded very much like prosecuting “by public pressure or petition.” The Treepers read politics into Corey’s motivations. “One charge. Second Degree Murder,” wrote Sundance. “She threw the book at him. Was this a smart decision? Legally, no. Politically, heck yeah.” The Treehouse posted the second-degree murder statute:

  The unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual.17

  The Treepers proceeded to analyze the case based on the available evidence. Was the killing “unlawful” or was Zimmerman acting in self-defense? What act of Zimmerman’s was “imminently dangerous”? Was it getting out of his car in his own community to check on a suspicious person all the while staying in communication with the police? And most challenging of all, what did Zimmerman do to evince a “depraved mind regardless of human life”? After getting his head slammed against the concrete for at least forty seconds, his mind may have been a little fuzzy, but depraved? Despite their belief that the evidence was on Zimmerman’s side, the Treepers, like that lone Chinese dissident, felt the weight of the machinery moving against them. Corey looked so confident. She had the Florida governor solidly on her side, the US attorney general as well, even the president. Almost to a person, the major media were cheering her on, and most important of all, the BGI had her back.

  The opportunity to align oneself with the remnants of the civil rights movement has left many a Republican giddy. Corey was no exception. If her numbers reflected local norms, the great majority of the defendants she convicted in murder cases were black or Hispanic. Like the prosecutor Kramer in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, she, too, must have thought “this eternal prosecution of blacks and Latins” was not immoral exactly, but in “bad taste.” Now, however, she had a shot at what Wolfe called a “much-prized, ever-elusive . . . very nearly mythical creature, the Great White Defendant.”18 Zimmerman may not have been exactly white, but he was white enough, and she, Angela Corey, was on the side of the angels, the side of “sweet parents” and the “precious victims” and the Team Trayvon attorneys whom she chose to “especially thank.”

  “The first thing we did was pray with them,” said Corey. By “them,” she meant Martin’s parents and their lawyers, Team Trayvon. In the rough-and-tumble of Florida racial politics, Angela Corey was finally the good guy. Natalie Jackson certainly thought so. “It’s actually a very brave charge of Angela Corey, and it really shows that she conducted an independent, impartial, and fair investigation in this case,” said Jackson. “She could have easily charged this as a manslaughter, to try to appease everyone, and she didn’t. She did what prosecutors do. She charged it to the hilt.”19 Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post, like many in the major media, was equally enthused. “I wondered if someone could take the life of another—an unarmed child—and not be judged in a court of law,” he wrote immediately after Corey’s press conference. “At 6:05, my faith was restored.”20