The shooter of Trayvon Martin will remain under 24-hour monitoring while awaiting trial.
The judge in the Trayvon Martin case denied a request from George Zimmerman, the man charged with second-degree murder in the teenager’s death, to remove his electronic monitoring device.
As a result, Zimmerman will be forced to remain under 24-hour GPS monitoring while awaiting trial in the case of the killing of the unarmed Black young man in a suburb of Orlando.
As a condition of his bail, Zimmerman must remain in Seminole County, just north of Orlando. He is allowed to travel only to adjacent Orange County for meetings at his lawyer's office. Zimmerman is also required to wear an electronic-monitoring device.
“There is nothing in his history or his actions since his pretrial release and his second release that would suggest these types of restrictions are necessary,” Mark O’Mara, Zimmerman's lawyer, told the judge. “He shouldn’t have to be living in hiding.”
However, Bernie de la Rionda, the prosecutor, responded by pointing out that Zimmerman had offered false information about his finances earlier in the year, a development that led to the court revoking Zimmerman’s initial bail arrangement.
“The defense would want us to summarily forget that all that has happened,” de la Rionda said.
Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was unarmed. Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch volunteer, has pleaded not guilty, insisting that he shot the teenager in self-defense. He has invoked Florida’s controversial "Stand Your Ground" law, which allows people to use deadly force in instances where they feel threatened.
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(Photo: Gary Green/The Orlando Sentinel-Pool/Getty Images)
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