Shocker: Prosecution Selectively Edits Transcript Used To Indict Zimmerman’s Wife For Perjury
Before George Zimmerman was ever formally charged with a crime he was the victim of multiple instances of video/image and transcript manipulation. Video/images were manipulated to make it appear as though he didn’t have injuries consistent with his claims that Trayvon Martin was attacking him (turns out he did have the injuries). Also, a transcript of a 911 call he made before Martin was shot was edited in news reports to make it appear as though Zimmerman was making an issue out of Martin’s race (it turns out the dispatcher initiated the question about race).
The most recent news in the case is that Zimmerman’s wife has been indicted for perjury for misleading the court about the amount of money they had access to during a bail hearing. After introducing a weak indictment, which earned devastating criticism from legal experts including famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, the prosecution obviously needed a win.
But there’s a problem. Part of a transcript used to prove that Zimmerman’s wife had lied was edited to leave out some pertinent details. Per William Jacobson, these words were part of a discussion between Zimmerman’s wife and prosecutors regarding an account containing contributions to Zimmerman’s defense fund (the matter at hand is that the Zimmerman’s allegedly mislead the court about the amount in the account).
The words in bold were left out of the Affidavit of Probable Cause posted below:
Q: How much money is in that website right now? How much money as a result of that website was —
A: Currently, I do not know.
Q: Who would know that?
A: That would be my brother-in-law.
Q: And is he — I know he’s not in the same room as you, but is he available so we can speak to him, too, or the Court can inquire through the State or the Defense?
A: I’m sure that we could probably get him on the phone.
Q: Okay. So he’s not there now.
A: No, he is not, sir.
Q: Do you have any estimate as to how much money has already been obtained or collected?
A: I do not.
“The deleted transcript language certainly gives a very different context to the issue of whether Shellie knew how much was available,” writes Jacobson. “She offered to get the person who knew on the phone, but the prosecution didn’t take her up on that.”
Click through to Jacobson’s post for more.
Zimmerman’s innocence has yet to be proven yet, but it’s going to be hard to ever get to a point where we can establish his guilt or innocence if the prosecutors remain intent on this sort of a ham-handed railroad job.
