George Zimmerman Lynching Further Unravels

George Zimmerman has been the subject of the most transparent and vicious media and law enforcement lynchings since the FBI tried to blame hero security guard Richard Jewell for the 1996 Olympics bombing carried out by Eric Robert Rudolph.

Jewell’s actions to move people away from a suspicious backpack bomb saved countless lives. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman in Sanford, Florida, shot Trayvon Martin during a beating he suffered at the hands of the teen. Zimmerman had been attempting to keep him in sight for police responding to the scene to determine why Martin was loitering on a cold rainy night in front of a home that had been recently burglarized.

Zimmerman’s defense team released a collection of files to the public and media last month. The files included Zimmerman’s written statement to police about the shooting, audio interviews of Zimmerman with Sanford Police Department investigators, a video interview of Zimmerman passing a computer voice stress analyzer (CVSA) lie detector test, and a video walk-though by Zimmerman (incorrectly described as a re-enactment) of the incident 22 hours after the shooting.

Despite erroneous media claims, George Zimmerman’s next-day account tracked well with both the physical and medical evidence recovered at the scene of the shooting and with the recording of the non-emergency call he made the night before.

An underreported fact of the investigation: the almost foolishly transparent way Zimmerman cooperated with police, refusing to obtain an attorney until long after he’d completed his interviews and follow-up interviews with the Sanford Police’s investigators.

When local, state, or federal law enforcement officers are involved in a shooting, they are immediately told not to say anything about the shooting to investigators for at least two to three days — more importantly, two to three sleep cycles – -after the incident. The same advice holds true for civilians with competent attorneys. The reasoning behind this delay is based upon how the mind stores and accesses memories of high-stress events, and how the same chemical cocktail of hormones that triggers the “fight or flight” response impedes the accurate collection of those memories. There are numerous incidents of police officers being interviewed after an event and having no recollection of even the highly significant act of firing their gun, or of providing investigators a widely inaccurate underestimate of the number of shots fired.

Discrepancies between more minor details surrounding the incident — including remembering where someone was standing, what they said, or recalling why someone did something during the course of events — are entirely expected during the first three days, with the final and most accurate recollection expected to have “set” three sleep cycles after the event.

The comparison between George Zimmerman’s written statement of February 26 and his audio-recorded interviews on February 26 and 29 is stunning primarily for the consistency of his argument across these time periods. Despite an attempt by SPD investigators to compare the non-emergency call he made to police against 911 calls of that night, the key details of  Zimmerman’s story hold up.

The most interesting character in the Zimmerman interrogations isn’t George Zimmerman, but Sanford Police Department investigator Christopher Serino. Cordial at first, stern at times, and seemingly vacillating  between “good cop and “bad cop” roles, Serino is as variable over the three-part interrogation as Zimmerman is consistent.

Without explaining why he feels this way or presenting any evidence to support his assertion, Serino asserts Zimmerman is not being truthful with the investigation. Serino implies there may be security video of the confrontation between Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, in an effort to see if Zimmerman will change his story. Serino states that he’s talked to professionals who don’t find Zimmerman’s wounds to be consistent with the kind of fight Zimmerman says occurred, asserting Zimmerman is being less than truthful.

Pushing and probing a suspect in an attempt to clarify discrepancies or to expose a lying suspect is the police investigator’s job, but Serino stands accused of going beyond his duty. He may have gone as far as attempting to influence the public’s perception of the case in what would be an unethical and possibly illegal leak to the media, according to Conservative Tree House:

We contacted the Sanford Police Department, the Public Information Officer, and the Police Chief, and we explained how they can use the secured CCTV system to identify who accessed the footage and recorded it on their cell phone.

Now we know that recording was done by Lead Detective Chris Serino who was also the source of numerous exclusive ABC leaks.

Chris Serino was obviously disciplined and given the opportunity to resign from his position and take another position as  “Night Patrol”, where he can wait til his retirement.

ABC’s Matt Gutman, the reporter who ran the video apparently leaked by Serino, appeared to confirm Serino as the leaker in a tweet — then deleted the tweet and denied his confirmation was a confirmation at all. Gutman himself now seems to have been pulled from the story and has been sent overseas by ABC News, as Serino was confirmed to have been transferred to street patrol even as the department publicly claims his transfer is not a demotion.

All actual physical evidence, medical evidence, and eyewitness statements suggest that Zimmerman’s account of the significant events of that night can be corroborated, and that an overzealous investigator and politically minded  prosecutor have manufactured a second-degree murder case that never should have been filed.