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Cross posted from Frederick Leatherman Law Blog
George Zimmerman. Photo by Seminole County Sheriffs / Wikimedia Commons.
Yesterday, the prosecution released a copy of the information charging Shellie Zimmerman with perjury, the supporting affidavit of probable cause, and six recorded jailhouse phone calls between George and Shellie Zimmerman.
Go here to review the 69 page document.
I. Shellie Zimmerman’s testimony under oath by telephone at George Zimmerman’s Bail Hearing on April 20, 2012.
A. Direct examination by Mark O’Mara:
After establishing that she and her husband are indigent, he asks
Q: … other major assets that you can liquidate reasonably to assist in coming up with money for a bond?
A: None that I know of.
Q: I have discussed with you the pending motion to have your husband George Zimmerman declared indigent for cost, have I not?
A: Yes, you have.
Q: And is — are you of any financial means where you can assist in those costs?
A: Uhm, not that I am aware of.
Q: I understand that you do have other family members present with you, and I’ll ask some more questions of them, but have you had discussions with them of at least trying to pull together some funds to accomplish a bond?
A: We have discussed that.
Q: Okay
A: — trying to pull together the members of the family to scrape up anything that we can possibly can.
…
B. Cross examination by Bernardo de la Rionda
Q: And you mentioned also, in terms of the ability of your husband to make a bond amount, that you all had no money, is that correct?
A: To my knowledge, that is correct.
Q: Were you aware of the website that Mr. Zimmerman or somebody on his behalf created?
A: I’m aware of that website.
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: Do you have any estimate as to how much money has already been obtained or collected?
A: I do not.
II. Shellie Zimmerman’s money transfers from her account to George Zimmerman’s account from April 16 to April 19, 2012, a four-day period ending the day before the hearing.
$9,990 (X 4) = $39,960
$9,999 (X 2) = $19,998
$7,500 (X 2) = $15,000
_______________________
Total: $74,958
More than $47,000 was transferred from George Zimmerman’s account into his sister’s account during the period April 16 through April 19, 2012.
III. On April 24, 2012 (four days after the hearing), Shellie Zimmerman transferred $85,500 from her account into George Zimmerman’s account. She had previously transferred that money from the Paypal account into her own account.
Total Transferred before and after the hearing: $160,458
IV. Recorded Jailhouse Conversations
The prosecution released six of the 155 recorded telephone conversations. The balance of the recorded conversations have been withheld pending the outcome of a motion by Mark O’Mara, who claims they are not relevant to the case.
The conversations contain coded references to the Paypal account as “Peter Pan” and amounts are referred in a primitive code where dollar amounts are really 10,000 times greater, as you can see below. George Zimmerman gives the orders and Shellie Zimmerman carries them out. For example, he instructs her how to access the accounts, how to make the transfers, and how much to transfer. He also tells her what bills to pay and checks back later to make sure she did it.
April 16, 2012 @ 2:26 pm
GZ: In my account do I have at least $100?
SZ: No
GZ: How close am I?
SZ: There’s like $8. $8.60
GZ: So total everything, how much are we looking at?
SZ: Uhm, like $155
The actual sum on that date was $155,000
V. Conclusion
There is no defense to the perjury charge and I am surprised that the prosecution did not also charge George Zimmerman with perjury as an aider and abettor.
50 Comments
Zimmerman also appears to have made a crass “hoodie” joke, in one the conversations
A basic principle of criminal law is that a person who aids and abets another person to commit a crime, in this case perjury, is just as guilty as the person who committed the crime.
I suspect the prosecutors are much more interested in prosecuting George Zimmerman for perjury on an aiding and abetting theory than they are in prosecuting Shellie Zimmerman.
Will they attempt to flip her in exchange for pleading guilty and recommending a sentence of probation, if she cooperates and testifies against him?
I don’t see anything in the transcripts where he tells her to lie to the court, even though it’s apparent that they were moving the money around while attempting to conceal what they were doing for that purpose. Therefore, they might want to use her to plug up that hole in their case, and who knows what else she might have to say about what he told her regarding the shooting.
I’ll bet the prosecution would love to add a perjury charge against him.
hopefully that’s on the way
Yes, I saw that too.
Also, 151 phone calls costs a helluva lot of money. The man must have had some serious bank on his books.
Bond for this man is probably a (very) long shot at this point.
What I find interesting is that there was never any mention of paying O’Mara, or whomever retained him. I’m sure retaining a lawyer in this case amounts to a healthy amount of change. Also, O’Mara seems ambivalent about the money, since ostensibly, anyway, it is to pay him.
Admittedly, I didn’t listen to the tapes, but this issue wasn’t mentioned in other reports of what bills they paid with the money.
They never mentioned paying him in the 6 phone calls.
Plus, he added a second lawyer to the case.
IIRC, that person gave up his job as a public defender to work on the case with O’Mara.
There must be a lot of money coming from somewhere in addition to Zimmerman’s Paypal account.
That’s quite a pharmacy of powerful psych meds which means he was under the care of a psychiatrist.
Odd that he did not go see his psychiatrist the day after the shooting regarding a possible concussion or brain trauma instead of going to see a family physician.
Odd too, of course, that he declined to go to the ER though offered rides there by the EMT who treated him at the scene of the shooting and by the police.
I am wondering about a couple of things.
First, SZ went to a lot of trouble (following GZ’s instructions) to keep all transfers under $10k. The $10k bank reporting trigger is for CASH transactions only, as far as I can tell. Why were they concerned about these inter-bank and inter-account transfers? What were they trying to hide and from whom?
Second, what kind of people are so aware of the $10k threshold that, upon receiving a windfall and suddenly having at their disposal more money than they’ve ever seen before, they take great care to stay just under it?
Third, according to O’Mara’s website, the Zimmermans will pay income taxes on the PayPal donations. As far as I can tell from the IRS website, the Zimmermans do not owe income taxes on these gifts no matter how much they receive. The donors do not owe gift taxes unless they donate more than $13k in one year. Forbes has an article online on this subject, and they state that the Zimmermans are not liable for income taxes on this money.
And what a shame that no blood was drawn from GZ on that night for drug and alcohol testing.
So last night I re-listened to Omara’s arguments at the revocation hearing in the company of an attorney friend and she agreed with me that he sounded foolish. eg: to claim that poor Georgy is only 28 (so he is to be expected to make mistakes like aiding and abetting perjury?)
PS anyone know where I can find a copy of the full video of the revocation hearing? it seems to have been disappeared from the web
You might try looking here for the hearing.
In light of the fact that GZ and SZ were moving money in amounts just under 10k, their being young, dumb and scared just doesn’t cut it. Afraid of losing the biggest windfall of their life is more like it. I mean seriously, if someone dropped 155k in my lap, that is all I’d be thinking about.
They were moving a lot of money around from one account to another which is what money launderers do, although they usually run the money through multiple dummy corporations that have accounts in offshore banks like the Cayman Islands, Panama, and now New Zealand, of all places.
The odd thing is that it was an extremely clumsy effort because they used a bank manager to help them do it. In addition, I believe you are right about there being no obligation on the bank to generate a Currency Transaction Report and send it to the IRS because Shellie did not engage in a currency transaction.
Currency: The coin and paper money of the United States or any other country which is circulated or customarily used and accepted as money.
Currency transaction: The physical transfer of currency from one person to another. This does not include a transfer of funds by means of a bank check, bank draft, wire transfer or other written order that does not involve the transfer of currency.
Since she did not engage in a “currency transaction,” the bank had no obligation to report any of the transfers, even though the manner in which she structured her transactions indicated that she thought the bank was obliged to file a Currency Transaction Report (CTR) for amounts exceeding $10,000.
She also did not know that the way she structured the transactions would have generated a suspicious transaction report (STR), for each of the transactions, if they had qualified as currency transactions.
In a previous post or comment to a post, I think I mistakenly implied that she had engaged in structured currency transactions, but she did not. She did not violate the law moving the money around.
She violated the law by claiming she did not know anything about the money she was moving around.
Finally, I agree that the Zimmermans do not have to pay an income tax on the money because it was a gift and gifts are not income.
I believe a police official, not sure whom, said they could not take a blood sample because he was not arrested for DUI.
That’s pretty lame because they could have asked him if he would voluntarily submit to a blood draw and/or a urine test.
Evidently, they never asked.
I wonder if they asked him whether he was taking any prescription medication?
I guess we are going to have to wait to see his statements.
I also wonder if they asked him to take a polygraph and what his score was, if he took the test.
I also wonder if his prescription medication was in his vehicle that they did not seize or search.
Do we know if George was off his meds when he shot Trayvon? How would this effect his case?
Tamazepam – for insomnia
Respiradal -, for schizophrenia; bi-polar disorder
Mirtazapin(Remeron) – for major depressive disorder
Adderal – for ADHD, narcolepsy and depression
I do not know about his other mentaL conditions but I thought schizophrenia was a legally insane why is his lawyer not arguing this even with his meds I am sure that sometimes people lose it.
Did the Right get suckered into backing the stand your ground law with a schizophrenic defendant as their test case nationwide poster boy?
Why would a lawyer not try the insane defense even if their client insisted that he was sane?
I think George does not want the insane defense because he wants to be a cop and was taking classes to be one.
But his lawyer should tell him that after this trial even mall security cop jobs even if he is found innocent are over.
I wonder what who ever is paying his lawyer’s bills ( NRA, Ted Nugent, GOP, Mitt, Jeb Bush) is going to say when they find out George is on more Meds for all different kinds of crazy than my retired mom is for old age related health issues?
Also lots of crazy people self medicate and there is no law against it just how do these drugs react with lets say a few beers or some of the more common over the counter medications?
How do these drugs interact with each other and a few beers or over the counter medications?
I know pain killers and beer multiply each others effects.
If George even had one beer on his meds would he be legally insane or by drinking the beer knowing what it would do to his mind would he be slam dunk guilty?
Was George made aware of what his meds can do with over the counter medication?
How about energy drinks they speed up the metabolism, have sometimes several different legal versions of speed in them and by speeding up his metabolism would shorten the length of time his meds would be effective.
We need George’s psych file has he had rage incidents in the past? Is he a violent schizophrenic? Even if he is not between perjury and crazy assuming the judge tells the jury this can anything George say be trusted?
Doctors order x amount of pills expecting them to be used up in X amount of days lots of crazy people skip pills because they don’t like how the pills make them feel.
Was George renewing his pills as the Doctor expected every X amount of days like clock work?
Was he perhaps doubling up on some pills because he liked the effects either way George is in trouble.
That and if confronted by this fact won’t Georg’s lawyer have no choice but an insanity defense assuming he did not already know?
nope
shenanigans are afoot
3 heavy downers: An anti-psychotic, an anti-depressant, and an hypnotic. Plus Adderal, which we used to call Black Beauties when I was young: The two-amphetamine cocktail came in black capsules back then.
So, he was taking so many drugs that he was completely out of it, and on top of that he takes this speed cocktail….
It’s no wonder that he was saying criminal & paranoid things like “They always get away with it.”
Mason: Obviously, anyone would be a fool to have ever thought that jailhouse conversations weren’t recorded.
But it can’t be Constitutional, can it?
Hi Mason,
Just a quick FYI from personal experience about reporting currency transactions. Many moons ago, I worked as a Compliance analyst at a major brokerage firm. One of my duties was to review one of our exception reports for suspicious transactions and, if needed, file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). Note – we did not accept cash which meant that any client who wanted to deposit funds into their account had to use something else (e.g. check, MO, wire, etc.). So I was reviewing reports of general and inter-account transfers, deposits, wires non-physical currency transactions.
Although they type of transactions SZ did were not cash, they absolutely would’ve appeared on our exception reports and I would’ve filed a SAR even though technically we weren’t required to do so. 4 for $9,990 and 2 for $9,999? Of course! Basically, we erred on the side of caution. Banks were even more cautious than us, since they accepted cash, and back then, the OCC/FED/FDIC/OFAC, etc. wouldn’t hesitate to shut down a bank branch.
Also, all this was well before all the 9/11 stuff (e.g. PATRIOT ACT, enhanced AML, etc.). So, imo, I suspect the Credit Union filed SARs just to cover themselves. Further imo, their Compliance Officer would be incompetent not to do so or have done so.
That’s very interesting – so banks and brokerages report, or used to report, suspicious transactions even if they are not in cash? From what you post I gather that what makes a transaction suspicious is an amount just under $10k, especially if there are more than one of them? It sounds like it would not have been suspicious for the Zs to just do the larger transactions!
Thanks, ks.
You’ve made a very important point that I neglected to mention because I was only vaguely aware — mostly by word of mouth — that banks and brokerage houses were filing SARs for multiple financial transactions by a party in amounts less than $10,000 because they appeared to be structured transactions to avoid triggering a CTR, regardless of whether the transactions were in currency.
George Zimmerman was in his final semester of Criminology at a community college when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin. He wanted to be a cop.
I suspect he had some general exposure in his curriculum to the subjects of money laundering, the $10,000 limit, and CTRs, but not structuring and SARs. That may be why he instructed Shellie to structure the deposits in amounts less than $10,000.
People who deal in large sums of cash, such as drug dealers, generally know about this stuff too, although I am not aware of any evidence that he had been or was involved in drug dealing.
Ironically, his advice drew attention to his scheme to conceal how much money he had received in the Paypal account, especially after the prosecutors decided to check those recorded phone calls.
Who knows. Maybe someone at the bank tipped them off, although I had been assuming O’Mara was the source.
BTW, he was ethically required to notify the court about Shellie’s perjury, once he knew about it, so he did nothing wrong in reporting it.
If you listen to the recorded conversations or read a few transcripts, you’ll discover that every inmate call begins with a recorded message advising the inmate caller and the person called that the conversation is being recorded and may be actively monitored.
I believe every jail and prison in the country does it for security purposes and this is but one of many exceptions to the Fourth Amendment right to privacy.
This is why I always told my clients not to talk about their case on the jailhouse phone and when we needed to talk about the case, I would go to the jail and meet with my client in an attorney-client conference room.
See my answer to ks at @ 24.
Let’s hope those conference rooms are not bugged.
You’ve made a very important point that I neglected to mention because I was only vaguely aware — mostly by word of mouth — that banks and brokerage houses were filing SARs for multiple financial transactions by a party in amounts less than $10,000 because they appeared to be structured transactions to avoid triggering a CTR, regardless of whether the transactions were in currency.
100%. That’s exactly what we did then and it’s still done in the industry today. Especially post 9/11.
Yes! Mason answered your questions well and to add some flavor it it, imagine a Bank/SEC/FINRA examiner walked into your shop and was doing their routine examinations and noticed several transactions of $9,999 in your reports and asked to see copies of your SARs and you told them that you didn’t file any SARs because they weren’t cash transactions. You would be lucky to have your job by the end of the exam and the firm would likely get hit with an AML violation and fine.
Also, I suspect Mason is right about GZ being aware of the 10K hurdle and CTR issue but not structuring and SARs because the $9,999 thing is a really big and obvious red flag for the latter.
Please see @29. Thanks!
Thank you for this information – I had no idea. Does this mean that every time my husband and I make any sort of transaction over $10k a report is generated? Just curious.
The question that remains in my mind is this: Why was GZ concerned about transactions being reported to the government? There was nothing illegal about his soliciting donations or transferring money to various accounts. He is not liable for income tax. Which government agency was he concerned about? Why was he trying to hide the fact that he was transferring large sums of money?
Presumably, masonblue is right that he learned about money laundering and the $10k trigger in a course. I have never taken a course in criminology or anything related to it, but I am vaguely aware of the $10k thing. It has never crossed my mind, though, when making a transaction over that amount, to be concerned about it. What was GZ thinking? In my view, the attempts to avoid the $10k threshold are among the most suspicious actions GZ and SZ have taken.
You’re welcome mollyk. To your question, the answers are as follows:
A CTR is required to be filed if it’s over 10K in cash. If it’s not cash it’s at the discretion of the Firm but, given the times and our increasing cashless society, they will usually file one. Generic CTRs are a non-event for most folks as they are not affected by the reporting or, more importantly, looking to avoid reporting which brings me to the next scenario.
OTOH, as it appears with GZ, SZ and Co., if you are looking to avoid CTR reporting for whatever reasons and structure your transactions as it looks like they did, you will avoid the CTR reporting BUT chances are a SAR will be filed which, imo, is a much worse outcome because now you would be on eveybody’s radar.
What was GZ thinking? IMO, he was trying to keep the court from knowing how much he received in donations so he could claim indigent and/or get a low bail. The evidence for that is the movement of money FROM the Paypal account and his account to his wife and sister’s accounts and then his wife transferring back the money to him once he was made bail.
As Mason speculated, he probably thought if he kept the transfers under 10K a CTR wouldn’t be filed so the Credit Union wouldn’t make an offical notice of the transfers but he either he didn’t know about or consider SARs and overall, as the tapes reveal, his scheme was so clumsy and brazen, that it didn’t stand up to the barest scrutiny.
So according to the Florida statutes GZ assaulted Trayvon first and undeniably, non?
784.011 Assault.—
(1) An “assault” is an intentional, unlawful threat by word or act to do violence to the person of another, coupled with an apparent ability to do so, and doing some act which creates a well-founded fear in such other person that such violence is imminent.
I think George Zimmerman never stopped looking for Trayvon Martin after Trayvon ran and he lost sight of him. I think he started down the sidewalk between the two rows of townhouses looking for him and when he saw him, he intended to approach, confront and restrain him until the police arrived.
Yes, I think Trayvon reasonably believed Zimmerman was going to assault him, as the term “assault” is defined in the statute, and he attempted to run away again, but Zimmerman caught him, a struggle ensued in which Zimmerman sustained some minor injuries, and Zimmerman probably lost his temper and shot him to death.
I think my theory will be supported by the location of various items of evidence, including Trayvon’s body.
I have never understood why Trayvon would have gone looking for Zimmerman after he ran away and eluded him. Makes no sense whatsoever.
The government must be inundated with CTRs. Do you know which agency received them? I wonder whether anyone actually reviews them.
I have not looked at the bank transactions, but if money was tranferred out of GZ’s account before the bond hearing and then transferred back afterward, it does appear that his intention was to hide the money from the court. But what made him think that the court would be notified if he made a large transaction? This also implies that, at the moment SZ testified that she had no assets, she had several thousand dollars sitting in her CR account.
What is O’Mara making of all this? I wonder when he learned about these shenanigans. (I’m sure he did not know at the time of the bond hearing.)
Zimmerman assisted the police in apprehending a criminal several years ago, and it seems likely that he hoped to cover himself in glory once again.
Some folks on the internet have speculated that Trayvon went after Z because he was under the influence of drugs, and therefore aggressive. (Of course, this is inconsistent with the blood test results.) Now it seems that Z was the one who was under the influence of (at least) several heavy-duty prescribed drugs.
Those awful screams, if they were, indeed, coming from Trayvon (I can hardly think about that – his poor parents!), tell me that Z had his gun out and Trayvon knew it, for almost a minute before the shot was fired. If those were Trayvon’s screams, he was terrified and certainly not threatening anyone at that point. If the screams were coming from Z, then it is strange that they stopped abruptly when the shot was fired.
I cannot speak for O’Mara because I do not know him, but I would be absolutely furious, if Zimmerman were my client.
I agree that he had no idea how much money was in that account. Not sure, if he knew about the account, but if he did, I’m certain he would have asked George how much money was in it before the hearing because that information was important to disclose relative to the indigency claim.
If he asked that question, I think it’s apparent that George lied to him.
I don’t believe any experienced criminal defense lawyer is surprised to discover that his client lied to him, but this lie also included a fraud upon the court that has enormously complicated the defense.
And let us not forget O’Mara’s fee. If he agreed to do it pro bono (free), which I doubt, he must be mega furious because most, if not all of that money should have been paid to him for fees and costs. BTW, there is another lawyer on board.
Now Shellie needs her own lawyer because he cannot represent her due to his conflict of interest in representing George. Her best interest would be to rat Gorge out and O’Mara cannot advise her to do that because it would not be in George’s best interest.
What an awful tragic mess.
Due to the pending perjury charge against Shellie, I do not believe we will see her testifying at the hearing on the 29th.
Due to the possibility that George could be charged with perjury as a principal or as an accomplice, I do not believe we will see him testifying either.
The biggest long-shot Louie at Hialeah wouldn’t put a fin on George being reinstated on bond because ye olde they-were-just-scairt defense ain’t got no legs to a perjury charge.
And there’s the issue of two passports . . .
Your instinct about CTRs is correct. On any given day there are a staggering number of them and the vast majority, if not all, are filed electronically now.
While the Glass Stegall wall was up, the regulatory split was FED/OCC/FDIC, etc = Banks/S&Ls/Credit Unions, etc and SEC/NASD (now FINRA)/NYSE = Brokerages/Investment Banks, etc. Since the Glass Stegall wall fell and the traditional investment houses became bank holding companies (e.g. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, etc.) the FED/OCC/SEC/FINRA are the big regulatory dogs but all 50 states have banking and securities rules and regulations and enforcement. The latter are known as “Blue Sky Laws” in the securities industry. To your point about reviewing CTRs, given the volume, it’s extremely unlikely they are reviewed individually. They probably review a small sampling and scrub that sampling vs. various lists like “bad client”, public officials, hotbed locations for money laundering, FBI/Interpol etc.
About GZ’s transactions check, Mason’s #III in this diary. The reason why it’s so damning is that it shows that GZ tried to avoid CTRs and shed funds BEFORE the bail hearing but afterwards…not so much. It’s a clear effort to deceive the court and you are correct about SZ’s account. At the time of the court hearing SZ had, I believe, 57K sitting in her account.
O’Mara? I agree that he didn’t know anything beforehand about the shenanigans. If he did, that would be career suicide. Overall, I think he’s trying to put as best a face on it as he can but, he looks a bit shell-shocked and I suspect he might have a bit of newfound empathy for GZ’s much malinged previous attorneys. Heh.
Heh, indeed.
Now Shellie needs her own lawyer because he cannot represent her due to his conflict of interest in representing George. Her best interest would be to rat Gorge out and O’Mara cannot advise her to do that because it would not be in George’s best interest.
Yep if SZ gets a good independent lawyer, he/she would have to advise her to do so because while the case against her is evident she can very credibly argue that she was acting based on GZ’s instructions. Unless she just pleads guilty that’s her only possible out.
“I agree that he had no idea how much money was in that account. Not sure, if he knew about the account, but if he did, I’m certain he would have asked George how much money was in it before the hearing because that information was important to disclose relative to the indigency claim.”
I imagine that O’Mara didn’t think much about that account. I was shocked to learn how much had been donated, and it probably didn’t occur to O’Mara that the donations might be substantial. He must have been scrambling to come up to speed on the case, and if he did hear about the website/account, it probably didn’t really register as important.
O’Mara does seem shell-shocked, and his heart doesn’t seem to be in the effort to defend G and S against the perjury issues. Maybe he sees no hope of getting bail again for GZ, and is saving his efforts for the main case? Or maybe he’s trying to withdraw?
Seems like there are forms for everything these days, and yes, there’s an IFP Form (In Forma Pauperis) that defendants have to fill out when they are claiming indigency. Every court has a version of that form and O’Mara likely went over it with his client as his client filled it out.
I certainly would have asked a client about their assets, such as real property, personal property, accounts of any sort anywhere, investments, etc. AND their debts.
Notice that George instructed Shellie to only pay off the AX card and Sam’s Club while merely making the monthly payment on other debts. He could legitimately list the debts that he did not pay off as current liabilities. Of course, if he listed the two big debts that he paid off to pad his indigency claim, that would be another perjury together with not mentioning the Paypal account because the IFP Form is a sworn statement.
So I think O’Mara asked him about the Paypal account (after all it was in the news and he would have asked, if for no other reason than concern about his payment of his fee) but I doubt he will mention that and become a witness against his client because that would require him to move to withdraw.
What no one has mentioned so far is that there likely is a basis to charge George with perjury based on his written indigency claim, which I assume O’Mara would have submitted to Judge Lester before the bond hearing.
Would they bother charging GZ with perjury when he is facing second degree murder?
I am pretty sure that O’Mara said initially that he was working pro bono, and later, when he learned about the PayPal account, said that under the new circumstances he would expect to be paid.
I think that actually makes Zimmerman look even worse because he was, in effect, stealing from the man who stood up for him and agreed to represent him pro bono on the assumption that he killed in self-defense and had no money to pay a lawyer.
This just in
SANFORD POLICE CHIEF FIRED
The police chief at the center of the Trayvon Martin shooting case has been fired, according to sources who spoke with FOX 35. A spokesperson confirmed the news to CNN.
Good point. I wonder whether O’Mara regrets having accepted the case.
I’m fairly certain O’Mara is not working pro bono. Two other attorney’s turned down the case due to conflict of interest before O’Mara was called. I’m also fairly certain that early on he mentioned the cost could hit 1 mil.
Being local, I’m subjected to the day to day mundane BS involving the case.
He is not working pro bono now, but he was initially. This is one among many articles reporting the change in O’Mara’s arrangement after he discovered that a substantial defense fund had been raised:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0510/Trayvon-Martin-case-Online-fund-for-George-Zimmerman-now-being-tapped
O’Mara, a criminal defense lawyer from central Florida, also indicated that money pouring in from Zimmerman supporters means he himself will be paid for at least some of his work, after originally agreeing to take on the defense as a pro bono case.