Dershowitz: Zimmerman Should Ask For a Mistrial Due to His Lawyer’s Knock-Knock Joke

June 24th, 2013 9:36 PM

One of the lawyers for George Zimmerman on Monday actually began his opening remarks with a knock-knock joke.

Appearing on CNN’s Piers Morgan Live Monday, famed attorney Alan Dershowitz said, “I would be furious at my lawyer unless the lawyer told him he was going to open with that joke. In fact, I would ask my other lawyer to make a motion for a mistrial to start all over again.”

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: First of all, if I were George Zimmerman, I would be furious at my lawyer unless the lawyer told him he was going to open with that joke. In fact, I would ask my other lawyer to make a motion for a mistrial to start all over again. I think he has been so prejudiced by that opening with an insensitive joke in front of parents of a child who was killed. I just can't imagine a worse opening.

And, you know, you can't tell a client how to look, but putting on all that weight is not going to help him, because his defense is going to have to be he was weak, he was underneath a much younger and stronger man who was banging his head against the ground and that he had no choice but to take out his gun and kill him. The way he looks now, it seems to me a jury might think he could have rolled the guy over and just walked away. So, I think on balance, it has been going very badly against Zimmerman and partly as the result of his lawyer’s problem.