George Zimmerman haters throughout the media have carped and whined about the fact that there weren’t any African-Americans on the jury despite the law requiring the accused NOT the victim be judged by his peers.
On CNN Newsroom Tuesday, it was revealed that a potential black juror had been struck by the prosecution for committing the crime of being a Fox News watcher (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CAROL COSTELLO, HOST: So Mark, do Trayvon Martin's parents you think, I mean, when they look at the jury makeup and they look at the decision that jury came to, do they say why didn't we have an African-American on the jury? Why did we have six white women?
MARK NEJAME, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: And that's what we were saying from the beginning. You know, sometimes I've been criticized by some who don't understand that a legal opinion is very different than a personal, a social, or a philosophical opinion. When you look at the composition of Seminole County, it's eleven percent African-American. And when you look at Sanford, it’s 30 percent African-American. So when you subtract Sanford from the overall Seminole County, you have, you know, a very, very small minority, specifically African-American representation within Seminole County. So when in fact you condense that down to a jury, the odds of getting an African-American on the jury are very slim when you're in Seminole County.
COSTELLO: Although if I remember correctly one of the prosecutors struck a black, a potential black juror from the jury.
MICHAEL SKOLNIK, POLITICAL DIRECTOR TO RUSSELL SIMMONS, CO-PRESIDENT GLOBALGRIND.COM: Yeah, he was also, I was just, he was also a Fox News watcher. So that was, you know, problematic for the prosecution.
In case you were wondering, Skolnik is not a Zimmerman supporter or a conservative.
Besides being hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons' political director and the co-president of GlobalGrind.com, he's also on the board of directors of the Trayvon Martin Foundation.
That said, it appears black jurors were only going to be acceptable to the prosecution if they were liberals getting their "news" from Zimmerman-hating media outlets.
Martin supporters should keep that in mind as they complain about the makeup of the jury.
(HT NB reader Mad53PA)
