George Zimmerman will more than likely be able to post the $1 million bail so ordered by Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. in today’s bond hearing.
He’s only required to post 10 percent of the full bond amount and Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, says of the $211,000 in Zimmerman’s legal defense fund, he has more than enough to cover it.
Urgh.
As reported by the Orlando Sentinel, the interesting part of today’s hearing is what judge Lester had to say about Zimmerman before setting bond. He is none too pleased with the way the defendant has dealt with the court. He chastised Zimmerman and indicated that he didn’t believe Zimmerman’s story about being “scared and confused,” not trusting the judge, and not knowing what to do. All, he claims, led to misleading the court by using his wife to orchestrate actions that would hide their true stash of money received from a “profit from death” website he set up to garner monetary gifts from the public. Shellie Zimmerman now faces perjury charges for her part of the scheme that included testifying under oath that the couple was nearly destitute when bank records showed money was pouring in from their website at the rate of $1,000 a day.
“By any definition, the defendant has flouted the system,” Lester wrote. “It appears to this court that the defendant is manipulating the system for his own benefit.
“It is entirely reasonable for this court to find that, but for the requirement that he be placed on electronic monitoring, the defendant and his wife would have fled the United States with at least $130,000 of other people’s money.”
The latter was in reference to the appearance of a second, undisclosed passport; another omission by Zimmerman in this case. The judge also inferred that the action could put Zimmerman in the position of being the subject of “future contempt proceedings.”
In this new order, the judge ordered the defendant to wear a satellite monitoring device but this time banned Zimmerman from leaving Seminole County without his permission and also banned Zimmerman from having or opening a bank account, but he acknowledges that Zimmerman will more than likely use the money he’s collected online for the bail.
“It can be deemed almost as ‘found money.’ It is not money which the defendant has earned through his hard work and savings, so forfeiting it for failing to appear would not impact the defendant’s life in the same manner as a similarly-situated defendant who puts his house up as collateral to obtain a surety bond.”
The Miami Herald reported that Judge Lester added that he could no longer consider Zimmerman’s “family ties” as a positive factor, as his family showed it was willing to lie in court or allow a lie to stand without reporting the fraud. The bond needed to be set high, he said, because Zimmerman’s loss of money he never earned or saved would be of little consequence to him.
Yet for all the judge’s concern about the individual at the center of this case; the fact that he may have fled; his use of found funds to assist in making bond; the lying and disregard for the court — the judge still set a bail Zimmerman could afford.
Go figure.
Today’s decision comes on the heels of slow leaking information about the case that’s made its way to the public. Perhaps some of the most damning include the fact that while Zimmerman did suffer from a broken nose, he did not have head trauma on the night in question, and only reported to a physician the day after the killing to obtain a doctor’s note so that he could return to work.
In addition, the detective who investigated the case, Det. Chris Serino, did not believe Zimmerman’s account of the incident, and his statements to that fact were recorded during several interviews with Zimmerman.
Serino wondered why Zimmerman’s skull wasn’t fractured, why he didn’t know the street names of a tiny neighborhood where he’d lived for three years and why he had no defensive wounds on his hands. Serino got him to acknowledge what Trayvon’s parents and lawyers have said all along: that Zimmerman got out of his car that night not so much to check for an address to give police, but to find out where the teen went.
“You wanted to catch him. You wanted to catch the bad guy, the f—–g punk who can’t get away,” Serino said, referring to words Zimmerman used on his call to police. At one point, Zimmerman answered: “I wasn’t following him; I was just going in the same direction he was.”
Serino retorted: “That’s following.”
Interestingly, the interrogations also reveal that detectives were troubled by a man with a history of inserting himself into law enforcement matters who did not have the training to determine what a “suspicious” person should look like.
