Florida juror says George Zimmerman 'got away with murder'
NEW YORK, July 25 (UPI) -- The woman known as Juror B29 says former neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman "got away with murder" in the Florida shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
The juror, who is Puerto Rican, was the only minority member among the six women on the panel that acquitted Zimmerman July 6 in the slaying of the 17-year-old Martin.
"You can't put the man in jail even through in our hearts we felt he was guilty," she told ABC News.
Juror B29, a 36-year-old nursing assistant and mother of eight, was interviewed by "Good Morning America" anchor Robin Roberts. She allowed her face to be shown during a portion of the interview but only used her first name "Maddy," ABC News said.
The juror told Roberts she never considered the case to be about race although the prosecution sought to prove Zimmerman had racially profiled Martin when he killed him Feb. 26, 2012 because he was a young African-American teen wearing a hoodie in the Sanford, Fla., New York Giants jerseys gated community.
Maddy, who moved to Seminole County from Chicago five months before she was selected as a juror, said she wanted to convict Zimmerman of second-degree murder.
Zimmerman claimed he shot Martin in self-defense.
"George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can't get away from God," she said. "And at the end of the day, he's going to have a lot of questions and answers to deal with. [But] the law couldn't prove it."
Maddy said she initially was going to push for a hung jury but changed her mind on the second day of deliberation when she decided there wasn't enough evidence under Florida law to convict Zimmerman of murder or manslaughter.
She said she has had second thoughts about the verdict, as a mother, and questions whether she made the right decision. She said she sympathizes with Martin's parents.