George Zimmerman’s second-degree-murder trial kicked off on Monday with Trayvon Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, giving a statement and the judge removing Zimmerman’s family from the courtroom since they could be potential witnesses. “I ask that you pray for me and my family because I don’t want any other mother to have to experience what I’m experiencing right now,” Fulton said outside the courtroom. Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Martin last year, claiming that he acted in self-defense, although the teenager was unarmed.
Prosecutors said before the trial that they can sum up the case in two arguments: that Zimmerman was a “grown man with a gun” and Martin was “a minor with no blood on his hands.”
"George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin during a confrontation last year "because he wanted to," a prosecutor told a Florida jury today at the start of the racially charged case that has simmered since the shooting more than a year ago.
The trial began with fireworks as prosecutor John Guy opening the trial with the blunt and shocking words, "F***ing punks."
Guy, quoting from Zimmerman's phone call to police reporting a suspicious person the night of the shooting, continued: "These a**holes always get away."
"Those were the words in the defendant's head just moments before he pressed the pistol," the prosecutor told the jury of six women."
Zimmerman, 29, shot and killed Martin as the unarmed teen was walking back to the home of his father's fiancee from a Sanford, Fla., convenience store with a bag of candy on the night of Feb. 26, 2012.
Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty in Martin's slaying.
