>> Her perjury was when the judge was trying to set bail. Zimmerman's lawyer went berserk when he learned about it.
He didn't "go berserk", he did what any good attorney would have done, which is to try and repair the damage that was done by the media getting hold of it; he knew that Z had been dragged through the mud already, and it was not a good time for such a mis-step.
>> And the judge was less than happy.
Right, and she was, from the start, highly biased toward the prosecution. She didn't like Z from the beginning and it showed throughout the trial. That's not to say he didn't get a fair trial, but that was because of excellent legal representation and not because of the fairness of the judge. I don't think it should be held against her, as even judges are people and they do have their own biases.
>> This was not something the Zimmerman's get to determine.
Then why did they ask?
A person, and no one else, is responsible for any personal financial details they present in a court of law. However, perjury I think involves intentional deception, and it is entirely possible that Z's wife did not fully comprehend the meaning of the legal defense fund. She may have believed that money was inaccessible for other uses; she may have been broke all her life and not really viewed it as "her money". Who knows?
At any rate, the facts came out, and they came out from Z's legal representatives willingly. For that reason it may have been difficult to have sustained the charge against her anyway.
As we learned in the late 90s, perjury is okay sometimes, remember? And in fact, the perjurer is the person who gets to decide whether it is okay to lie to a court. You remember that, right? |
