by Frederick Leatherman

Cross posted from Frederick Leatherman Law Blog

I have suspected all along that Trayvon Martin’s cell phone would turn out to be the smoking gun in the Zimmerman case and I offer the following evidence for consideration and comment.

At the 4:47 mark during Detective Serino’s interview of George Zimmerman, after Zimmerman admits that he shot Trayvon Martin with a hollow point bullet, Zimmerman suddenly volunteers,

When he was hitting me, I don’t know what he was hitting me with. I thought he had something in his hands, so I grabbed his hands when I was on top of him and I spread his hands away from his body because he was still talking and I was on top of him. And that’s when somebody came and they had a flashlight too and I thought it was a police officer, so I got off him.

In addition to claiming that Trayvon had banged his head against pavement, Zimmerman also told the EMT at the crime scene, when the EMT was cleaning his wounds with peroxide, that he had been struck with an unknown blunt instrument.



The report concludes:

Cause of injury: Struck by blunt/thrown object (9640) Mechanism of Injury: Blunt.

We know that Trayvon Martin was not armed and the police recovered only one thing near Trayvon’s body that could have served as a blunt instrument: His cell phone, which was lying in the grass next to his body.

The cell phone is Exhibit DMS 7.

The police submitted Exhibit DMS 7 to the Crime Lab with a request for a latent print examination. See Lab Report dated March 12, 2012 (see page 119)

The results:

No latent print examinations were performed per information received from Special Agent Supervisor David Lee.

Exhibit DMS-7 was returned to the agency.

The use of fingerprint powder to dust an object for possible prints (the fine powder adheres to the oil ridges left by the print making it possible to see the print and “lift” it from the object using special tape) can interfere with a DNA analysis and make it impossible to obtain a result. For this reason, one must always do a DNA analysis first.

According to Trayvon’s girlfriend, just before the connection terminated, she heard Trayvon ask,

Why are you following me?

Then she heard a male voice respond,

What are you doing here?

Then she heard what sounded like Trayvon’s headset being yanked out of the phone.

She tried calling him back, but he never answered.

I suspect the phone was resubmitted to the DNA lab for analysis, and if it was not submitted, it should be because it may have George Zimmerman’s DNA on it.

I don’t know about y’all, but I do not believe Trayvon would have confronted George Zimmerman while he was talking to his girlfriend and suddenly started wailing on Zimmerman with his cell phone.

I can easily imagine, however, Trayvon hitting Zimmerman in self-defense with the cell phone because he had it in his hand and it was the only thing he had to use as a weapon when Zimmerman attacked him.

Do y’all think that the prosecutors know they have the trump card and they have not released the lab report to prove it because they want to hold it back as long as possible?

I want to see that report.