George Zimmerman’s wife pleaded guilty Wednesday to a misdemeanor perjury charge for lying during a bail hearing after her husband’s arrest, and she was sentenced to a year’s probation and 100 hours of community service.
Shellie Zimmerman, 26, had been charged with felony perjury after she lied about the couple’s assets during a bail hearing following her husband’s arrest for the fatal 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, was acquitted last month of second-degree murder. Shellie Zimmerman had been charged with a felony and, if convicted, had faced up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. She had given her bail-hearing testimony by telephone last year because of safety concerns for Zimmerman’s family.
As part of the deal, Shellie Zimmerman wrote a letter of apology to Judge Kenneth Lester, who presided over last year’s bail hearing.
Shellie Zimmerman misled the court because she had been told by others to say “maybe that’s not my money,” her attorney, Kelly Sims, said after the hearing.
“But in her heart, you know, if it walks like a duck and looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck,” Sims said. “She was calling from a phone. She was scared. Her husband was locked up. She didn’t know what was going on. So, she stood by her man, like Tammy Wynette says. She’s accepting responsibility.”
Prosecutor John Guy said he agreed to the deal because Shellie Zimmerman didn’t have a prior criminal record and the misdemeanor plea would allow her to pursue her nursing career.
“The important thing is that she apologized to Judge Lester for what she did,” said Guy, who helped prosecute Zimmerman unsuccessfully. “The proof is not in question in this case. It was only a matter of what should be done as far as the disposition.”
Court records show that in the days before the bond hearing in June 2012, Shellie Zimmerman transferred $74,000 — broken into eight smaller transfers ranging from $7,500 to $9,990 — from her husband’s credit union account to hers. It also shows that $47,000 was transferred from George Zimmerman’s account to his sister’s in the days before the bond hearing. Amounts of over $10,000 would have been reported to the Internal Revenue Service.
Four days after he was released on bond, Shellie Zimmerman transferred more than $85,500 from her account into her husband’s account, records show. They also show that the jail recorded George Zimmerman instructing her on a call to “pay off all the bills,” including an American Express and Sam’s Club card.
Most of the money had come from donations to a website that had been set up to pay for George Zimmerman’s defense.
At the bail hearing, Shellie Zimmerman testified that the couple, who married in 2007, had limited funds for bail because she was a full-time student and her husband wasn’t working. Prosecutors say they actually had then already raised $135,000 in donations from the website.
Shellie Zimmerman was asked about the website at the hearing, but she said she didn’t know how much money had been raised. A judge set George Zimmerman’s bail at $150,000 bail, and he was freed a few days later after posting $15,000 in cash — which is typical.
After Shellie Zimmerman’s false statements were discovered, the judge revoked her husband’s bail. He was later released on $1 million bond.
Shellie Zimmerman’s plea deal was one of the last loose ends left from her husband’s murder trial. A judge still has to consider defense attorneys’ request for sanctions against prosecutors for what they claim was their withholding of evidence.
(AP)
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14 Responses
So Mr. Zimmerman kills an unarmed kid (admittedly, the kid was wearing a hoodie) after being told by a 911 operator to stop following the kid, and a jury finds he did nothing illegal. But his wife cops a plea to lying about her assets? What’s wrong with this picture?
#1. The first thing wrong with this picture is your difficulty getting the facts straight.
What’s wrong with this picture is the way you paint it; very misleading.
NFGO3, what does one have to do with the other. Where did you learn your reasoning skills? On the set at MSNBC’s Al Sharpton show?
Big deal. With unbelievably large legal bills to pay, because Al Sharpton and all the race hustlers had blackmailed the State of florida into conducting a star-chamber proceeding against her husband, she tried to save as much money as possible for the huge and unbearable expenses that lay ahead.
Thank G-D she had a compassionate and understanding judge.
nfgo: What’s wrong with your picture is that you left unmentioned that the thug Travyon Martin initiated a violent attack against neighborhood volunteer watchman George Zimmmerman. Then he got what was coming to him when George self-defended himself.
Being a volunteer neighborhood watchman is a good thing. If a non-police 911 dispatcher gives voluntary advice that “we don’t need you you to follow him”, he needn’t take that advice. And Martin getting violent is a bad thing.
No. 2: Help me out, please. What facts did I not get straight?
No. 3: See above.
No. 6: How do you know that Trayvon Martin is a “thug”? And how do you know that he “initiated” a violent attack, other than from the unsworn statements of his killer, who would have appeared guilty of murder if he did not allege that he was attacked? And would you please explain to me the difference between “initiating a violent attack” and “standing your ground”?
And, No. 4: You must tell me about Al Sharpton, because I do not watch his show or believe a word he ever said.
#1 As many have pointed it out, U Have no reasoning skills and therefore a waste of time to have a conversation with u!!!!
nfgo #8: I know because a) it is the most logical explanation based on the known facts and b) a court with 12 jurors determined and rendered a verdict as such.
“And would you please explain to me the difference between “initiating a violent attack” and “standing your ground”?”
initiating a violent attack: What Travyon Martin did to George Zimmerman when he initiated a physical altercation by pounding George’s head into the pavement.
standing your ground: What Zimmerman responded, in self-defense, to the above action by Martin.
No. 10: The only indisputable things we know about the altercation between Mr. Martin and Mr. Zimmerman is that Mr. Martin lost and is now dead. We do not know who, if anyone, provoked a fight. We do know that Mr. Zimmerman was following Mr. Martin, and we know that a 911 operator asked him not to. Under Florida law, Mr. Martin had a right to “stand his ground” if he was being pursued by Mr. Zimmerman. We know that the dead Mr. Martin was killed by the gun of Mr. Zimmerman. We know that Mr. Zimmerman suffered some bruises and scrapes to his head, and that the coroner/medical examiner in the case testified that Mr. Zimmerman’s scrapes and bruises were minor. So, again, how do you know that Mr. Martin is a thug?
And by the way, do you realize the circularity (or perhaps it is the tautology) of your definitions of “initiating a violent attack” and “standing your ground”?
NFGO3- we know that Zimmerman was following TM, we know that TM beat up Zimmerman, and we know that Zimmerman shot TM. That’s all we know, and those facts alone leave reasonable doubt that Zimmerman was guilty. It’s very possible that while Zimmerman may have been wrong to follow TM, it did not give TM the right to beat him up, which means GZ was acting in self defense.
Is it possible that TM had no choice but to beat him up (like if he couldn’t run away)? Sure. Is it possible that GZ didn’t have to use deadly force? Sure. But in this country you need proof to convict, not to acquit. And as long as there is a reasonable possibility that he was acting in self defense, then he was properly acquitted.
No. 12: My original question to Commenter No. 4 was, how does he know that Mr. Martin is a “thug?” I understand that the criminal case against Mr. Zimmerman was weak, particularly because there is no one to tell Mr. Martin’s side of the story, and the jury was not wrong to find that there was reasonable doubt about Mr. Zimmerman’s guilt. But I was not addressing the jury finding, I was addressing Commenter No. 4’s characterization of Mr. Martin as a “thug”.
No. 10: I presume that you believe that OJ Simpson did not murder his wife and her friend, as the jury found him not guilty.
nfgo #11 — Even if you’d be correct that “we do not know”, both common law and Jewish law grant the accused the benefit of the doubt and demand any accusations be proven in court to be accepted as fact. So even accepting your premise that “we do not know”, George was correctly acquitted.
George had a legal right to follow Martin. The 911 operator *suggested* he not follow (the language being “we don’t need you to do that”) and a 911 operator has no legal authority to give orders.