Replies

I wondered the same thing at first - I thought maybe the prosecutor didn’t think charges should have been brought in the first place. But, really, all of those points can be explained away. 1) Change of venue: Jury members in Sanford would likely feel more pressure to convict than jury members elsewhere. 2 & 3)Picking jurors. The defense also ended up with jurors they didn’t want. Many people thought having women on the jury would help the prosecution - that they’d feel sorry for Trayvon’s family and feel that GZ should pay in some way. 4)Prepping Rachel Jeantel: The prosecution did not have years to do this. 5)Playing the Hannity interview: Not a good move, but the prosecutor used it to try to show inconsistencies in GZ’s accounts. The prosecutor didn’t have much else to work with. 6) Not objecting when the police officer said he believed GZ’s story. Yeah, that was a mistake. But whether he objected at the time, or the next day (as happened), the jury heard it.

O’Mara slipped the question by them the first time. He'd just gotten Serino’s statement about Z’s reaction to being told there was a video, asked what Serino concluded and Serino said he thought he was either a pathological liar, or he was telling the truth. O’Mara then asked if he'd seen any other evidence that he was a pathological liar, Serino said “no”, and O’Mara said “so....” They'd have had to object at the moment O’Mara asked a question that called for a conclusion. Once he got by that point, the jury would have puzzled it out on their own.

Moreover, it was possible to elicit the same information by asking the question in a different way, which is precisely what O’Mara did the next morning right after the jury had been admonished to ignore the previous reply. I was watching the prosecution desk at that instant, and they all looked like they were still basking in the glow of their “great victory”.