Piers Morgan Conducts Riveting Interview With Trayvon Martin’s Friend, Witness Rachel Jeantel

bombshell interview with an anonymous Zimmerman trial juror tonight with an exclusive chat with the witness everyone has been waiting to hear from since the verdict came down: Trayvon Martin‘s friend Rachel Jeantel.

Jeantel, who created a media firestorm with her highly-polarizing testimony towards the beginning of the trial, appeared on Piers Morgan Live alongside her attorney. She described her reaction to Zimmerman’s acquittal as “disappointed, upset and angry” and called the jury’s assessment of what happened “just B.S.”

Asked about what Trayvon Martin was like as a friend, Jeantel described him as a “calm, chill, loving person” and said she never saw him get “aggressive” or “lose his temper.” She said that the defense’s attempts to portray Martin as a “thug” were unfounded and defended his relatively mild drug use. “Weed don’t make him go crazy,” she said, “it just makes him go hungry.”

Jeantel also responded to the massive mockery she received in social media for the way she speaks, explaining that she was born with an under-bite that has made it difficult for her to speak clearly. When Morgan asked if she’d been bullied for her condition, she simply responded, “Look at me,” to laughter from the studio audience.

Morgan attempted to get Jeantel to offer her opinion of defense attorney Don West, who many claimed was condescending towards her when she was on the stand. Jeantel shook her head, declining to say anything bad about the man given her “Christian” upbringing.

In the second part of his interview with Jeantel, Morgan turned to the “creepy-ass cracker” comment she made and the major impact it had on the tenor of the case. She explained that the term is actually spelled “cracka” and defined it as “people who are acting like they’re police.” She said that if Zimmerman had calmly approached Martin and introduced himself, her friend would have politely said what he was doing there and nothing more would have happened.

Unlike the juror, Jeantel did think Zimmerman was racially motivated. “It was racial,” she said. “Let’s be honest, racial. If Trayvon was white and he had a hoodie on, would that happen?” She said she “had a feeling it was going to be not guilty” not because of the racial makeup of the jury, but because of the way the testimony went.

Jeantel insisted that Martin was “creeped out” and believed Zimmerman was following him, even worrying that he might be a “rapist.” She asked, “For every boy or every man who’s not that kind of way, seeing a grown man following them, would they be creeped out?”

FYI

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1307/15/acd.01.html

Exclusive Interview With Juror B-37; Defense Team Reacts to Juror Interview

COOPER: I want to ask you a bunch of the — I want to ask you about some of the different witnesses. Rachel Jeantel, the woman who was on the phone with Trayvon Martin at the start of the incident.

What did you make of her testimony?

JUROR: I didn’t think it was very credible, but I felt very sorry for her. She didn’t ask to be in this place. She didn’t ask — she wanted to go. She wanted to leave. She didn’t want to be any part of this jury. I think she felt inadequate toward everyone because of her education and her communication skills. I just felt sadness for her.

COOPER: You felt like, what, she was in over her head?

JUROR: Well, not over her head, she just didn’t want to be there, and she was embarrassed by being there, because of her education and her communication skills, that she just wasn’t a good witness. COOPER: Did you find it hard at times to understand what she was saying?

JUROR: A lot of the times because a lot of the time she was using phrases I have never heard before, and what they meant.

COOPER: When she used the phrase, “creepy ass cracker,” what did you think of that?

JUROR: I thought it was probably the truth. I think Trayvon probably said that.

COOPER: And did you see that as a negative statement or a racial statement as the defense suggested?

JUROR: I don’t think it’s really racial. I think it’s just everyday life, the type of life that they live, and how they’re living, in the environment that they’re living in.

COOPER: So you didn’t find her credible as a witness?

JUROR: No.

COOPER: So did you find her testimony important in terms of what she actually said?

JUROR: Well, I think the most important thing is the time that she was on the phone with Trayvon. So you basically, hopefully if she heard anything, she would say she did, but the time coincides with George’s statements and testimony of time limits and what had happened during that time.

COOPER: Explain that?

JUROR: Well, because there was a — George was on the 9-1-1 call while she was on the call with Trayvon, and the times coincide, and I think there was two minutes between when George hung up from his 9-1-1 call, to the time Trayvon and Rachel had hung up.

So really nothing could have happened because the 9-1-1 call would have heard the nonemergency call that George had called, heard something happening before that.

COOPER: She said at one point that she heard the sound of wet grass.

Did that seem believable to you?

JUROR: Well, everything was wet at that point. It was pouring down rain.

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