Silence Is Golden: the Withdrawal of Zimmerman's Attorneys
Although the big news today in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case is that Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder, I want to focus on something that happened earlier in the week: attorneys Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig held a news conference to announce that they had lost contact with Zimmerman and no longer represented him. As far as I can tell from media reports and from watching most of the full video (available here), Sonner said that “[a]s of the last couple days [Zimmerman] has not returned phone calls, text messages or emails. He’s gone on his own. I’m not sure what he’s doing or who he’s talking to. I cannot go forward speaking to the public about George Zimmerman and this case as representing him because I’ve lost contact with him.” Apparently they had last spoken to Zimmerman on Sunday, and they announced their withdrawal on Tuesday. In the interim, they said, Zimmerman had called the prosecutor’s office asking to speak to her, had called Sean Hannity and spoken to him, and had set up a website allowing supporters to make donations towards his expenses. Uhrig said that Zimmerman was “in our opinion . . . not doing well emotionally,” was “emotionally crippled,” was “probably suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome” and “may not be in complete control of what’s going on.” Sommers described him as being in “hiding,” and Uhrig suggested that he was not in Florida, though he remained in the United States. They did say that they [...]
