With the George Zimmerman trial set to begin on June 10th, there are claims that the defense’s lead attorney, Mark O’Mara, has fabricated evidence against the slain teen, reports the Huffington Post.
Last Tuesday, during a hearing, Zimmerman’s legal team claimed they had video of “two buddies of [Martin] beating up a homeless guy.” However, the footage was actually of two homeless men fighting over a bicycle.
O’Mara apologized for presenting false evidence in a statement to the Huffington Post. “It was a mistake, I’ve acknowledged it, it happened and I’m sorry. I only wish that those who are so wiling to condemn would be without fault first. I said something wrong, I apologize. What they’re doing is trying to make more out of it because they have, for the past year, put Trayvon Martin up on a pedestal where he shouldn’t have been, because he’s a regular 17-year-old kid and they knew all this information about him.”
Legal representation for the Martin family isn’t buying the apology. “The video, to me, is one of the clearest examples of a pure fabrication,” said Jasmine Rand, managing attorney and head of the Civil Rights division of Parks and Crump’s South Florida office. “I have no idea where that information came from. It’s inaccurate, and to spread that type of information on such an important case was a clear fabrication of the evidence. I think that the behavior of the defense, to me, would call into question their veracity as a whole. And if you fabricate evidence once, I don’t trust that you wouldn’t fabricate evidence twice.”
Since the defense team began preparing for the upcoming trial, a bevy of evidence has been presented to the public. Much of which the defense will use to prove Martin was the aggressor not the target on the night he was fatally shot at the hands of Zimmerman. Judge Debra Nelson previously ruled that the defense team may not use any information regarding Martin’s drug use, school records and cell phone data, including text messages, during their opening statement.
“A lot of the evidence that they’ve brought forward is completely irrelevant, and it’s a clear attempt to assassinate Trayvon Martin’s character publicly in the media by mischaracterizing certain evidence,” said Rand.