Mark O'Mara, attorney for George Zimmerman, enters Seminole County Courthouse for Zimmerman's bond hearing.
Having taken over George Zimmerman’s defense about two months into the case, Mark O’Mara has not received any pay for his services, and his small, Orlando-based staff is almost completely engaged in defending the only living person who knows for sure what happened the night Trayvon Martin was killed. O’Mara, who previously worked on mostly criminal defense and family law cases, has become a tireless campaigner for his client’s innocence. In a blog post in response to a recent essay by Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart on race and the Trayvon Martin case, he says Capehart overlooks “the significant forensic evidence that supports George’s claim of self-defense, and that FBI documents related to the civil rights investigation show no evidence that George acted in a racially motivated way that night.”
O’Mara expects to argue at an April 22 hearing before a Florida Circuit Judge that Zimmerman’s shooting of Martin was justified under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” statues. He has talked about possibly combining the hearing and the trial, noting that the defense does not have the money or the resources to put together a legal presentation by that date.
But many legal experts expect the trial to go ahead on June 10, in which O’Mara will have to defend his client from charges of second degree murder.