George Zimmerman

• 1. Introduction

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  George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, on the 26th of February 2012. A jury acquitted him of murder the following summer. That verdict did not take him out of the public eye.

  Over the next several years he sold paintings, listed the gun from that night for auction, filed enormous lawsuits, and was himself shot at from another car. Courts, police reports and the press kept recording what he did.

  Who was this man before that night? What did Florida law say about what happened, and why did so many people protest? And what do the years that followed, with their paintings, posts and court dates, reveal about how one case kept following him?

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• 2. Before Twin Lakes

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  In Manassas, Virginia, on the 5th of October 1983, George Michael Zimmerman was born, the third of four children. His siblings were a brother, Robert Jr., and two sisters, Grace and Dawn. His mother, Gladys Cristina Zimmerman, whose maiden name was Mesa, was born in Peru. His maternal great-grandfather was of Afro-Peruvian descent.

  His father, Robert Zimmerman Sr., had a military career of 22 years. He served first as an Army sergeant and then for 10 years at the Department of Defense. Before retiring to Florida in 2002, he had also served as a magistrate in Fairfax County's 19th Judicial District.

  Voter registration forms list Zimmerman as Hispanic. The family was known for its devout religious life, and he was raised Catholic. He served as an altar boy from age 7 to 17. He attended All Saints Catholic School in Manassas, then moved on to a public high school.

  At 14, he joined an after-school Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, because he wanted to become a Marine. At 15, he worked three part-time jobs on nights and weekends to save for a car. He graduated from Osbourn High School in 2001.

  Seminole County voter records show that he registered as a Democrat in 2002. According to his brother Robert, he voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. He later became a critic of Obama.

  Lake Mary, Florida, a suburb of Orlando, was where Zimmerman went after high school. There he worked for an insurance agency and took night classes toward a license to sell insurance. During this period he befriended Lee Ann Benjamin, a real estate agent, and her husband John Donnelly, a Sanford attorney. Both would later testify on his behalf at his trial.

  In 2007, Zimmerman married Shellie Dean, a licensed cosmetologist. Two years later, the couple rented a townhouse in the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford. He had earlier worked at a car dealership and at a mortgage audit firm. By the time of the shooting he was an insurance underwriter.

  In 2009 he enrolled at Seminole State College to pursue an associate degree in criminal justice. In December 2011 he was allowed to take part in a graduation ceremony, although he was one course credit short of the degree. He was finishing that credit when the shooting occurred.

  In early 2011, Zimmerman spoke at a citizen forum at Sanford City Hall. The forum protested the beating of a black homeless man by the son of a white Sanford police officer. He said he had witnessed "disgusting behavior" during a police ride-along program. The police department later said it did not know when, if ever, he had taken part in that program.

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• 3. A Night at Twin Lakes

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  The Retreat at Twin Lakes was a gated community in Sanford, and Zimmerman served there as the neighborhood watch coordinator. Martin, an African-American high school student, was temporarily staying in the community. The watch program was not registered with the National Neighborhood Watch Program. It was administered by the local police department.

  Before the fatal encounter, Zimmerman had made a call to police. Officers arrived within two minutes of a gunshot fired during an altercation. Martin had no weapons. Zimmerman was taken into custody, treated for head injuries, and questioned for five hours.

  The police chief explained why Zimmerman was released. In his account, no evidence contradicted Zimmerman's claim that he had acted in self-defense. He also said Florida's stand-your-ground statute barred police from making an arrest. In the chief's view, Zimmerman had the right to defend himself with lethal force.

  Thousands of protesters across the United States then called for Zimmerman's arrest and a full investigation. The coverage was widespread and intense, and in some cases misleading. Six weeks after the shooting, a special prosecutor appointed by Governor Rick Scott charged Zimmerman with murder.

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• 4. Trial and Federal Review

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  The trial opened in Sanford on the 10th of June 2013. A month later, on the 13th of July 2013, the jury acquitted Zimmerman of second-degree murder and of manslaughter.

  His body became part of the commentary. In roughly 16 months between the shooting and the trial, Zimmerman gained between 100 and 125 pounds, or about 45 to 57 kilograms. At the trial he weighed more than 300 pounds, about 136 kilograms. Fox News and similar outlets speculated about how his weight might shape the jury's perceptions.

  The verdict did not close every inquiry. For three years, the U.S. Department of Justice investigated Zimmerman on civil rights charges. In February 2015, it concluded that the evidence was not sufficient to show he had intentionally violated Martin's civil rights. The case, it said, did not meet the "high standard" for a federal hate crime prosecution.

  Zimmerman said the decision left him free to speak his mind "without fear of retaliation". He turned his criticism toward the government and President Obama, whom he believed had inflamed racial tensions. In his words: "He by far overstretched, overreached, even broke the law in certain aspects to where you have an innocent American being prosecuted by the federal government."

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• 5. After the Verdict

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  On the 17th of July 2013, four days after the verdict, Zimmerman and another man pulled a family of four from their overturned SUV. The single-car crash happened in Sanford.

  The months that followed brought police calls of a different kind. In 2013, his estranged wife phoned 911 to report that he had assaulted her father and threatened her with a gun. He was not charged. In November of that year he faced a felony aggravated assault charge, after he allegedly pointed a shotgun at his girlfriend. That case was later dropped.

  In January 2015, a different girlfriend accused him of throwing a wine bottle at her, and he was charged with domestic assault. Those charges were also dropped.

  In 2014, his brother Robert Jr. said Zimmerman had spent the year after the trial homeless and jobless. He believed his brother's "state of mind" had improved. Even so, he called him "a very traumatized person because he has had his liberty taken away from him".

  On the 9th of September 2014, police named Zimmerman in a road rage incident. The other driver, later identified as Matthew Apperson, said Zimmerman had followed and threatened him. Zimmerman later testified that Apperson had approached him about a leaking rear tire, which he already knew about. According to Zimmerman, Apperson then asked whether he knew he was "wrong for killing that little black boy". Zimmerman said the two stopped at a gas station, where he lost Apperson and drove off.

  On the 11th of May 2015, Apperson fired a shot at Zimmerman while they drove in separate cars on a Lake Mary street. The bullet broke through the passenger-side window and stopped in the metal window frame. Flying glass and metal shards grazed Zimmerman's face. He flagged down a police officer and was taken to a hospital.

  Apperson insisted that Zimmerman was the aggressor and that he had acted in self-defense. Zimmerman also carried a gun that day. His attorney said "George absolutely denies having shown it, waved, displayed, pointed it." A Lake Mary police spokesperson said the investigation had proven that Zimmerman "was not the shooter."

  Apperson was jailed in Sanford on the 15th of May 2015 with a bond of $35,000. While free on bond, he was convicted of disorderly conduct, and his bond was revoked. Lake Mary police said they had learned he had recently been admitted to a mental institution. They described a fixation on Zimmerman and signs of paranoia, anxiety, and bipolar disorder.

  On the 22nd of September 2015, a judge ruled that Apperson would stand trial for second-degree attempted murder. He also faced a count of aggravated assault and one of shooting into an occupied vehicle. He was convicted of attempted murder and aggravated assault with a firearm on the 16th of September 2016. On the 17th of October 2016, he received a 20-year prison sentence, with a concurrent 15-year sentence for the assault.

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• 6. Paintings

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  In December 2013, Zimmerman began to sell paintings, and the first, a portrait of an American flag, fetched $100,099.99 on eBay in late December. On the auction page he described art as a therapeutic outlet that let him reflect and, with a smiley face, "remain indoors". He signed off: "Your friend, George Zimmerman."

  Reports later said the flag painting had been copied without attribution from a Shutterstock stock image. A bigger dispute followed in January 2014, when the Associated Press and Jacksonville photographer Rick Wilson demanded that he stop selling another painting. The news agency said it directly copied a photo it owned.

  The picture showed Angela Corey, the Jacksonville-based prosecutor whose office had prosecuted Zimmerman for the shooting, holding her thumb and fingers together. Zimmerman apparently invented the quote he added: "I have this much respect for the American judicial system." The affair resembled the controversy over Shepard Fairey's use of an AP photo in the Obama "Hope" poster. Attorney John Michael Phillips led the cease and desist, which halted sales of this painting and others.

  In August 2015, Zimmerman began selling a limited number of prints of a Confederate battle flag painting. His partner was gun seller Andy Hallinan of Florida Gun Supply in Inverness, Florida. Hallinan was known for saying Muslims were not welcome at his store, which he called "Muslim free". Michael Walsh of Yahoo! News observed that the painting joined three controversial topics: the deaths of young black men, the Confederate flag, and discrimination against American Muslims.

  Art writers were unkind. Andrew Russeth of the New York Observer likened the work to paint by number. Jason Edward, a contributing editor at Art+Auction, called it "very primitive, the sort of thing an art critic wouldn't look at twice." Christian Viveros-Fauné of the Village Voice used the word "murderabilia".

  That same late August, a Confederate flag in his Twitter profile picture was drawing notice of its own.

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• 7. Posts, Bids and Disputes

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  Zimmerman described his profile picture as a Confederate flag "backed by an American flag". Among his frequently criticized August 2015 posts, one called Obama an "ignorant baboon". Another showed Vester Lee Flanagan, an African-American former news reporter who killed two ex-coworkers during a live broadcast, with the caption "If Obama had a son...". A third answered people who wanted him dead by saying the country understood "how it ended for the last moron that hit me", a reference to Trayvon Martin.

  In September 2015, he retweeted a photo of Martin's slain body that another user had captioned "Z-Man is a one man army". Days later, he posted a letter saying the photo had carried a "sensitive" warning and was blocked. He said he had retweeted it for the text without seeing the image.

  In December 2015, he tweeted two photos of a topless woman he said was his ex-girlfriend. He accused her of cheating and of stealing his firearm and money, and he published her phone number and e-mail address. Twitter suspended his account less than two hours later, citing its policy against posting private and confidential information. The tweet also contained a statement against Muslims.

  On the 11th of May 2016, he posted a planned auction of the firearm he had used to shoot Martin, calling it "an American Firearm icon". He said the Justice Department had recently returned the weapon and that, as owner, he had the right to sell it. He said proceeds would go toward combating violence against police officers by members of the Black Lives Matter movement. He also promised to "ensure the demise of Angela Corey's persecution career and Hillary Clinton's anti-firearm rhetoric".

  The auction was set for the 12th of May, yet the listing disappeared first. The original site, GunBroker.com, said it wanted no part of the listing or its publicity. Zimmerman reposted the gun on United Gun Group, and within minutes the site went down under heavy traffic. Bidders used fake names such as "Donald Trump" and "Tamir Rice" to place large bids, which were read as jokes. Martin Shkreli expressed genuine interest, saying he would either destroy the firearm or put it in a museum. Moderators caught further scams. On the 20th of May, Zimmerman said he had accepted a bid of $250,000.

  On the 11th of November 2016, it was reported that Zimmerman had been thrown out of a bar in Central Florida. A deputy had come to investigate a battery claim involving a female friend of his. While the deputy reviewed surveillance footage with the manager, Zimmerman began yelling at a waitress. The manager said it was one of several incidents Zimmerman had started and wanted him removed for trespassing. The waitress said she had tried to collect the group's bill when he snatched the credit card from her hand and shouted at her. The manager also claimed that Zimmerman used a racial slur.

  Zimmerman claimed that Floyd L. Narcisse, a 38-year-old black pastor, had struck his shoulder twice. According to the incident report, video and witnesses showed Narcisse tapping his shoulder to speak with him. On the sworn form the deputy offered, Zimmerman wrote that Officer Nickell was "an incompetent officer under qualified to flip burgers". He told the officer he would sue the Seminole County Sheriff's office.

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• 8. Courtrooms and Pop Culture

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  In May 2018, Zimmerman was charged with misdemeanor stalking. The target was Dennis Warren, a private investigator hired by Cinemart Productions, which was making the documentary Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story. In September 2017, Warren had left Zimmerman a voicemail asking for an interview. Another producer reported threats from Zimmerman after contacting his family members.

  Over a nine-day span, Zimmerman called Warren 55 times and left 36 voicemails. He also sent 67 texts and 27 e-mails. A Seminole County sergeant who contacted him about the allegations in January 2018 was berated and called a "whore". In November 2018, Zimmerman pleaded no contest. He received 12 months of probation and a 10-year court order barring contact with Warren.

  On the 4th of December 2019, Zimmerman sued the Martin family and others involved in the trial for $100 million, alleging false evidence and abuse of process. A judge dismissed the suit in February 2022, finding no evidence for any of his claims.

  On the 18th of February 2020, he filed a $265 million defamation lawsuit against Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren. It was dismissed in February 2021. The judge said Zimmerman had "failed to sufficiently allege an essential element of defamation."

  Popular culture took notice as well. The South Park episode "World War Zimmerman" premiered on Comedy Central on the 9th of October 2013. It parodied both World War Z and his trial.

  In 2013, Public Policy Polling included Zimmerman in an Alaska poll of possible Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential election. Its director, Tom Jensen, explained that the firm included him because of his popularity among conservatives and curiosity about "how he would do." Alaskans gave him 2% support.

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