Rest in Power

by Sybrina Fulton

  “From having listened to it,” O’Mara continued, “it was your thought that it might be Trayvon, correct?”

  “When we heard it in the mayor’s office I guess I didn’t want to believe that it was him,” Jahvaris said, pausing. “So that’s why during that interview I said I wasn’t sure….Listening to it was clouded by shock and denial and sadness. I didn’t really want to believe that it was him.”

  That same day, July 5, brought the prosecution’s last witness, the medical examiner Shiping Bao, who performed Trayvon’s autopsy. “His heart was beating until there was no blood left,” said the medical examiner, estimating that Trayvon could have remained alive for between one and ten minutes after the shooting. It chilled me to know that his last minutes of life were spent alone with his killer.

  When the screen before the jury displayed a picture of Trayvon’s body as it arrived at the medical examiner’s office, Sybrina left the courtroom.

  At the end of the medical examiner’s testimony, after nine days and thirty-eight witnesses, the prosecution rested, allowing the defense to begin presenting its case.

  —

  I was the eleventh witness for the defense. I was disappointed that the prosecution hadn’t called me—so the jury could hear and hopefully feel the heartbreak of the father of the victim—and that I was instead being called by the defense.

  The defense attorneys were bulldogs, and they did their job, making the jury see the side of the killer they wanted them to see. The prosecution’s job was to show that this was a child who had been killed, a kid who was walking in peace from the 7-Eleven and was pursued by a stranger.

  The defense called character witnesses for the person who killed our son. But other than Sybrina and Jahvaris the prosecution did not. Why? They could have called more character witnesses for Trayvon: parents, grandparents, teachers, counselors, friends, all of whom could have shown that he was a person, not a caricature. But they called none. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t call more people who knew Trayvon best, to show who he really was.

  Now, with the trial nearing an end, I had begun pressing the prosecutors every day on their strategy—“Why didn’t you call a certain witness? Why didn’t you follow a certain line of questions? Didn’t you see that opportunity?” They tried to assure me that they were listening but had it under control. I still had questions.

  For instance, they called Sybrina and Jahvaris to testify. But they didn’t call me. I was the last parent to see him alive. I was the first parent to know he died. Why didn’t the state call me? Although I didn’t understand why the state didn’t call me, I did know why the defense did: they were going to try to get me to admit that I had originally said that it wasn’t Trayvon’s voice screaming for help on the 911 tape, which I had endlessly said, in interviews and depositions, was not what I had said.

  The New York Times called me the defense’s “key witness,” in their attempt to convince the jury that it was the killer, not my son, screaming for help on the 911 tape.

  That morning, I prepared myself for what I knew would be a battle ahead, dressing in a dark blue suit and matching tie. I was ready to tell my story, eager to clarify what I knew to be true. I was ready to defend my son, who, as the victim, shouldn’t have needed defending. But here we were.

  “You’ve been here for testimony throughout the trial, correct?” Mark O’Mara began. “Including today when we had a couple officers testify about an event where you had gone to meet with investigator Chris Serino at [the] Sanford Police Department. Do you remember that [meeting]?”

  “Yes,” I said. Both Brandy and I met with Serino less than two days after Trayvon’s death, to make sure he had verified that Trayvon had been identified.

  “My understanding,” O’Mara continued, “was that you listened to a number of tapes, one of which was the tape that we’re identifying as the Lauer 911 call, correct?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I understand that it was difficult to listen to. It included the shot that ended your son’s life,” O’Mara said. “At the end of that tape, do you recall Officer Serino asking you whether or not you can identify your son’s voice?”

  “Not those exact words,” I said. “But something to that nature, yes.”

  What had actually happened, and what I said on the witness stand, was that after Serino had played the tape he asked me, “Do you recognize the voice?”

  I remembered the day vividly, even in all my disorientation and devastation. And when Serino played the tape for me that morning, without giving me any context as to what I would hear, and the sound of the gunshot came echoing through the room, the last thing on my mind was to analyze it.

  “I didn’t tell him, ‘No. That wasn’t Trayvon,’ ” I said. “I kind of…I think the chair had wheels…and I kind of pushed away…from the table and kind of shook my head and said, ‘I can’t tell.’ ”

  “So your words were ‘I can’t tell’?”

  “Something to that effect. But I never said, ‘No. That wasn’t my son’s voice.’ ”

  Like Jahvaris had testified, “shock and denial and suffering” had clouded my thoughts, and I desperately wanted to believe that this was all a mistake and Trayvon was still alive.

  “You heard Officer Serino testify that you said ‘No,’ correct?” O’Mara said. “And you heard Officer Singleton also testify that she was about eight or ten feet [away] and she heard you say ‘No,’ or an indication that you acknowledged that was not Trayvon’s voice, is that correct?”

  “I had no idea that she [Officer Singleton] was even in the vicinity,” I said. “The first I had heard Officer Singleton was within earshot of my meeting with Serino was in her testimony in court, when she said about hearing the tape, ‘I was choked up myself.’ ”

  “Did you ever ask to hear the tape a second time?”

  “Not at that moment, no.”

  “Did you ever tell anybody that you had listened to a cleaned-up version of the tape and were then able to identify the voice on it?”

  “What do you mean ‘cleaned-up version’?”

  “I’m asking you, sir.”

  “To my knowledge, the tape that I listened to was the same tape that’s circulating,” I said. “That’s the only tape I know about…”

  “Did you ever tell Sybrina Fulton, your ex-wife, that you had listened to the tape at Officer Serino’s desk?”

  “There was a lot of stuff going on,” I said. “We had just buried our son, a lot of emotions. And you know you just don’t think of every little detail that you’ve been through. Obviously it was a tragic, and still is, a tragic time for us, and so just to answer your question, ‘Did I tell Ms. Fulton I listened to the tape?’ No, I didn’t.”

  The tape, the tape, the tape. The tapes we begged to be released, the tapes that gutted us to listen to, the tapes that we were sure would make the truth clear to everyone. And now, the trial was turning out to be about that tape, but in a way I never would’ve predicted. The tape of my son dying, after what I knew could only be his own high-pitched screams for help, followed by the fatal gunshot. Why would the man with a gun be the one screaming for help? The tape was the evidence the defense tried so hard to use to prove that Trayvon’s last moments on Earth were spent in attack instead of trying to ward off his attacker. But I wasn’t budging on what I knew to be true. It was Trayvon’s voice.

  By now the 911 tape had become a he-said-she-said kind of thing: we knew it was Trayvon’s voice, while the killer’s camp said it was the defendant’s voice. Even the voice experts who were called in, by both the media and the lawyers on both sides, couldn’t verify the voice a hundred percent, which only fed the debate.

  I felt that Detective Serino’s interview after the shooting said it all.

  “Hear that voice in the background? That’s you?” he asked.

  And the killer replied, “That doesn’t even sound like me.”

  —

  “After liste
ning to the tape maybe twenty times,” I testified about the day in the mayor’s office when we were allowed to listen to it as many times as we wanted, “I said that I knew that it was Trayvon’s voice. I didn’t direct that toward any family members. Matter of fact, I think the family members had started leaving out of the room. It was too much for them. They couldn’t take it. And I just decided to sit there and listen to it.”

  De la Rionda soon began his cross-examination.

  “Mr. Martin,” de la Rionda began, “even at this time is it hard for you to believe your son is no longer living?”

  “It’s very difficult to believe that Trayvon is not living,” I said. “As I said over and over, that was my best friend in life, and to have him gone is tragic.”

  “Now in terms of being sure we understand the context,” he said, “your son was killed late evening Sunday, February twenty-sixth, and you would have gone over to the Sanford Police Department the morning…I believe it was the twenty-eighth, do you recall that?” (I answered, “Yes.”) “And I believe also you only found out your son was dead at some point, actually the twenty-seventh. Is that true, that Monday?”

  “Correct. Yes.”

  “Was it still hard for you to believe your son was dead?”

  “It’s still hard to this day that he’s dead,” I said.

  De la Rionda tried to describe this event, asking if officers had come to the townhouse and showed me a picture of “a body there on the ground?” Before I could answer, O’Mara objected and the attorneys approached the bench.

  “I was asking you about the twenty-seventh,” de la Rionda said when the trial resumed. “Investigator Serino had come and shown you a photograph, is that correct? And you identified it as being your son, correct?”

  “Correct,” I said.

  De la Rionda moved on to the next day, Tuesday, listing the various 911 calls and their contents, asking if I had heard all of the tapes on the day I went to the Sanford Police Department.

  “I don’t think Detective Serino played each call in its entirety,” I said. “He played some of each call leading up to the last call with the fatal shot.”

  “Am I safe to assume that you were still, at that time, were in denial in the sense of not wanting to believe that your son was dead?” de la Rionda asked.

  “Correct.”

  “This was an emotional time for you. Would that be fair to say?”

  “Very emotional.”

  De la Rionda restated what happened after I heard for the first time the gunshot that killed my son. “You pulled your chair back in disbelief,” he said. “You realized that was the shot—”

  “That killed my son, yes,” I said.

  “Did you really know what to do at that point?”

  “From that point until today, my world has just been turned upside down.”

  “Then after you heard the cries for help…and then also the shot,” de la Rionda said, “right there, Investigator Serino asked you about the recording, if you could recognize the voice, correct?” (I answered, “Correct.”) “And I’m assuming that was difficult for you to even contemplate, identifying or not identifying the voice, is that correct?”

  I tried to answer Serino as best I could, I said.

  “There was a lot of commotion in that recording, wasn’t there?” de la Rionda said. “The yells for help, the person calling, and then most importantly the shot, too. In terms of your mind, what was going through your mind. Can you describe for the jury what was going through your mind when you were listening to that?”

  “Basically,” I said, “I was listening to my son’s last cry for help. I was listening to his life being taken. And I was trying to come to grips that Trayvon was here no more. It was just tough.”

  De la Rionda asked if, during our meeting in the mayor’s office, we were played all of the 911 tapes or just the Jenna Lauer tape that recorded the gunshot in the background. I told him I couldn’t remember if it was all the tapes or just one, but I did recall taking control of the mayor’s computer and replaying Trayvon’s screams over and over and over again.

  “Why?” de la Rionda asked. “Were you trying to deal with this? Why were you doing that?”

  “It wasn’t as much I was trying to deal with it,” I said. “I was just trying to figure out the night of February 26, 2012, why did the defendant get out of his vehicle and chase my son?”

  This was a chance for the state to bounce back—to get back to the story of that night. But they didn’t. And just like that, I was done.

  No further questions were asked of me by the prosecution and I felt another opportunity slip away.

  —

  On the morning of July 9, the defense called another expert witness, Dr. Vincent Di Maio, a nationally renowned forensic pathologist and medical examiner from San Antonio, Texas, with more than forty years of experience.

  The doctor took his seat at the witness stand in a suit and yellow tie.

  As Dr. Di Maio testified, photographs from the autopsy, including a close-up of the bullet’s entry wound in Trayvon’s chest, were projected on the far wall of the courtroom.

  I looked over at Sybrina, knowing this wouldn’t be easy for her. I could feel the effort she was making to keep herself composed, but she never looked at the photograph.

  The defense was arguing that, based on the bullet wound, Trayvon must have been on top of Zimmerman at the time of his death. We didn’t doubt that there had been a struggle, a fight, somebody on top and somebody on bottom, and maybe Trayvon and Zimmerman both at one point had the dominant position. We didn’t doubt that Trayvon was fighting for his life. Whatever the conflict was, it began the moment the neighborhood watch captain decided to follow Trayvon.

  Dr. Di Maio went on to describe Trayvon’s wound in detail. The bullet entered his chest an inch to the left of center between the fifth and sixth ribs; it passed through the right ventricle of his heart and became lodged in his right lung.

  In his description, Dr. Di Maio kept referencing the photo of the wound, which had been up on the wall now for several agonizing minutes. I stared at the photo for what seemed to be hours, while Sybrina diverted her eyes and looked down.

  The defense lawyer moved away from the wound itself and on to the effects the wound would have had on Trayvon as he breathed his last breaths. How long was he alive? How long was he conscious? And what would he have been physically able to do after being shot?

  “The ability to move,” Dr. Di Maio said, describing the last moments of my son’s life in a cold, analytical manner, “is determined by the amount of oxygen in your brain, for which you have a reserve of ten to fifteen seconds…that’s minimum.”

  The amount of blood in the brain “depends on blood pressure and how severe your wounds [are],” he said. A moment later, he added, “Now, how long can your heart beat?

  “In this case,” he continued, “you have a through-and-through hole of the right ventricle [of the heart], and then you have at least one hole, if not two, into the right lung. So you’re losing blood, and every time the heart contracts it pumps blood out of the two holes in the ventricle and at least one hole in the lung.”

  He said in Trayvon’s case, his heart would have been pumping faster than usual, more than a hundred times per minute, due to the physical nature of the struggle and the fact that he had been shot, each pump pushing blood out of the holes in the heart and the lung.

  After two minutes, Trayvon would have lost half of his blood supply. The blood he had left would not have been able to reach his brain, making death imminent.

  “So assuming these conditions,” Dr. Di Maio said, “he’s going to be dead within one to three minutes after being shot.”

  In terms of being conscious, the doctor said Trayvon would have been aware for less time as oxygen levels in the brain dropped.

  No parent wants their child to suffer; even a few seconds is far too much. My eyes were red with tears. I could feel Sybrina’s leg shaking. Then she rose and exi
ted the courtroom.

  “From what I understand you to say then,” West continued, “for at least ten to fifteen seconds after Mr. Martin sustained the shot, he would have been capable of talking and of voluntary movement?”

  “He could,” Dr. Di Maio said. “Some people just lose consciousness immediately. It’s psychological, it’s not physical, but he has the potential for ten to fifteen seconds minimum.”

  “Could that include moving his arms from an outreached position to underneath his body during that ten to fifteen seconds?”

  “Yes,” Di Maio said. But once consciousness is lost there is no more voluntary movements and, gratefully, no more pain.

  —

  On July 10, Dennis Root, a “use of force” expert witness, was called by the defense. A retired twenty-two-year veteran Florida policeman, he was certified as an instructor in hand-to-hand combat, defensive tactics, and impact weapons.

  He taught classes in open-hand combat techniques like blocking, choke holds, and takedowns, and the use of pepper spray. Late in his career, he had become an instructor in firearms, licensed by the state as well as the NRA, and focused much of his teaching on justifiable uses of force in various situations.

  Root followed the case as it dominated the media, and he soon began, with the defense, reviewing evidence, including the 911 calls, witness statements, police and medical reports, and crime-scene photos.

  O’Mara led Root through a series of questions: about Root’s background, his interpretation of the events of the night of February 26, 2012, and if it would have been appropriate to use force, and even a gun, in a self-defense situation.

  Then, John Guy began his cross-examination.

  “The defendant told you that his head was repeatedly slammed into the concrete?” the prosecutor eventually asked.

  “His words were, his ‘head was slammed into the concrete,’ ” Root said.

  “You didn’t ask him how many times?”

  “No, not how many times it happened.”

  “And you didn’t ask him how his head was slammed, right? Whether Trayvon Martin grabbed his ears, or grabbed his face, or grabbed his jacket?”