The next hearing date in the George Zimmerman murder trial has been set on the same day as Trayvon Martin's birthday. Martin was shot and killed in an alleged altercation with Zimmerman, he would have been 18 years old on Jan 8.
The mother of Martin told Essence, "I want justice in 2013. The trial begins in June, and we want Trayvon's murderer held accountable for what he did. This was a murder. This was not a case of 'Stand your ground' or self-defense. One of the things Tracy [Trayvon's father] and I have done is take a negative and make it positive. We want to try and engage the political process with the Change for Trayvon campaign to encourage people around the country to get involved and vote to help revise these 'Stand your ground' laws."
Zimmerman and his legal team have maintained thought out the case that shooting the unarmed 17-year-old was a matter of self-defense and was not an intentional murder. Zimmerman has pled guilty to second degree murder, but argues that he is protected by the self-defense laws of Florida State.
Zimmerman at the time of the fatal incident was a volunteer watch-guard of a gated community, when he approached 17-year-old Martin after observing some suspicious behavior. Zimmerman claims that the encounter soon turned into a violent affront. In an act to protect himself, Zimmerman fatally fired at the teenager.
A few months ago, Mark O'Mara, Zimmerman's head lawyer said that he would change his defense strategy from applying the Florida State's "Stand Your Ground," to the state's self-defense law.
According to the "Stand your Ground," law, if a person is in reasonable fear of danger than he/she could use deadly force, without having to evade the situation. This means that even though a person has the opportunity to escape his/her attacker he/she could choose to stand ground and fight back.
But Zimmerman's lawyer told the Huffington Post, "I think the facts seem to support that though we have a stand-your-ground immunity hearing, what this really is, is a simple, self-defense immunity hearing."
The basic argument, O'Mara will make is that Zimmerman was being attacked by the unarmed teenager and fired the shots in an act of pure defense without any opportunity to escape the situation.
The voice recording of Zimmerman's interrogation, which was released early on to the public, revealed the 28-year-old repeatedly telling police that he was punched and violently attacked by the victim.
In one of the audiotapes, Zimmerman revealed Martin "jumped out from the bushes and starting punching my face knocking me down. I started screaming for help. I couldn't see. I couldn't breathe...He grabbed my head and started hitting it into the sidewalk," he said. "When he started doing that, I slid into the grass to try to get out from under him. ... I'm still yelling for help," as reported by Christian Science Monitor.
He has been released from jail on bond, but under strict conditions including a round the clock GPS monitoring system. A request to remove the 24/7 GPS device was denied in December by Judge Debra Nelson.