Zimmerman to be released on bail... again

I don't know a thing about posting bond or what goes into deciding what the bond ought to be (it all seems quite arbitrary to me) but the bottom line is that once again, George Zimmerman may be bailed out assuming he can raise the 10% needed on the newly declared $1 million bond:

A Sandford judge today ordered George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old, released on $1 million bail but called him a manipulator.

It was not immediately clear how long it would take the 28-year-old Zimmerman to arrange his release.

Defense attorney Mark O'Mara said Friday that Zimmerman's legal defense fund had a balance of $211,000, more than enough to cover the 10-percent non-refundable portion charged by most bonding companies.

Zimmerman had been free on $150,000 bond for five weeks when Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. ordered him back to the Seminole County Jail.

That's because Zimmerman's wife had testified under oath that the couple was nearly destitute when bank records show money was pouring in from a support-George-Zimmerman website at the rate of $1,000 a day.

On the day Shellie Zimmerman testified that the couple was broke, she and her husband had access to $130,000, a defense financial expert testified Friday.

In his nine-page order, the judge today chastised Zimmerman.

"By any definition, the defendant has flaunted the system," Lester wrote. "It appears to this court that the defendant is manipulating the system for his own benefit."

Lester also was troubled, he wrote, that Zimmerman and his wife hid the money and that George Zimmerman had a second, undisclosed passport.

"Notably, together with the passport, the money only had to be hidden for a short time for him to leave the country if the defendant made a quick decision to flee. It is entirely reasonable for this court to find that, but for the requirement that he be placed on electronic monitoring, the defendant and his wife would have fled the United States with at least $130,000 of other people's money."

I don't see Zimmerman to be the flight risk that the court sees the man to be... but then again, I don't see him to be as guilty as the court seems to be treating the man.

So this travesty continues.

It occurred to me that the Sandford court system may've found a revenue generator in Mr. Zimmerman... after all, if they simply continue to revoke the man's bond, then reinstate it time and again, they'd find themselves to have quite the funding stream.

Seems like nothing more than an extension of the scam that surrounds this case already.

Comments

[tim aka The Godless Heathen]

Considering how awesome this whole thing has been handled so far, I can hardly wait for the trial.

[Marla Hughes]

I think if your bond's revoked you get at least some of the money back. It's a surety, not a penalty.
Even though I tend to agree with Zimmerman's defense on the main issue of the death of Treyvon Martin, I have to agree that he's probably a flight risk. Not to escape any possible punishment, but to preserve his own life and the lives of his family. IMO, that was what he and his wife were planning on saving the money for. Just in case either she and the kids or all four had to flee to Peru to escape the death threats.
The judge left that completely out of his calculations, either deliberately (possibly due to liability issues in the event the New Black Panthers' bounty on Zimmerman causes his death) or doesn't credit it as a reason for the possibility of flight risk.