By Graham Winch and Amanda Sloane, HLNTV.com
Editor’s note: This story contains language that may offend some readers.
(CNN) — A prosecuting attorney greeted the jury in the George Zimmerman trial Monday with a quote full of expletives, while his adversary decided it was appropriate to tell jurors a knock-knock joke.
And that was just the beginning of opening statements in Zimmerman’s long-anticipated murder trial.
In a case that has ignited national debate about gun laws and race relations, Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, is accused of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in February 2012 in Sanford, Florida.
Prosecutor John Guy’s first words to the six-woman jury may have raised a few eyebrows.
“Good morning. ‘F*****g punks, these a******s all get away,'” Guy quoted Zimmerman. “These were the words in this grown man’s mouth as he followed this boy that he didn’t know. Those were his words, not mine.”
Zimmerman, Guy said, “got out of his car with a pistol and two flashlights to follow Trayvon Benjamin Martin, who was walking home from a 7-Eleven, armed” with a fruit drink and a bag of candy. Eventually the two became entangled on the ground in a fight. A witness has said Martin was on top of Zimmerman, Guy said.
“The defendant claims that while Trayvon Martin was on top of him, he said, ‘you are going to die tonight,'” said Guy. “Nobody heard that.”
Guy told jurors that no witnesses saw what happened the night of the shooting from beginning to end. Witnesses only saw “slices” of what happened, he said.
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