By Rene Stutzman and Jeff Weiner, The Orlando Sentinel –
SANFORD, Fla. — Like two worried parents with a wayward child, George Zimmerman’s lawyers stood puzzled in front of the Seminole County Courthouse on Tuesday and admitted they’d lost control.
(PHOTO: Attornies Craig Sonner, left, and Hal Uhrig talk to the media on Tuesday, April 10, 2012, in front of the Seminole County Courthouse in Sanford, Florida. The pair are dropping the case of George Zimmerman, saying they’ve lost contact with Trayvon Martin’s shooter.)
Zimmerman has not talked to or communicated with them since Sunday, said Craig Sonner, one of his lawyers.
Worse, Zimmerman has done two dangerous things, his lawyers said: He telephoned a special prosecutor who’s trying to put together a criminal case against him, and he called Sean Hannity of Fox News.
Both were bad ideas, said Sonner and co-counsel Hal Uhrig.
The call to the office of Special Prosecutor Angela Corey apparently did no harm, Uhrig said.
“They cut him off,” Sonner said.
Still, Uhrig said, “We were a bit astonished.”
Sonner and Uhrig admitted they are flummoxed by what Zimmerman is doing. They held the news conference, they said, because they now believe they are off the case. It is no longer ethical for them to present themselves as his lawyers, they said.
“He’s not returning my calls. He’s not returning my texts. He’s not returning my emails,” said Sonner, adding that he has tried many, many times to get a response since he last heard from Zimmerman on Sunday. “I said, ‘Please call me. Please call me collect.’ ”
Until then, they had communicated at least once a day, Sonner said.
Despite stepping back from the case, Uhrig gave an impassioned defense of Zimmerman, 28.
He is no racist, Uhrig said, and all the evidence that Uhrig knows about corroborates Zimmerman’s account that he acted in self-defense after Trayvon Martin knocked him down and began pounding Zimmerman’s head on a sidewalk.
If there was a crime, Uhrig said, Martin committed it.
“The first person who swung, from what we can tell, was Trayvon,” Uhrig said. “The crime was battery by Trayvon Martin against George Zimmerman.”
A mortician didn’t find any injuries on Martin’s body, Uhrig said, because he was the one throwing the punches — not the one taking them.
The lawyers said they would eagerly go back to work for Zimmerman. All it would take is one quick phone call or text message from him.
Tuesday’s news conference was a bizarre twist in a case that for weeks has captivated the nation and forced people to ask hard questions about racial profiling and gun control.
Zimmerman, a Neighborhood Watch volunteer, shot and killed Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old, on Feb. 26 after seeing the youth walk through a Sanford neighborhood, calling police and following him on foot. Zimmerman told police he acted in self-defense, and they let him go.
For weeks, protesters have held rallies in Sanford and cities across the country, demanding that Zimmerman be arrested.
Attorney Benjamin Crump, representing Martin’s family, said he was alarmed by Tuesday’s news.
“The family is deeply concerned that George Zimmerman is unaccounted for,” he said. “They worry he may be a flight risk if he does, indeed, face charges.”
Crump said the situation could have been avoided had police “just simply arrested him.”
Zimmerman has been in hiding. Uhrig and Sonner would not say Tuesday where he is but suggested that it is outside Florida.
Sonner and Uhrig said Zimmerman called Corey’s office most likely because he wants to tell prosecutors his story.
Corey’s office would not comment on Zimmerman’s call, but a news release late Tuesday said Corey, the state attorney in Jacksonville, would hold a news conference about the case within 72 hours.
The defense lawyers said Zimmerman called her office at 10:55 a.m. Tuesday but that employees there refused to talk to him.
Hannity on his show Tuesday night confirmed that he had spoken to someone he believed to be Zimmerman but that he had promised not to share the content of the conversation.
Zimmerman has spent much of the past few weeks alone, Uhrig said. There have been reports that he has lost a great deal of weight, Uhrig said, and he fears Zimmerman is now “emotionally crippled.”
“Our concern runs more deeply than this,” Uhrig said. “This has been a very corrosive process. … We’re concerned about his emotional and physical safety.”
They had an unusual business arrangement, the lawyers admitted. Neither lawyer had met Zimmerman. They communicated strictly by phone and email.
And Zimmerman had paid them nothing yet, Sonner said.
The arrangement was that until the special prosecutor filed charges, Sonner would work for free. In the past few weeks, he and Uhrig have traveled to New York at least twice to appear on network news shows.
