Zimmerman juror wins, loses book deal all in a day

We don’t know who Juror B37 is -- only that she isn’t going to write a book about the George Zimmerman trial.

Except she was going to! Or at least until the juror’s book agent fired her over Twitter, half a day after hiring her.

And maybe because the juror decided herself not to write the book because of public outrage. It’s not totally clear.

Every major criminal case spawns a cast of minorly intriguing supporting characters, and Juror B37’s moment of consideration in the national consciousness may have peaked with her nameless, faceless interview with Anderson Cooper on a darkened CNN set Monday night.

“I want people to know that we put everything into everything to get this verdict,” the juror said, getting tearful as she explained why she’d come forward for a TV interview. “We didn’t just go in there and say we’re going to come in here and do guilty, not guilty. We thought about it for hours and cried over it afterwards. I don’t think any of us could do anything like that ever again.”

In the occasionally halting interview, Juror B37 -- who during jury selection revealed herself to be a pet owner and a mother of two -- revealed crucial information about the jury’s outlook on the case. Half of the jurors initially thought Zimmerman, 29, was guilty of manslaughter or second-degree murder, but later agreed upon a not-guilty verdict after reviewing the evidence and Florida’s state laws.

A couple of the jurors “wanted to find him guilty of something,” the juror said.

But while the juror’s remarks were being broadcast over CNN, an online backlash was already underway. A collection of tweets by Twitter user @MoreAndAgain showed the mounting pressure on Los Angeles-based Martin Literary Management agency president Sharlene Martin to drop the juror’s book deal.

Then came the message from Martin, who has represented other clients in the media spotlight, including Raffaele Sollecito, who was charged with murder in Italy alongside his then-girlfriend, Amanda Knox.

Then, in a statement dated later that night and issued through Martin, Juror B37 said she wouldn’t write a book.

“I realize it was necessary for our jury to be sequestered in order to protest our verdict from unfair outside influence, but that isolation shielded me from the depth of pain that exists among the general public over every aspect of this case,” read the juror’s statement.

“The potential book was always intended to be a respectful observation of the trial from my and my husband’s perspectives solely and it was to be an observation that our ‘system” of justice can get so complicated that it creates a conflict with our “spirit’ of justice,” the statement continued. “Now that I am returned to my family and to society in general, I have realized that the best direction for me to go is away from writing any sort of book and return instead to my life as it was before I was called to sit on this jury.”

Here was some of the other reaction directed at Sharlene Martin over Twitter after she announced the book was off.

Times staff writer Hector Tobar contributed to this report.

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