Many people are wondering about the *shift* noted in Mark O’Mara’s representation of George Zimmerman. While no one can get inside his head it is possible to listen, understand and objectively review his current position which can aptly be described as: His worst nightmare has come to pass.
Mark O’Mara is representing an innocent man, George Zimmerman; and O’Mara is very uncomfortable with that. He does not want that responsibility – but that responsibility has found him.
He is not used to this. He never expected this. Nothing, so far, in his legal career has prepared him for this and it is very well summed up from a recent conversation I had with someone who said:
Mark O’Mara will learn far more from George Zimmerman, than George Zimmerman will learn from Mark O’Mara.
From the outset my personal position on Mark O’Mara was based on hundreds of hours of review of his history, his behavior, his approach, his ideology, and his legal tendency which compromises his professional approach.
If there is one person, one attorney, I could recommend NOT to defend an innocent man under these circumstances it would be the detached, aloof, pinkie finger ring-wearing, cocktail class insider, Mark O’Mara. The absolute worst possible advocate for an innocent person; and perhaps that is WHY he was chosen.
Throughout O’Mara’s career he has been, by his chosen constitution, always “above the fray”; He likes it that way, or, perhaps I should say, he *liked* it that way.
Though I still find myself unable to see him changing his approach, I can definitely concede he just might change as an effect of this case.
Pontificating about the legalese of a case, the objective nuance, the academic lawyers approaches are the forte’ of Mark O’Mara, and as such he is a good consultant type, an advisor of what to file, how to file it, and what it means to file. A process guy who does not like to get stuck in the weeds of pesky details like whether or not his client is in fact criminally liable for conduct. The oft-mentioned professional separation.
That is how this whole thing started, that was his whole approach. Turn to page one, of chapter one, of the book of legal process 101 and begin the case. But George Zimmerman is different, vastly different.
George “Tugboat” Zimmerman is an innocent man, perhaps guilty of legal naiveté’ and constitutionally centered around faith-based, but humanly flawed, principles of right and wrong – Zimmerman was not, and is not, well skilled in the nuanced shades of grey that O’Mara is used to dealing with.
Hence from the outset there was this massive disconnect in ideologically understanding each other.
Consider:
Right is right even if nobody does it; and wrong is wrong even if everybody does it.
That’s the way George Zimmerman views the world.
But for Mark O’Mara the ideology is:
Right is right when everyone agrees about it; and wrong is wrong anytime anyone can prove it happened.
One ideology is based on faith, the other is based on the most flawed of human approaches, control.
Control is a short-term effective, but long-term futile, approach to anything. With “control” you get compliance, based on the events of the moment; which, as we all know, are subject to changes in environment, circumstance, and self-interest.
With faith you form habits. Embedded constitutional habits that affect your behavior, your outlook, and stay with you over time.
You can teach a child the difference between right and wrong with either approach. But one stays around after you leave the room. Using control, which ultimately is a reaction to fear, you can insure the child keeps his elbows off the table based on your presence. But with faith, the longer habitual approach, the elbows remain absent from the neighbors table too because the habit is engrained in the faith-based understanding of the ‘why’. It is, in a larger sense the id vs. the ego. The selfless vs the self-interest.
Ultimately the outcome, or absence of these central considerations, is also noted in the behavioral choices of the 17-year-old George Zimmerman met on February 26th. Tracy Martin was not there, in the moment, to control Trayvon – and, like the behaviors that led to three school suspensions, his choices reflected the absence of faith or core embedded understanding of the whole Good v Bad, Right v Wrong, thing.
Heck, just read his self-broadcasted twitter account. You tell me if Trayvon retained any sense of right and wrong – WHEN NO-ONE WAS WATCHING.
Such ultimate distinctions led to the crossed paths of Mark O’Mara and George Zimmerman.
O’Mara has never represented an innocent man before. He has represented numerous people who were not guilty; But never before anyone, *anyone*, who was innocent.
So Mark O’Mara is facing his worst nightmare. The responsibility for protecting an innocent man from the fury of the furnace in front of him. The guilt, the overwhelming physical and emotional guilt, which would come from failure is so powerful even someone as skilled at detachment as Mark O’Mara may not be able to recover.
That internal compass shift is why you are seeing a change.
“I wouldn’t plea someone who is innocent. So I think the answer is pretty easily no,” – Mark O’Mara