Women Criminal Defense Attorneys: Who Was the Woman on the Zimmerman Defense Team?

It wouldn’t seem right to have a criminal defense blog and not comment on the Zimmerman trial this week.  I must confess that I did not follow the trial moment by moment and have only viewed some of the arguments after the fact.  But, I did watch the verdict being read “live” like so many other people Saturday night.  And what has bothered me since then is, who was the female lawyer at counsel table with George Zimmerman? Why don’t we know her name like we know Mark O’Mara and Don West?  Why isn’t she mentioned anywhere in the coverage, as if she wasn’t even there?

The image of George Zimmerman at the moment the verdict was read is all over the media and the Internet, but the identity of the female lawyer standing right beside him is not.  For a couple days the media didn’t even identify her, though now you will see her name in some captions under photos of the defense team.  Her name is Lorna Truett and she is an Associate of Mark O’Mara.  She became a lawyer in 2010 after being a legal assistant for ten years.   What struck me is that she was obviously significant enough to be standing next to Mr. Zimmerman at one of the most important moments in his life – when that verdict was being read - but she didn’t attend the press conference after the trial.  When you are part of the defense team, your contribution should be recognized.  You should be at the press conference, and when the world is watching, we should know who you are.  It is a powerful and unfortunate message that her image is everywhere but her contribution and identity is unreported.

In regards to the Zimmerman trial in general, I believe that the defense team did an incredible job in the face of tremendous adversity.  They faced immeasurable adversity from the media storm brewing around them, the prosecution’s obviously calculated efforts to hide exculpatory evidence, a trial Judge that wasn’t easy on them, and the inequities of resources to fight what O’Mara properly identified as a David vs. Goliath battle.  I watched the press conferences of both sides after the verdict.  I loved two things from the defense’s press conference: Don West’s answer when asked if he thought the Judge was fair, that he “wanted to keep his bar license for a couple more years.” And, when Mark O’Mara told the media, to their faces, in a professional but honest demeanor, how they and the system had failed his client and acted as “mad scientists operating on Zimmerman without anesthesia,” I wanted to give the man a standing ovation. What I loved about listening to them was hearing the passion they both had and still have for their client’s cause and story.  They didn’t gloat or behave unprofessionally.  It made me proud of them and proud to be a defense attorney.  Whatever you think of the verdict, the entire Zimmerman defense team, the men and the woman, have honored our profession.