George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watchman who shot dead unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin last year, has been found not guilty.
Lawyers for George Zimmerman, 29, argued he acted in self-defense and with justifiable use of deadly force in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
The jury retired on Friday to consider its verdict on charges of either second-degree murder or manslaughter.
The case sparked a fierce debate about racial profiling in the US.
Protesters are gathering in Sanford, the Florida town where the shooting took place.
Police and community leaders have appealed for calm.
After the verdict, Judge Deborah Nelson told George Zimmerman he was free to go.
“Your bond will be released. Your GPS monitor will be cut off when you exit the courtroom over here. And you have no further business with the court,” Judge Nelson said.
George Zimmerman showed little reaction as the verdict was read out.
“Hopefully everyone will respect the jury’s verdict,” his lawyer Mark O’Mara told reporters after the case.
Mark O’Mara said George Zimmerman would now have to be “very cautious and protective of his safety because there is still a fringe element who have said that they would revenge – that they would not listen to – a verdict of not guilty.”
Lawyers for George Zimmerman argued he acted in self-defense and with justifiable use of deadly force in the death of Trayvon Martin
Another member of his defense team, Don West, said: “I’m thrilled that this jury kept this tragedy from becoming a travesty.”
The case brought into sharp relief some of the most divisive issues in the United States: race, gun control and equal justice under the law.
Florida police did not arrest George Zimmerman for six weeks after the shooting, provoking mass rallies in Florida and throughout the US.
Under the state’s controversial “stand your ground” law, the use of lethal force is allowed if a person feels seriously under threat.
Benjamin Crump, the Martin family lawyer, said: “Trayvon Martin will forever remain in the annals of history… as a symbol for the fight for equal justice for all.”
He, too, appealed for calm, saying “for Trayvon to rest in peace, we must all be peaceful”.
The family’s legal team said they were not in the courtroom when the verdict was read out.
State Attorney Angela Corey said she believed prosecutors had “brought out the truth on behalf of Trayvon Martin”.
“This case has never been about race or the right to bear arms,” she said.
“We believe this case all along was about boundaries, and George Zimmerman exceeded those boundaries.”
As the jury retired on Friday, the judge told the panel of six women to consider whether George Zimmerman acted in self-defense and with justifiable use of deadly force.
Without explicitly discussing race, the prosecution had suggested George Zimmerman assumed the African-American teenager, who was wearing a hooded sweatshirt as he walked in the rain, was up to no good.
But the defense said Trayvon Martin punched their client, slammed his head into the pavement and reached for George Zimmerman’s gun.
The accused, who was legally armed with a pistol, had been sitting in his vehicle on a dark street when he saw Trayvon Martin.
George Zimmerman telephoned police to report a suspicious person, then left his vehicle in apparent pursuit of the teenager.
Shortly afterwards, Trayvon Martin was found dead, shot in the chest.
Earlier, George Zimmerman’s lawyer said he had proven his client’s “pure, unadulterated innocence” in Martin’s death.
But prosecutors said the accused had told a series of lies.
President Barack Obama commented on the case last March following calls for the arrest of George Zimmerman.
He said the “tragedy” of an unarmed black teenager shot dead in Florida should prompt some national soul-searching.
“If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon,” President Obama told reporters at the White House.
Following the verdict, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) – best known for its battles against segregation and discrimination – said it was calling “immediately for the Justice Department to conduct an investigation into the civil rights violations committed against Trayvon Martin”.
“This case has re-energized the movement to end racial profiling in the United States,” Roslyn M. Brock, chairwoman of the NAACP, said in a statement.
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Shellie Zimmerman, wife of Trayvon Martin’s shooter George Zimmerman, was charged with perjury Tuesday, accused of lying when she told a judge that the couple had limited funds during a hearing that resulted in her husband being released on $150,000 bond.
Shellie Zimmerman, 25, was released on $1,000 bond on the third-degree felony that is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
George Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the teen’s slaying and had been out on bond after the April 20 hearing. However, Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester on June 1 revoked the bond and ordered George Zimmerman returned to the Seminole County Jail. In a strongly worded ruling, Lester said the Zimmermans lied about how much money they had.
George Zimmerman’s attorney Mark O’Mara has said the couple was confused and fearful when they misled court officials about how much money they had. A call and email to him on Tuesday weren’t immediately returned.
Records show Shellie Zimmerman in the days before the hearing transferred $74,000 in eight smaller amounts ranging from $7,500 to $9,990, from her husband’s credit union account to hers, according to an arrest affidavit. It also shows that $47,000 was transferred from George Zimmerman’s account to his sister’s in the days before the bond hearing.
Four days after he was released on bond, Shellie Zimmerman transferred more than $85,500 from her account into her husband’s account, the affidavit said. The affidavit also said that jail call records show that George Zimmerman instructed her to “pay off all the bills,” including an American Express and Sam’s Club card.
Shellie Zimmerman, wife of Trayvon Martin's shooter George Zimmerman, was charged with perjury Tuesday
A state attorney investigator met with credit union officials and learned that she had control of transfers to and from her husband’s account.
Jeffrey Neiman, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, said cash transactions in excess of $10,000 usually trigger a reporting requirement by the bank to multiple government agencies – including the IRS.
“If Mrs. Zimmerman intentionally structured the financial transactions in a manner to keep the offense under $10,000, not only may she have committed perjury in the state case, but she also may have run afoul of several federal statutes and could face serious federal criminal charges,” Jeffrey Neiman wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer, has maintained since the February 26 killing that he shot Trayvon Martin in self-defense because the unarmed 17-year-old was beating him up after confronting Zimmerman about following him in a gated community outside Orlando.
George Zimmerman was arrested 44 days later and at the bond hearing, he took the stand and apologized to Trayvon Martin’s parents.
At the hearing, Shellie Zimmerman testified that the couple, who married in 2007, had limited funds for bail because she was a full-time student and her husband wasn’t working. Prosecutors say they actually had then already raised $135,000 in donations from a website George Zimmerman created. They suggested more had been raised since then.
Shellie Zimmerman was asked about the website at the hearing, but she said she didn’t know how much money had been raised. Judge Kenneth Lester set the $150,000 bail and George Zimmerman was freed a few days later after posting $15,000 in cash, which is typical.
In bringing a motion to have George Zimmerman’s bond revoked lead prosecutor Bernie De la Rionda complained: “This court was led to believe they didn’t have a single penny. It was misleading and I don’t know what words to use other than it was a blatant lie.”
The judge agreed and ordered George Zimmerman returned to jail where he has been since turning himself in on June 3. He didn’t perjure himself, but Kenneth Lester said he knew his wife was lying.
“Does your client get to sit there like a potted plant and lead the court down the primrose path? That’s the issue,” Kennethh Lester said in revoking George Zimmerman’s bond.
“He can’t sit back and obtain the benefit of a lower bond based upon those material falsehoods.”
He has another bond hearing set for June 29.
Bernie De la Rionda presented to the judge during the revocation hearing a partial transcript of telephone conversations George Zimmerman had with his wife from jail, days before the original bond hearing.
George Zimmerman and his wife discussed the amount of money raised from the website, and he spoke in code to tell his wife how to make fund transfers, according to the transcript. The code referred to amounts of “$15” in place of “$150,000.”
In the arrest affidavit, they also spoke about small amounts when really, prosecutors said, they were referring in code to thousands of dollars that Shellie Zimmerman withdrew from her account to pay the bail bondsman.
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