Zimmerman's lawyer: Cub Scout leader, martial-arts expert, one-man law firm
10:55 p.m. EST, April 3, 2012|
By Rene Stutzman, Orlando Sentinel
(Courtesy of FOX35 / Apr 03, 2012)
Craig Sonner has never defended a client accused in a homicide, but he now represents George Zimmerman, the man at the center of one of the nation's most racially divisive shootings in years.
And Sonner predicts he'll have no problem clearing Zimmerman.
"I believed his story of how he was defending himself," said 47-year-old Sonner, a one-man Altamonte Springs law firm. "I've already got a number of experts lined up to take this one … I don't think we're going to have a problem exonerating George Zimmerman."
Sonner had not paid much attention to the case and all the media reports about it until Zimmerman's father called, asking for help.
"Then George called me," Sonner said.
That was more than two weeks ago. Sonner says he now talks with the 28-year-old Zimmerman at least once and sometimes several times a day, depending on the day's events.
At first, Sonner advised his client and his family to say nothing, but the story about Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old, kept growing.
There were rallies and marches in cities across the country. Al Sharpton and the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People traveled to Sanford. Members of Congress called for an arrest.
Finally, on March 23, Sonner decided to change course. Someone had to publicly defend Zimmerman, to say that he was no racist and that his claim of self-defense was legitimate.
So Sonner drove to Lake Mary to do an interview at WOFL-Channel 35. Minutes after walking out of the studio, his phone wouldn't stop ringing, he said. When he got back to his office a short time later, network-news trucks were stacked up outside his office.
He flew to New York and made appearances on CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS.
But he made perhaps his biggest media splash March 26, when he walked out of an Orlando studio minutes before airtime, leaving Lawrence O'Donnell, host of "The Last Word" on MSNBC, fuming and spending several minutes angrily interviewing an empty chair.
It prompted Jon Stewart on"The Daily Show" to air a parody.
"I live in New York City," Stewart joked. "I see a lot of people yelling at chairs. None of them have TV shows."
Sonner said the night he walked off the set that the "only reason I'm talking now is that this case has spun so out of control," he said. Zimmerman "is not a racist. This was a case of self-defense."
And Sonner is no longer Zimmerman's lone defender.
Late Tuesday, veteran Orlando-area criminal-defense attorney Hal Uhrig, who often works on cases with Sonner, announced that he was joining the defense team.
He is confident of their client's self-defense claim, Uhrig told WOFL, in part because Zimmerman has already passed a voice-stress test, something similar to a lie-detector test, administered by Sanford police.
Both lawyers said they never have met Zimmerman face to face.
"Because of the danger he faces, we communicate only by phone," Sonner said.
Worked for FDOT
Sonner has been a lawyer since 2001. Before that, he worked 10 years as a highway engineer for the Florida Department of Transportation, where he designed bridges and resurfacing projects, managed road-sign-inspection paperwork and oversaw permits in the Lake City region.
"When I was in school, I liked math and physics and sciences and always had an interest in construction and buildings," he said.
He lives in Oviedo with his wife and two children, a 7-year-old boy and 5-year-old girl. He's a Cub Scout leader, and the family is active in church, according to friends.
He's also a martial-arts instructor. He has a black belt in aikido, a form of self-defense that allows practitioners to defend themselves without injuring their attacker. He teaches classes in it twice a week in Orlando.
"He's a great guy. He's a man of impeccable character. He's dependable, very reliable, very ethical," said Andrew Storie, who worked alongside Sonner when both were assistant state attorneys in Seminole County from 2003-05.
Storie now has an office in the same building as Sonner.
"He's not a publicity-seeker," Storie said. "He would be the antithesis of that. ... He's not seeking self-glorification."
Life, education
When Sonner was 14, his family moved from Illinois to Knoxville, Tenn., where he sang in a choir and raced sailboats competitively, he said.
He graduated from Tennessee Tech University with a degree in civil engineering and went to work for the Indiana Department of Highways, then moved to Lake City and FDOT, according to a state job application. He left that career in 1997 to enter law school.
"I heard people criticizing lawyers and the system and so on," he said. "I thought, 'Well, if I didn't like the system, I needed to get involved.' "
He graduated in 2000 from Ohio Northern University College of Law, then worked as a substitute schoolteacher in Gainesville for six months while waiting to be admitted by The Florida Bar, the application said.
He was hired in 2002 by the State Attorney's Office in Seminole County, where he worked for three years on misdemeanor cases, many involving drunken driving. Then he went into private practice.
As of Tuesday morning, neither Sonner nor Zimmerman had talked with anyone in the office of Special Prosecutor Angela Corey, the state attorney appointed by Gov. Rick Scott to take over the investigation and decide whether to charge Zimmerman.
If she convenes a grand jury, Zimmerman will be there, Sonner said. If she calls, saying she's going to file charges, Zimmerman will surrender.
"It's still true that we're cooperating fully with law enforcement," Sonner said.
The basis of his defense: Florida's stand-your-ground law, which allows a person who reasonably fears imminent death or great bodily harm to use lethal force.
rstutzman@tribune.com or 407-650-6394
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