After more than a decade, book explores forensic evidence from shooting death of Trayvon Martin
It’s been 14 years since Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African American 17-year-old, went out for snacks in Sanford, Florida, and was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. Zimmerman claimed self-defense and was found not guilty. Concerned about the outcome of the case, attorney J. Cheney Mason, who has tried hundreds of criminal cases, including the 2011 defense of Casey Anthony; and Dr. William R. Anderson, a medical examiner and forensic pathologist who has performed thousands of autopsies, wrote Murdered in a Hoodie: A Forensic Autopsy of the Evidence Related to the Killing of Trayvon Martin (Buster Bodhi Press, 2025). The two Florida-based authors say they’ve researched 11,500 newspaper and journal articles, scoured investigative records and pored over Martin’s autopsy report, done by medical examiner Dr. Shiping Bao. The authors both maintain basic crime scene processes were not followed. Other concerns involve the bullet trajectory, Zimmerman’s re-enactment of the crime being admitted into evidence and the history of racial tensions in Sanford.
Trayvon Martin was killed on Feb. 26, 2012. Why did you write this book now?
Mason: We started it about six years ago. We were first doing it as a novel. Then we both decided it needed to be factual. Bill and I both had simultaneous suspicions about this case. And we’ve worked together and against each other. … He’s been a professional witness for the prosecution for decades because he’s a medical examiner. That’s how we met; me defending murder cases. I’ve used him occasionally as my defense witness. And when we talked, we both thought, something’s wrong.
Anderson: The story was that Zimmerman’s head had been beaten in by Trayvon. And so there should have been a lot of blood. What did the police do in the rain? They take fingerprints and see if they can pull a criminal record out on this kid—meanwhile, destroying any possibility of trace evidence. One way or another, if there was no blood, the story would have been refuted right there. I’ve been a medical examiner since 1976. I have never had a situation where the law enforcement would not preserve trace evidence.
What else did not line up with the forensics in the case?
Anderson: One of things we looked at was the major crux of Zimmerman being allowed to re-create exactly what happened—according to Zimmerman. But looking at the forensic evidence we show in the book, there are many other ways that this could have happened. But Zimmerman had the opportunity to tell us exactly how he said it happened. And that’s about the only way it couldn’t have happened. This is sort of a critical point in the book.
How was this case different from other cases that might be investigated as a potential homicide case?
Mason: The first homicide case I tried was in 1972. I’ve never seen anything quite like this one. There were witnesses to hearing a struggle; a fight of some kind. Although there was a witness who claimed there were three shots fired, there was only one. The police showed up. [The 911 operator] had already told [Zimmerman] to not follow this kid; stay in his car. You have a body with a hole in his chest and a guy standing there with a gun in his hand. Now that should have been an immediate arrest—and in other place or any other time, it would have been. But they talked. One of the things I pointed out is this is indicative of the attitude. Mr. Zimmerman said, “If you call my wife, just tell her I shot someone.” Just as casual and meaningless as that. If he had been prosecuted correctly, he would have been convicted.
Anderson: Our theory on the prosecution; it was not inept prosecution. This was done knowingly. They can’t just make these many mistakes all in a row. [Editor’s Note: Angela Corey, who was the prosecutor who tried the case, did not respond to ABA Journal interview requests.] Plus, that’s not the way you handle forensic evidence. You don’t need fingerprints. You want to do DNA. And why would you think [Martin] would be a criminal? If they find somebody on the street—a heart attack guy—they don’t go fingerprint him.
The shooting of Trayvon Martin sparked outrage, media attention, protests and racial divide. Why so much upheaval about this case?
Mason: The simple answer: It was totally racial. I’ve lived here for 82 years, except for my three years in the Vietnam area and college. The people at that scene saw a teenage Black kid in a hoodie, and therefore he had to be up to no good. This guy standing there sets himself up as a watch commander … he’s holding the gun. And he just makes this story up. He claims this kid had him down and was beating his head against the sidewalk. And yet, they made no effort to even see if there was evidence to confirm that, like hair, blood, skin—anything on the sidewalk.
Dr. Anderson, if you had been called to the Trayvon Martin crime scene, how would you have handled things?
Anderson: When you get there, the first thing you do, you make sure the body is not moved. You bag the hands and the feet. If there is any trace elements, they are protected by a bag, and that will protect the DNA from being contaminated and cross-contaminations. That didn’t happen because they had already taken the fingerprints. The medical examiner had bagged the hands, but after that, everything had been contaminated because they took the fingerprints before the medical examiner even got there. If you read the medical examiner’s investigator report, it says when she arrived, the fingerprints had already been taken. They had already destroyed any possible trace evidence that might have either actually exonerated or convicted Zimmerman.
Why was crime scene protocol not followed?
Mason: It was determined at the very first look. Very simple: You had the whitest guy as a wannabe cop, standing there with a gun, and you had a Black kid in a hoodie lying on the ground, shot. They didn’t need anything more than that. Obviously, the kid had to have attacked him. He was Black in a hoodie. The area where this happened is historically, into the early 19th century, it’s white versus Black. People don’t want to admit that, but they know it’s the case. I remember when I came back from Vietnam in 1964: colored fountains, white bathrooms, white-only—the whole business. Think about that. It’s not that much different—if any—today.
Did stand your ground law apply to this case?
Mason: If he filed a motion to stand your ground, Zimmerman would have to had testified and been cross-examined and questioned by both the judge and the lawyers. Well, defense lawyers are a lot smarter than prosecutors. They knew. They didn’t want him to have to get cross-examined because he had already done his version of the re-enactment the day after the shooting. The prosecution was effectively begging them to file a motion, challenging them. And defense lawyers kept leading them on to make them think they were going to do that. That’s the reason why it didn’t happen. If it had been such a motion filed, a first-year prosecutor would have gotten a conviction on that case because Zimmerman could never pass the examination of any of the things that Dr. Anderson has pointed out.
The bullet trajectory and gunpowder stippling you examine in the book: None of that was introduced as evidence during the trial?
Anderson: That’s correct. Dr. Bao basically said, ‘Oh, the bullet went straight back.’ And they let it go at that. None of the trajectory stuff was there at all. No. None of that was presented to the jury. This would have completely refuted his story.
What about Benjamin Crump, the lawyer hired to represent Trayvon Martin’s parents? Didn’t he know any of this?
Anderson: Ben didn’t know about it either, until a couple of months or so ago. I did an autopsy case for him, and we got into talking about this. We sent him the book. He read it.
Can the case be retried as a hate crime with the new evidence you’ve uncovered?
Mason: It cannot be tried in a Florida state court. It’s done. The question of whether or not it could be brought in as a hate crime, theoretically, it perhaps could [in federal court]. They don’t have any kind of admissions or really incriminating things that could help transfer an ordinary shooting into a hate crime. I believe it was a totally racial doing and nothing other than that. This guy, Zimmerman, was puffed up and excited. He was on Saturday-night duty. He had his gun strapped on. Made him feel powerful. Made him taller. Made him stronger. And he went out and he saw this kid.
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