Star Witness Rachael Jenteal: I Can't Read That Letter Explaining What Happened to Trayvon Martin That Night Even Though I Supposedly Wrote It

She's a star witness because she's the only witness to contradict George Zimmerman's claim that he stopped following Trayvon Martin. The defense suspects she's making this all up-- that she had nothing important to tell police, which is why she never bothered contacting them.

At some point, weeks later, the Martin family contacted her. She now explains her failure to step forward with critical information in a homicide case by saying she expected police to contact her, because that's what always happens on First 48 (one of those crime documentary news magazine shows).

"Don't you watch First 48?" she asked a defense attorney when pressed on this claim. As if she thought the attorney's knowledge of police procedure came from the same place hers (allegedly) did.

An alternate explanation is that she didn't contact police because she had nothing important to tell them at all, and that now she's been coached into how to deliver perjured testimony that could land Zimmerman in jail.

Yesterday she claimed that, over the cell phone, she could hear the sound of "grass, wet grass." Yes, of course everyone hears vegetation, and especially over a cell phone.

It's in this context that a letter supposedly written by her but not, alas, readable by her, is important.

A teenage friend of Trayvon Martin was forced to admit today in the George Zimmerman murder trial that she did not write a letter that was sent to Martin's mother describing what she allegedly heard on a phone call with Martin moments before he was shot.

In a painfully embarassing moment, Rachel Jeantel was asked to read the letter out loud in court.

"Are you able to read that at all?" defense attorney Don West asked.

Jeantel, head bowed, eyes averted whispered into the court microphone, "Some but not all. I don't read cursive."

It sent a hush through the packed courtroom.

Jeantel, 19, was unable to read any of the letter save for her name.

posted by Ace at 12:42 PM

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