George Zimmerman Is Broke And Wants The Public To Pay His Legal Fees

Murder suspect George Zimmerman, whose plight prompted thousands of well-wishers to donate a flood of money — more than a collective $250,000 — is nearly broke, his lawyer said Monday, and plans to ask the public to pay for his defense.

“He really has to live as a hermit, unfortunately,” said Mark O’Mara. “He’s not doing well. He’s getting by.”

His legal-defense fund, which once hovered around $210,000, now has a balance of $50,000, O’Mara said Monday, with about $20,000 in outstanding bills.

Zimmerman and his wife, Shellie, are out of work, living in hiding in Seminole County, and spending a great deal of money on security because they fear for their lives, O’Mara said.

“Seminole County is unquestionably the most dangerous county, most expensive county for him to be in,” O’Mara said.

He intends to ask the court to declare Zimmerman indigent, an official finding that the 28-year-old Sanford man is broke and needs the public to pay his legal expenses.

Zimmerman also will ask a judge to let him move out of the county, O’Mara said Monday.

“I want him safe. If he’s out of state, so be it,” O’Mara said.

The request to be declared indigent will be an awkward one, coming from Zimmerman and O’Mara.

In April, they had the same plan. Zimmerman was raking in donations at a rate of $1,000 a day via a website he and his family had set up — although O’Mara didn’t know it, he insists.

In a single day, he collected $64,000, according to court records.

Also back then, Zimmerman, from his cell at the Seminole County Jail, was directing his wife to move the money from one account to another, generally in $9,990 chunks.

Zimmerman, a Neighborhood Watch volunteer, is charged with second-degree murder for killing Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old, on a Sanford sidewalk Feb. 26.

Zimmerman says he acted in self-defense, that the Miami Gardens teenager punched him and broke his nose, then got on top of him.

But prosecutors allege that Zimmerman is guilty of racial profiling — that he spotted a black teenager in his neighborhood, suspected he was about to commit a crime, began following him, then murdered him.

O’Mara held a wide-ranging news conference Monday in the front yard of his Orlando law office.

He opened by announcing that earlier in the day, he had filed an appeal challenging a decision by Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. to stay on the case.

O’Mara wants him out, saying that Zimmerman does not believe he can get a fair trial because in a July 5 bond order, the judge called the defendant a manipulator, saying he helped hide $130,000 from the court during an earlier bond hearing.

But Lester has refused to remove himself from the case. On Monday, O’Mara said he could not let that decision go unchallenged.