Fired Employee To File Lawsuit Against Zimmerman Prosecutor Office

A former employee of the Florida State prosecutor Angela Corey’s office is filing a whistleblower lawsuit against George Zimmerman’s prosecutors, the man’s attorney told Reuters on Tuesday.

Corey is already in hot water and facing criticism for her inability to get George Zimmerman convicted of the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin.

Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges on Saturday, a decision that has caused outrage in the community, leading to heated arguments online and protests on the streets.

Ben Kruidbos, Corey’s former director of IT, was fired after testifying at a pre-trial hearing on June 6 that prosecutors failed to turn over potentially embarrassing evidence extracted from Martin’s cell phone to the defense, as required by evidence-sharing laws.

“We will be filing a whistleblower action in (Florida’s Fourth Judicial District) Circuit Court,” said the fired employee’s attorney Wesley White, himself a former prosecutor who was hired by Corey but resigned in December because he disagreed with her way of handling her priorities. He said the suit will be filed within the next 30 days.

Corey’s office had no comment and it referred Reuters to look at the letter of termination in which Kruidbos is accused of hacking into state computers and obtaining confidential information.

The letter, dated July 11, charges Kruidbos with “deliberate, willful and unscrupulous actions” that make him untrustworthy and calls his questioning of Corey’s colleague Bernie de la Rionda’s actions regarding the cell phone evidence “a shallow, but obvious, attempt to cloak yourself in the protection of the whistleblower law.”

On Monday Corey told Reuters, “Our office adhered to the highest standards of ethical behavior.”

The law known as the Brady disclosure, obligates prosecutors to share evidence with defense attorneys, especially if it will exonerate their client.

Mark O’Mara, Zimmerman’s attorney, accused the prosecution of keeping important evidence from the defense and not sharing it until June, right before the trial began.

Kruidbos testified last month in a pre-trial hearing that he found photos on Martin’s phone that included pictures of a pile of jewelry on a bed, underage nude females, marijuana plants, and a hand holding a semi-automatic pistol.

Kruidbos emailed de la Rionda in late January and attached a report containing the text messages and images he had retrieved from Martin’s cell phone, his lawyer said.

Judge Debra Nelson ruled that pictures and texts from Martin’s cell phone were inadmissible, after prosecutors argued that it couldn’t be proven Martin actually took the pictures and wrote the texts on his phone.

The judge has yet to rule on whether prosecutor Anglea Corey and her office violated the Brady law by not handling over evidence to the Zimmerman’s attorneys.