ORLANDO, Fla. — George Zimmerman was acquitted at his racially charged murder trial in July. He won but at a steep cost.
Two months ago, he received a $2.5 million bill from his lead attorneys, Mark O’Mara and Don West.
They had tracked their time on the case. Each billed for about 3,000 hours, O’Mara said.
In a high-profile but not very complicated murder case, the relationship between lawyer and client and money long ago grew complicated.
O’Mara took on the case in April 2012, saying he would represent Zimmerman at no charge. Then he discovered that Zimmerman and his family were raising funds via a website and that money was pouring in, at least initially.
Throughout the case, even after the trial, O’Mara said he and West had not been paid a dime, although they hoped to be someday.
In an interview this week, O’Mara said Zimmerman paid them “a minute amount” after the trial.
O’Mara is still hopeful, he said, that there might someday be money he and West can collect.
In truth, they have already benefited financially from Zimmerman’s legal-defense fund. Several months ago, O’Mara reported spending $52,550 on “law firm support and infrastructure.”
O’Mara and his spokesman never provided a detailed accounting as to what that included, but they said it was such things as more computers, upgraded software, new phones and improved office security.
West and O’Mara also formed a private partnership, Timber Run Enterprises LLC, and bought the building next door to O’Mara’s Concord Street office in downtown Orlando. That building, like O’Mara’s office, is a former single-family home for which the lawyers paid $270,000.
It became the nerve center for the defense team, where O’Mara and West plus two other O’Mara law-firm employees and six law-school volunteers worked on the case.
O’Mara said he and West did not spend Zimmerman’s defense-fund money to buy the building but that they leased it to O’Mara’s firm, and defense-fund money was used to pay rent.
O’Mara charges $400 an hour, West $350 an hour, rates that area attorneys describe as reasonable, given their years of experience and skill.
But Orlando criminal defense attorney Richard Hornsby said the $2.5 million total is “mind-numbing.”
