First week of testimony in Martin case wraps up

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) — The first week of George Zimmerman's second-degree murder trial wrapped up with testimony from two neighbors and a police officer that seemed to bolster the defense's argument that he was pinned on his back by Trayvon Martin before shooting the teen.

Neighbor Jonathan Good testified Friday that it appeared the unarmed teen was straddling the neighborhood watch volunteer, while another neighbor, Jonathan Manalo, said Zimmerman seemed credible when he said just after the fight that he shot Martin in self-defense. Officer Tim Smith testified that Zimmerman's back side was covered in grass and wetter than his front side.

All three were called as witnesses for prosecutors who are trying to convict him of second-degree murder.

Good, who had perhaps the best view of any witness, said he did not see anyone's head being slammed into the concrete sidewalk, as Zimmerman claims Martin did to him. Good initially testified that it appeared "there were strikes being thrown, punches being thrown," but during detailed questioning he said he saw only "downward" arm movements being made.

Zimmerman has claimed that he fatally shot 17-year-old Martin in February 2012 in self-defense as the Miami-area teen was banging his head into the concrete sidewalk behind the townhomes in a gated community.

Under prosecution questioning, Good said he never saw anyone being attacked that way. Good said he heard a noise behind his townhome and he saw what looked like a tussle when he stepped out onto his patio. He said he yelled: "What's going on? Stop it."

Good testified he saw a person in black clothing on top of another person with "white or red" clothing. He said he couldn't see faces but it looked like the person on the bottom had lighter skin. Martin was black and was wearing a dark hoodie. Zimmerman identifies as Hispanic and was wearing a red jacket. Good was back inside calling 911 when he heard a gunshot.

"It looked like there were strikes being thrown, punches being thrown," Good said.

Later, under cross-examination, he said that it looked like the person on top was straddling the person on bottom in a mixed-martial arts move known as "ground and pound." When defense attorney Mark O'Mara asked him if the person on top was Martin, Good said, "Correct, that's what it looked like." Good also said the person on the bottom yelled for help.

Zimmerman, 29, could get life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder. Zimmerman followed Martin in his truck and called a police dispatch number before he and the teen got into a fight.

Zimmerman has denied the confrontation had anything to do with race, as Martin's family and their supporters have claimed.

Manalo, whose wife had testified earlier in the week, was the first neighbor to step outside and see what happened with his flashlight after he heard a gunshot. He took cellphone photos of a bloodied Zimmerman and Martin's body, and those photos were shown to jurors on Friday. Manalo also described Martin's hands as being under his body.

Manalo said Zimmerman didn't appear shocked and acted calmly. After police officers arrived and handcuffed Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer asked Manalo to call his wife and tell her what happened.

Manalo started to tell Zimmerman's wife that her husband had been involved in a shooting and was being questioned by police when "he cut me off and said, 'Just tell her I shot someone,'" Manalo said.

Under cross-examination, Manalo said when he asked Zimmerman what happened, the neighborhood watch volunteer told him, "I was defending myself and I shot him."

"From what you could tell at that moment, that seemed completely true?" asked defense attorney Don West.

"Yes," Manalo said.

Smith, the police officer, testified that when he saw Zimmerman after the shooting, the neighborhood watch volunteer's backside was covered in grass and wetter than his front side, bolstering defense attorneys' contention that Martin was on top of Zimmerman.

As he walked to the squad car after he had been handcuffed, Zimmerman told the officer that "he was yelling for help and nobody would come help him," Smith said.

"It was almost a defeated ... a confused look on his face," Smith said.

Smith said Zimmerman described himself as "lightheaded" during the drive to Sanford Police Station but declined an offer to take him to a hospital.

The physician's assistant who treated Zimmerman the next day said that Zimmerman complained of feeling nauseated upon reflecting what had happened. But Lindzee Folgate attributed that to psychological factors rather than any physical condition. She also said it appeared his nose was broken, but it was impossible to say for sure since no X-rays were taken. She recommended he see an ear-and-nose doctor and a psychologist.

When O'Mara asked if abrasions on his head were consistent with someone who had his had slammed into concrete, Folgate said, "it could be consistent, yes."

She also testified that Zimmerman had written on a form reciting his medical history that he was exercising three times a week by doing mixed martial arts, a statement that prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda asked her to repeat.

Paramedic Stacy Livingston, who responded to the shooting scene, testified Zimmerman had a swollen, bleeding nose and two cuts on the back of his head an inch long. When O'Mara asked if Zimmerman should have been concerned with his medical well-being because of his injuries, Livingston said, "Possibly."

When photos of Martin's body were shown on a courtroom projector during Livingston's testimony, Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, looked away and blinked back tears.

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Obama wraps up Latin trip with an eye back home

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — President Barack Obama, concluding a three-day visit to Mexico and Costa Rica, is cheering Mexican economic advances and pressing other Central American leaders to deal with poverty and security while reaching out to a politically powerful Latino audience back home.

Boosted by reassuring jobs numbers, Obama is calling for greater trade and economic cooperation with the U.S.'s southern neighbors, arguing that economic prosperity is the best antidote to drug and gang violence and, by extension, to the illegal immigration the U.S. is seeking to control.

In his radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama also made the case that deepening economic ties with the Americas means more jobs in the United States.

"One of the best ways to grow our economy is to sell more goods and services made in America to the rest of the world," he said. "That includes our neighbors to the south."

During the trip Obama has tried to modulate the exercise of U.S. influence. He has refused to insert himself in Mexico's strategy for confronting narcotrafficking, even if it means more limited access by U.S. security officials to Mexican law enforcement. In Costa Rica, he urged Central American leaders to integrate their economies, reduce their high energy costs and confront the violence in the region.

"As governments, our job is to make sure that we're doing everything we can to provide security and opportunity and ladders for success and prosperity for our people," he told the regional leaders at the start of a dinner Friday. "Economic growth that creates jobs, security for people so that they can be safe in their own neighborhoods, and development that allows people to live in dignity."

On Saturday, Obama to speak and takes questions during a forum on economic growth and development.

In addition to its economic aims, the trip served as a nod by Obama to the vast Hispanic population in the United States, which heavily supported him in the 2012 election and which retains strong family and cultural ties to Latin America.

"In fact," he said Friday in a speech aimed at young people in Mexico City, "without the strong support of Latinos, including so many Mexican Americans, I would not be standing today as president of the United States. That's the truth."

A theme during the trip was the U.S. effort to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, an issue of intense interest among Latinos in the United States and in Mexico and Central America.

The vast majority of the 11 million immigrants illegally in the U.S. are from Latin America, 6 million of them from Mexico alone. Obama supports legislation that would give those immigrants a path to U.S. citizenship and he told Univision in an interview aired Friday that he would not sign a bill that did not provide such a pathway. Republicans are demanding greater border security.

"The truth is, right now, our border with Mexico is more secure than it's been in years," he said in the radio address. "We've put more boots on that border than at any time in our history, and illegal crossings are down by nearly 80 percent from their peak in 2000."

The immigration legislation should be a compromise, he said, "which means that nobody got everything they wanted — including me."

As Congress debates immigration legislation, Obama's bullish — even overly rosy — depiction of Mexico's economic prospects were meant to convince the U.S. public and lawmakers that Mexico no longer poses the illegal immigration threat it once did.

"The long-term solution to the challenge of illegal immigration is a growing and prosperous Mexico that creates more jobs and opportunities for young people here," he said.

Mexico, Obama said, has lifted millions of people from poverty.

But while Mexico's economy has grown, it has yet to trickle down to average workers. Huge poverty rates held steady between late 2006 and 2010, the most recent year for which government statistics are available. Between 40 and 50 percent of the population of 112 million Mexicans live in poverty, earning less than $100 a month.

Even as he tried to keep the focus on the economy and immigration, Obama did not escape the issue of drugs and violence wracking the region. In the Costa Rican capital Friday, Obama said the U.S. and Latin America share "common effects and common responsibilities" for the troubles and argued to his dining companions Friday that his country has suffered from the drug epidemic as well.

"If you go to my hometown of Chicago, and you go to some neighborhoods, they're just as violent, if not more violent than some of the countries at this table — in part because of the pernicious influence of the drug trade," he said.

Drug-fueled violence remains an undeniable part of daily life in many parts of the region. Costa Rica has fared better than many of its neighbors, but it worries about spillover from nearby countries. Honduras, for example, now has the highest homicide rate in the world, with about 7,200 people murdered last year in the tiny nation of 8 million people, most in drug-related crime.

Obama acknowledged the role of U.S. demand for drugs and said his administration has spent $30 billion to reduce demand in recent years. But he acknowledged that the United States remains a "big market" and that "progress is sometimes slower than we'd like it to be."

Obama also could not avoid entanglements beyond the region. Questions about Syria dogged him and his aides during the trip. On Friday, he virtually ruled out sending U.S troops into the country torn by civil war, saying he did "not foresee a scenario" for doing so.

In the Republican address Saturday, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory argued that Washington should learn from Republican governors on how to make government work efficiently. He said governors need Washington to give states more flexibility, independence and accountability and called on Obama to show more leadership.

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Online:

Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: www.youtube.com/gopweeklyaddress

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Obama makes stop in Los Angeles, wraps up campaign swing

President Barack Obama has already started rallying supporters for his 2012 presidential campaign. STORY HIGHLIGHTSThe president urges an audience that includes Hollywood moguls to help get him re-electedParticipants include Jamie Foxx and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio VillaraigosaMore than 2,500 campaign contributors attend one event Obama holds six fundraisers over two days Los Angeles (CNN) -- Despite switching an audience of tech executives for Hollywood moguls, President Barack Obama on Thursday night made the same plea for help in his re-election as he wrapped up a two-day West Coast campaign swing in Los Angeles.

At the first of two fundraisers on the lot of Sony Studios in Culver City, Obama told an audience of about 100 guests he needed the same commitment from them in 2012 that drove them to support his unlikely candidacy four years earlier.

"Let's face it, it was not likely that I was going to end up in the Oval Office," Obama said of his supporters' grassroots efforts in his first campaign.

Obama told the audience that included Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and actor Dennis Haysbert that with the power of incumbency also comes an even tougher electoral atmosphere in the next cycle.

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