It has been speculated for the past week that Judge Jessica Reckseidler, who was set to preside over the trial of George Zimmerman, should recuse herself from the case. Now, that it has come to past, her replacement will be Kenneth R. Lester, Jr. The judge has an interesting history as he has presided over several much-covered cases, including ordering the release of a schizophrenic woman from a state mental hospital after she was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting deaths of her parents, and sentencing an ax murderer to death after he killed a 71-year-old man.
Judge Jessica Reckseidler's recusal from the trial comes after Mark O'Mara, Zimmerman's attorney, suggested that her husband's job as a partner to CNN legal analyst Mark NeJame represented a conflict of interest. According to the Orlando Sentinel, with Lester now in place as the judge in the Trayvon Martin case, his popularity amongst attorneys should be an interesting benchmark in this hotly contested case. Zimmerman is facing second-degree murder charges in the killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old whom he shot on February 26 in Sanford, Florida.
