Blood drips down the face of the man who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, in a photo released to the press by Zimmerman's defense team Monday, Dec. 4.
The photo, posted on the defense team's website, was taken the night the 28-year-old volunteer neighborhood watchman fatally shot Martin in Sanford, Florida, and was captured by a police officer, Zimmerman's attorneys wrote.
Zimmerman says he shot Martin in self-defense and has pleaded not guilty. Martin's attorneys say he was shot and killed "in cold blood." Prosecutors have charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder for the Feb. 26 killing.
A police report from the night of the incident said Zimmerman was "bleeding from the nose and back of his head."
The image itself isn't actually any new evidence. The state had previously provided a black-and-white copy of the image, the attorneys wrote on the website. "This high resolution digital file was finally provided to the defense on October 29."
Prosecutors have argued that Zimmerman profiled Martin and wrongly assumed that the hoodie-wearing teen, who was returning from a trip to 7-Eleven to his father's girlfriend's house, was a criminal.
The defense contends that Zimmerman was driving through his gated community and came upon Martin returning. After Zimmerman and the boy exchanged words, Martin charged at him, knocking him to the ground, and repeatedly banging his head against a concrete sidewalk, Zimmerman maintains.
Martin's family says Zimmerman attacked the teen first, who had done nothing wrong.
Martin's death sparked nationwide protests and ignited public passions over race relations and gun control, as well as Florida's controversial "stand your ground" law, which allows the use of deadly force when a person believes their life is in danger.
Zimmerman was arrested nearly five weeks after he was initially let go, according to CNN.
A new judge was named to oversee the case in August after an appeals court agreed to a request from Zimmerman's defense team. The attorneys had argued the previous judge had made remarks putting Zimmerman in reasonable fear of an unfair trial.
The release of the photo comes less than a week after Zimmerman announced new efforts to amp up his fundraising to pay his legal fund, the balance of which is "at its lowest," the team wrote on the fund's website. Zimmerman is raising money for his case by sending personally signed "thank you" cards to donors. The move has drawn criticism from some media outlets accusing Zimmerman of essentially selling his signature.
In April, ABC News published an image of Zimmerman that showed blood trickling from two small cuts on his head. An anonymous source purportedly took the image just after Zimmerman fired his gun.
At the time, Benjamin Crump, the Martin family's lawyer, denied that the photo backed up Zimmerman's story.
"How bad could it have been if they didn't take him to the hospital, didn't stitch him up," he said in a statement to ABC News.
"The special prosecutor has seen all the evidence and still believes George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin."
Zimmerman, who is out on $1 million bail, is set to return to court on June 10, 2013.
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