*

The second day of the grand jury's hearing was a Friday.  Hadley and the rest of the defense expected an indictment.  Zeigler's nine weeks of freedom were at an end.

Hadley wanted to avoid having deputies arrest his client.  Leslie Gift arranged for Zeigler to stay in the offices of another attorney while they waited for the formal announcement of the indictment.  When it came, she took Zeigler to surrender at the courthouse in Orlando.

She drove into the basement sally port and walked with Zeigler to the ground-floor booking desk.  Don Frye was waiting there, with Orange County sheriff Melvin Colman.  Reporters and photographers crowded a few feet away.

As both Zeigler and Gift remember it, the booking officer suggested that they avoid the media by booking Zeigler upstairs, at the jail; there was an elevator nearby.

According to Zeigler and Gift, Colman declined the idea, saying: "That's all right.  The press can have its pound of flesh."

Frye told Zeigler to assume the position, as cameras clicked and whirred.

 *

The indictment allowed Hadley to move for discovery of the state's evidence against Zeigler.  His motion invoked Florida's Mutual Criminal Discovery Agreement, obligating both prosecution and defense to disclose any relevant evidence.  In theory, both sides would share the fruits of their investigations, favorable or otherwise.  Without mutual discovery, the defense was entitled only to potentially exonerating evidence: so-called Brady material.

This tactic was not without some risk for the defense.  Hadley already had assigned Gene Annan to follow any lead that implicated Zeigler; if there was bad news, Hadley wanted to know about it.  Now the defense was obliged to reveal any unfavorable facts that Annan or any of the other investigators happened to find.

Hadley was willing to take the chance.  He had virtually no evidence that could damage Zeigler.  The payoff was a close look at the state's case, and insurance against an ambush at trial.  He got much more than he expected.

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5   From the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland.