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Fatal Flaw

A True Story of Malice and Murder in a Small Southern Town

- The Defense - Page 135

argue in the morning for a protective order that would prohibit the defense from further deposing Williams.

The next morning, Eagan told Paul that Williams should be protected from further questioning.  He complained that Hadley was repeating questions that he had already asked, and the Zimmer actually was conducting a psychological test of Williams.1  Davids countered that the defense kept asking the same questions because Williams kept giving different answers.  Zimmer, he said, was attending the deposition as a consultant.

Paul allowed the deposition to continue, with the limitation that Hadley could not cover any old ground.  That afternoon, Hadley resumed his questioning.  Eagan and one of his assistants, Steve Thacker, sat beside Williams.

The deposition lasted about two hours.  Williams was testy at times, but he stayed composed.  The session ended this way:

WILLIAMS: Well, I said like this.  I was talking a while ago when he asked me my personal business, I tried to say something different.  I didn't approve of that.  But everything that I said, you know, what I mean, what I said, if she [the court reporter] type it up how I say it, this is no difference with it.  I can't change it.  And anything I tell you is the truth.  I ain't going to change it.

THACKER: That's all right.

WILLIAMS: I wouldn't lie.

THACKER: Okay.

WILLIAMS: I wouldn't lie.

At the evidence viewing of May 7, Davids and the investigators learned that sixty-odd pieces of physical evidence that the prosecution claimed were at the FBI Lab actually had never left the 33rd Street sheriff's station.  The evidence included Mays's bloody trousers and the pants that Williams surrendered to Denny Martin early on Christmas Day.  Hadley and Davids could inspect the items, but the prosecution refused to allow the evidence out of custody.

Hadley wanted to test Williams's pants for gunshot residue.  The police and prosecution had not requested any such tests, even though this offered a chance to substantiate Williams's largely uncorroborated story; Williams claimed that he had put the snub-nosed Securities revolver in his right pants pocket after Zeigler gave it to him behind the store.  The results of a GSR (gunshot residue) test would

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1   Eagan asked an Orlando psychiatrist, Dr. Stuart Bernstein, to read William's May 25 and May 26 depositions, as well as Zimmer's deposition of May 27.  Bernstein told Eagan that he did not believe that Zimmer could determine whether Williams was telling the truth. "Furthermore, I am extremely doubtful as to  how psychiatric examination of Mr. Williams would help to clarify this issue," Dr. Bernstein wrote.

Page Number: 
135
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