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Fatal Flaw

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

- The Defense - Page 154

by which they could reject a juror without cause.  Hadley intended to reject nearly all of them.  He thought that Zeigler's prospects in Orange County were grim.

On Friday morning, June 4, Hadley and Eagan met Paul in the judge's chambers.  Eagan said that he would not oppose a change of venue if Hadley finally would waive Zeigler's speedy-trial rights.

Hadley agreed.  With apparent reluctance, Judge Paul ordered the trial moved out of Orange County.

Then he denied for a fifth time Hadley's motion for a continuance. The trial would begin again on Tuesday, June 8, at the Duval County Courthouse in Jacksonville.

*

The defense booked rooms in a moderately priced, slightly shabby hotel in Jacksonville.  Five and half months of spare-no-expense defense had depleted the Zeiglers' cash reserves, and business was poor at the furniture store.  Tom and Beulah had put one of their apartment properties in trust to the law firm, to cover the costs of what was expected to be a month-long trial.

Hadley's team arrived in Jacksonville on Sunday, dispirited by the series of denied motions.  What they learned that evening was even more discouraging.

Steve Robertson tacked a street map of Duval County up  on a bulletin board.  He and Leslie Gift placed pins at the address of each of the prospective jurors in the pool.  They found that the majority were in black neighborhoods.  At that time in Florida, juries tended to be overwhelmingly white.  Yet Vernon Davids thought he had never seen such a preponderance of black men and women in a Florida jury pool.

Given the loathing that the murder of Charlie Mays inspired among black residents in Orange County, Hadley and Davids knew that this could not bode well for their client.2  

The trial would have racial undertones, if only by implication.  Zeigler was about to become that rarest of birds; a white citizen tried in a Southern court for the first‑degree murder of a black man.

At about this time, the prosecution furnished Hadley a copy of Don Frye's taped interview with Cheryl Clafler, in which she claimed that Eunice was in fear for her life after discovering Tommy in a homosexual act with one of his friends.

He believed that the testimony was rank hearsay, and not admissible.  If it was admitted, he was sure that he could demolish it. He believed that the only

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2   Ordinarily Hadley and Davids would have welcome a black majority on a jury; in 1976, many trial attorneys accepted the idea that black jury were suspicious of authority and therefore sympathetic to a defendant. That notion has since proved false.  Previous victims of crime are considered ideal jurors for the prosecution, and the percentage of blacks who have been victims of crime is greater for any other racial group.

Page Number: 
154
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