Thirty-two

Almost any criminal trial is a battle for the perception of the jury. That was especially true of Florida v. Zeigler, in which most of the undisputed facts are trivial and most of the critical points are ambiguous.

The two opening statements on the morning of June 8 offered two versions that hardly seemed to describe the same crime.

Robert Eagan’s opening was a precis of the state's theory: life insurance; a murderous plan; an attempt to take advantage of two trusting black men ("Edward Williams practically worshiped Tommy Zeigler," Eagan told the jury); four murders and a botched try at a fifth; the dramatic scene with Williams in the back parking lot, and the self-inflicted wound.

In transcript, Eagan's words read as a dry summary, almost perfunctory.  But the jurors were hearing this story for the first time.  The impact must have been considerable.

Hadley, in his turn, told the jury that Tommy and Eunice were "in love and in an enviable position."  The family had wealth that it wanted to protect with insurance.  On Christmas Eve, Tommy Zeigler had everything. He awoke on Christmas Day having lost nearly all of it, and "this young man who lost so much is still losing." Charlie Mays was in the store as a perpetrator.  Eunice and her parents "came into the wrong place at the wrong time and the first part of the tragedy occurred.  They were killed, murdered brutally, but not by Tommy Zeigler."

Eagan began his case with Arthur McGraw, an OCSO crime scene technician, who identified photographs that he took in an around the store on Christmas Eve.  This began a shuttle of technical witnesses who identified items of physical evidence and testified to their own part in the chain of custody.

The trail could be bewildering.  A typical item of evidence was a .38 caliber lead slug that associate medical examiner, Dr. Ruiz, recovered from Perry Edwards during his autopsy.  From Ruiz it went to technician Harry Park, who gave it to Alton Evans, who packaged it for the FBI.  At the FBI Lab it went from examiner William Gavin to ballistics expert Robert Sibert, then back to Gavin, who returned it to the OCSO, where it went into the care of Evans, who brought it to trial.  Each of these individuals had to testify how he received it and to whom he passed it on.  The slug also received four different identification numbers before it joined the collection of trial evidence.  Originally the OCSO designated