Forty-two

Friday was a sultry summer day in Jacksonville. Most Americans who are old enough to remember will recall something of that day: if not specific details, then a memory of anticipation, of impatience to begin the biggest summer holiday of that year or many other years. Friday, July 2, 1976, was the eve of the nation's Bicentennial celebration.

Anyone who was involved with Florida v. Zeigler must remember it as a day of uncertainty and tension and turmoil, and then decision. At 9 a.m., as the jury reconvened, Judge Paul called Eagan and Hadley into his chambers. Irma Brickle had told a bailiff that she wanted a private conference with the judge; if not alone, then with the two attorneys present.

This request was problematic. The judge could not speak with any juror apart from the others.

"I really don't want to bring her in," Paul said.

"Judge, I just don't know," Eagan said. "I've never had this come up before.... I think the thing is fraught with peril in that if we do bring her in we might have a mistrial right here."

They debated whether to send her a note asking her to explain.

"It might not be anything, you know, but it might be something," Paul said. "That is why I wanted to just sit down and talk to you a minute. I don't want the press. That is why we came back here. I don't want anything in the press about this."

"That's right," Eagan said.

Eagan speculated whether it could be misconduct by one of the other jurors.

"It could very well be, but you never know," Paul said. "...Of course, it's all just speculation."

Hadley noted that Brickle and the juror who had been excused a week earlier, Johnestine Young, "seemed to carry the burden of being on the jury probably more heavily than anyone else, you know, just from the trial, watching their facial expressions and things like this."

"A lot of those people in there have never had to make decisions that anywhere approach the decision they are back there making today," Paul said.

Paul told the bailiff to take Brickle away from the rest of the jury, on the pretext that she was going to be examined by a nurse. Then the judge wrote a note to her, asking her to "advise, in writing, the nature of the subject matter you wish to discuss."