Forty-four

A few hours after he was sentenced, Duval County deputies delivered Zeigler to the Florida State Prison, in a rural area of north-central Florida. The town of Raiford is the closest community, but the prison's mailing address is a post office box in the town of Starke, about 12 miles distant. Inmates and staff usually refer to the prison as "FSP."

Zeigler became the seventy-ninth and newest prisoner on Death Row, which at FSP is the name given to any wing or floor where prisoners under a death sentence are segregated. Through executions, reduced sentences, or (rarely) successful appeals, he gradually moved up in seniority. By the summer of 1992, he was a prison old-timer, tenth in a Death Row population of more than 150.

Death Row inmates are housed singly in six-foot-by-nine-foot cells, and are permitted two hours of yard recreation per week. They send and receive letters, and may see visitors, but are allowed to use a telephone only under extraordinary circumstances; they are usually allowed to call their attorneys when they have been served a death warrant.

Death Row residence—as long as it lasts—is considered preferable to confinement elsewhere in the prison. The general population at FSP consists of the state's most violent and incorrigible criminals. While some Death Row inmates have a career of general brutality, many receive the ultimate penalty because of a single act of violence. Beatings and stabbings, though hardly unusual, are less common on the Row than in the general population. By the standards of a maximum-security prison, Death Row is a high-class neighborhood.

 FSP's Death Row inmates are allowed to pass time with water color painting and crocheting, both of which Zeigler began to pursue singlemindedly. He sends hand-painted cards at Christmas and for birthdays. His mother supplies him yarn, with which he crochets afghans and sweaters and comforters as gifts for his friends and supporters. At one point his output of these creations was so prodigious that prison authorities suspected him of pursuing a cottage industry for profit.

In sixteen years he has not been involved in a violent incident; his two disciplinary infractions have been for possession of a small tool for repairing his eyeglasses and an electrical device with which prisoners heat cups of water for instant coffee.