with Robert Eagan, Don Frye, and a third party whom McEachern could not recall.

McEachern had been the chief deputy to Sheriff Mel Colman in 1976.  He made this charge from a prison camp in northern Florida, where he was serving a sentence after being convicted of embezzling from his department's investigative funds.

According to McEachern, the ex parte meeting3  took place in a conference room of the offices of the state attorney.  He said that Eagan outlined for Paul the major points in the state's case, including the expected testimony of Professor MacDonell.

McEachern claimed that as the meeting broke up, Paul told Eagan: "Bob, get me one first-degree [conviction] and I'll fry the son of a bitch."  McEachern said that he later mentioned the meeting to Colman, but did nothing else.  He said that he decided to come forward after the Florida supreme court affirmed Zeigler's conviction and sentence.

Such a conference would have been completely improper.  Eagan, Frye, and Paul all denied that the meeting had taken place; Zeigler was awarded a hearing on the matter.  That occurred in August 1984; Duane examined Frye, Judge Paul, Eagan, and the former beverage agent Herbert Baker, attempting to establish a judicial conspiracy against Zeigler based on ill will from the Andrew James matter.  Circuit Judge James Stroker, who heard the testimony, ruled that the charge was without substance, although he admitted that he could find no obvious motive for McEachern to have lied.

LATE DISCOVERY

In 1987, after Florida passed its Public Records Act, Zeigler's appellate attorneys were granted access to the state attorney's files of the case.  Leslie Gift, who had cataloged the original discovery evidence in 1976, went along to examine the documents in the file.

Gift found at least three potentially relevant items that prosecutors had not turned over to the defense.

One was a thirteen-page report by Robert Thompson, in which he described the blood around Zeigler's wound as being "dry."  In his sworn statement Thompson has said it was "dry and damp," a crucial difference.  The significance was that the state claimed that Zeigler had shot himself after calling the Van Deventer home, when he was sure that help was on the way.  But Thompson arrived on the scene within a minute after that call; the blood around the wound that fresh could not possibly be dry.

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3 That is, a meeting away from the courtroom.