Tommy Zeigler - Research Paper Example

? Tommy Zeigler The case of Tommy Zeigler is an intricate one; he was convicted of perpetrating four murders: Perry and Virginia Edwards (his in-laws), his wife Eunice and a client named Charlie Mays) in a shoot-out that occurred at his furniture and appliance store. The prosecutors in the case maintained that the suspect allured his wife (Eunice) to his store determined to murder her, and that the rest of his victims were merely circumstantial given that they got in the way. After that, he shot himself in the stomach to make it appear as if they were robbery victims. Ziegler, on the other hand, disputes these accounts. In fact, in his 35 years on Florida’s death row, Tommy still alleges that he is innocent. This emanates from the apparent “unresolved mysteries” in the case based on the evidence. Tommy Zeigler Background Based on the events that took place on the evening of Christmas Eve, Tommy Zeigler was convicted for the four murders and put on death row. However, he considers that the chief witness misrepresented him, on the stand, to implicate him and that he was additionally pressurized by law enforcement officers in a bid to conclude the case (Newton, 2008). All sides across the divide concur that Zeigler called the municipal council at 9.20 that night to inform him of the attack. At around 9.18 p.m, he contacted and appealed to converse with Don Ficke notifying him of the robbery had transpired at his store and shot, was seriously wounded, and needed urgent medical help (Stacy, 2012). Detective Donald Frye wasted no time in analyzing the crime scene. There was a mixture of contradictory evidence manifested by pools of blood in varied places in the scene, bloody footprints, several disposed-off guns and a series of injuries at distinct locations for each body (Ames, 2007). It was apparent to the detective that the spray outlines at the scene implied two distinct lettings of blood, with Charlie May's grave gunshot wounds indicating to have been carried out in a period of 15 minutes subsequent to the earlier violent incident. Based on a track of blood directing flowing from the telephone Zeigler had employed to call for help to the chair in which he sat when help arrived, Frye also concluded that Zeigler ought to be considered a prime suspect. Frye considered that Tommy shot himself in the abdomen subsequent to calling Don (Anderson, 2013). Frye established a solitary responsible to explicate the circumstantial evidence and speedily set out to “prove” his theory (Ames, 2007). As a result, experts assert that it was neither handled accurately nor comprehensively processed (Stacy, 2012). Donald Frye’s Account Frye based his assertion of the night’s events entirely on the combined testimonies of the two men. Frye theorized that Zeigler had pre-meditated to murder Eunice for financial gain (she had $500,000 life insurance policy that he had taken out on his wife a few months before and that her staged murder coincidentally demanded the deaths of Perry and Virginia Edwards. Frye believed he murdered Mays and attempted to massacre Thomas and Williams to link them to the robbery (Stacy, 2012). He had also requested Edward Williams to help him deliver some Christmas presents that night. Williams’ testimony read that Zeigler had arranged to meet him at 7.30 p.m at his home. Frye believed that, in the period between 7.00 and 7.24, Zeigler first murdered his wife, then Perry and Virginia Edwards. According to Felton Thomas, when he and Mays arrived to collect the television, Zeigler approached him and proposed that they pursue a drive together (Anderson, 2013). The three went for a ride to an orange grove in which the suspect presented three guns to Thomas and Mays requesting them to try them out. This was considered as a delicately veiled ploy to acquire their fingerprints on the murder weapons. Nevertheless, when the weapons were found, they had been wiped clean. Williams claimed that he saw Zeigler arrive accompanied by two men (Felton Thomas and Charlie Mays) arrive at the garage and collect a box of ammunition (Stacy, 2012). Williams also testifies that the accused approached him and requested him to wait for several minutes. Frye supposed that Zeigler murdered Mays at that point. He also assumed that the accused then returned to his house, to meet Williams where he wiped down the car and drove with Williams to the store (Stacy, 2012). Once inside the dark store, Zeigler approached him with a gun in his hand. Williams testified that he was terrified and that he pointed a gun and pulled the trigger three times prior to realizing that the gun was empty. He also claimed that the accused gave him the gun in an attempt to alleviate his fright before he managed to flee and seek refuge in a restaurant opposite the store. Williams did later surrender the gun, which he claimed to have been handed to him by Zeigler. The handed gun was identified as the weapon employed to murder Perry and Virginia Edwards (Ames, 2007). Tommy Zeigler’s Account The explanation given by the accused that night still remains the same today. Tommy Zeigler alleged that he had made an appointment to meet Williams at 7.00 p.m. at his (the accused) house. Zeigler entered the darkened store prior to Williams and attempted to turn on the lights, which was later determined that a breaker was shut off. The suspect was unaware that his wife, Eunice, and his in-laws, who had went to the store to collect a recliner intended to be a Christmas gift, had by then been massacred in varied locations within the store. Ziegler was struck over the head and beaten by two men, a fact corroborated by the physician’s testimony citing the lump on the back of his head (Stacy, 2012). Ziegler testified that he may have used the gun in self defense using his .22 Gun before his gun jammed; then, he threw the gun away, and salvaged a .357 Colt pistol kept within a drawer nearby. The accused maintained that he may have fired several shots with the gun, prior to being shot and clobbered to the floor unconscious. On regaining consciousness, he found that his assailants had left, and he eventually found the phone and contacted Don Ficke at the party. Ziegler believes that Mays, who at the time had cash stuffed within his pocket, remained one of the assailants and was killed in the gunfight (Stacy, 2012). Discussion At 30, Zeigler was a successful businessman (possessed more than a million dollars in assets based on his family’s furniture store) and was a dominant figure in his small town of Winter Garden as well as, by all appearances, a dedicated husband and son. He had never been arrested before, but all this took a tragic turn on Christmas Eve, when tragedy stuck and altered his life (Katz, 2010). He and others believe that he was attacked and framed in a law-enforcement conspiracy since he was on the verge of uncovering corruption entailing high-ranked local officials, especially with regard to loan sharking operations undermining migrant workers. He was found guilty on July 2 1976 accompanied by allegations of juror misconduct. One of the jurors, now deceased, asserted that in media interviews subsequent to the trial that she believed that he was innocent and that she was harassed and forced into voting guilty by other jurors who pursued to end in time for the upcoming nation’s Bicentennial celebration (Anderson, 2013). The jury advocated committing him to life sentence, but the judge, in an exceptionally novel move, in Florida, overruled that decision and sentenced him to death (Von, 2006). Over time, he has picked up a rising wave of support with one of his initial advocates being David Burgin hired as the Orlando Sentinel editor in 1981. In 2003, Burgin wrote a letter to then Governor Jeb Bush attracting attention to Zeigler’s case and publicly expressing regret for his newspaper’s failure to probe the prosecutors’ version of narrated events and his partisanship against Zeigler right from the beginning. Burgin asserted “it is a collection of falsehoods and false assumptions (Swanson, Chemelin, Territo & Taylor, 2011).” Another advocate Lynn-Marie Carty, an investigator based at St. Petersburg was moved by Ziegler’s case last year to get involved. Lynn-Marie indicated that she found a witness whose existence she claims, was acknowledged then rebuffed by prosecutors at the time, besides there was a recorded case of attempted robbery nearby on the evening of December 24, 1975 (Newton, 2009). His lawyers claimed that prosecutors were aware of this information, but withheld this critical information at trial (Ames, 2007). A daughter of the former police chief of the neighboring town of Oakland now asserts that she deems him as innocent, and alluding to have been framed by her father and others. Leigh McEachern, a former Orange County chief deputy, asserted that there was evidence the sheriff’s office failed to process simultaneously as they considered him as guilty (Stacy, 2012). McEachern stipulated that sufficient evidence had surfaced to inform his belief that Zeigler to be innocent. According to a 1989 statement delivered by the chief deputy for Orange County, Leigh MacEachern, and the bulk of evidence was not processed since the OCSO felt that they knew he was guilty (Anderson, 2013). Based on fresh evidence that remain unearthed overtime, MacEachern now believes that he is innocent. It is probably reasonable to presume that this is a central factor to this unusual neglect that informs his stand, especially the two witnesses who came forward several hours after the murders (Von, 2006). Conclusion In conclusion, it is apparent that Frye had an assumed sequence of the night’s events. It is essential to note that the stipulated times are not as initially stated by both witnesses and Frye adjusted them to match the two accounts. For instance, the entire plan would have collapsed if Mays had arrived six minutes earlier. It is complex to believe that such a crime, which Frye later declared to have been plotted for many months before, would be perpetrated so haphazardly. This makes it hard to for the majority of people to consider that he was responsible for the bloody and puzzling scene at the Furniture store on December 24, 1975 (Anderson, 2013). As a result, his attorneys are presently requesting the judge to grant him a new trial grounded in a number of claims, including that prosecutors employed false and misleading testimony and concealed key evidence and that fresh evidence might possibly produce his acquittal (Anderson, 2013). Newly unearthed evidence shows that the State covered up material information that came from the defense in this case; this was grounded in circumstantial evidence and involved an initially deadlocked jury. The case against Zeigler can be considered as contrived and that the subject was framed. Despite the unsolved mysteries, it is almost certain that chief witness lied, on the stand, to incriminate him (Anderson, 2013). Given that there was attempted robbery at a gas station on the night of December 24, 1975 across the street from the furniture store, the happenings of the December 24, 1975 at W. T. Zeigler Furniture store remained a case of violent robbery. There is a possibility that, Charlie Mays, who at the time was found to have stuffed cash from the store in his pocket, could be one of the assailants, and a key suspect for the murders (Anderson, 2013). References Ames, P. (2007). Tommy Zeigler. Retrieved from: http://forum1.aimoo.com/the_kite/Specific-Death-Penalty-Cases/Thomas-Zeigler-1-214136.html Anderson, G. (2013). The Case of Florida Death row Inmate William Thomas Zeigler, JR. Retrieved From: http://www.justicedenied.org/zeigler.htm Katz, H. (2010). Cold cases: Famous unsolved mysteries, crimes, and disappearances in America. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood. Newton, M. (2008). The encyclopedia of crime scene investigation. New York, NY: Checkmark Books. Newton, M. (2009). The encyclopedia of unsolved crimes. New York: Facts on File. Swanson, C., Chemelin, N., Territo, L. & Taylor, R. (2011). Criminal Investigation 11th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Stacy, M. (2012). Tommy Zeigler Murder Case: Advocates Keep Swinging For Death Row Inmate's Innocence. Retrieved From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/22/tommy-zeigler-murder-case_n_1443816.html Von, D. D. (2006). Among the lowest of the dead: The culture of capital punishment. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press. Read More