- The Defense - Page 94

Andrew James’s case went to trial.  Hadley knew that if he was to have a chance of acquittal, he would have to attack the credibility of the beverage agent, a man named Herbert G. Baker.  As Hadley remembered it in 1991, his impeachment of Baker’s testimony forced the prosecution to call unscheduled rebuttal witnesses who would testify to Baker’s integrity.  One of those witnesses was a former attorney for the Beverage Department, who now was a circuit court judge and who had signed the original search warrant in Baker’s investigation of Andrew James.

For a sitting judge to testify as a character witness was virtually unheard-of.  Hadley found himself in a position few trial attorneys ever know, and none would envy: his responsibility to his client was forcing him to cross-examine a judge in whose court he had several active cases.

The judge was Maurice M. Paul, who in less than a year would preside at the murder trial of Tommy Zeigler.

James was found guilty and given probation, but the sentence was not adjudicated; technically,  James was not convicted.  Later Zeigler testified at a Beverage Department hearing that found that the evidence against James was insufficient to merit revocation.

The prosecution of James provoked anger in West Orange’s black communities.  Baker’s house was burned, he became the subject of an inquiry by the NAACP, and he left his job.1  Andrew James kept his license, and he probably had Tommy Zeigler to thank for it.

On Christmas morning, Hadley arrived at Orange Memorial around 11:00.  Zeigler was groggy and somewhat disoriented.  He had not yet been told that Eunice was dead.  Twice he asked for her while Hadley spoke to him; he wanted to know why she hadn’t been in to visit him.

Hadley, as he had been instructed, told Zeigler that he didn’t know where Eunice was.

Zeigler was able to answer questions.  In broken fashion, he told essentially the same story he would tell on the witness stand six months later: that he had last seen his wife when she went to the furniture store with her parents around 7:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, that a few minutes later he had ridden to the store with Edward Williams to pick up some gifts, that he had been hit in the head and

1  In 1984, Baker testified at a hearing that stemmed from one of Zeigler’s appeal issues.  He said he believed that Hadley had put him (Baker) on trial during those proceedings.  “I think I was investigated by about every agency in central Florida over it. . . . [S]omebody brought the NAACP. . . . My house was set on fire once during this time.  My kids were threatened in school.  My wife wound up having to go to a psychologist over it.”  Baker also said he believed that Zeigler had lied during the James trial.