My attention was first arrested by the case of Tommy Zeigler in 1986. I’d read an article about the case, in which Zeigler was convicted for a 1975 murder where Zeigler’s wife, in-laws and a customer were killed on Christmas Eve that year at his family’s Winter Garden furniture store. The article posited several questions that began to haunt me, including — why was a trial attorney still working at his own expense to free a client who had received the death penalty 10 years before?

The following year I read an exhaustive article in the Atlanta Constitution dealing largely with new evidence in the case. I formed new questions that messed with my conservative, pro-death penalty mindset.

I interviewed a couple who’d been close to Zeigler and his wife. They firmly believed in Zeigler’s innoc

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