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I first met Tommy eight years ago through an email acquaintance who told me about him and even said he could arrange for me to meet him. Yeah right!! I was in New Zealand far across the ocean, and you simply don't fly halfway round the world just to interview a prisoner in Florida. There was no way an unknown writer from an obscure little country like New Zealand could possibly help the cause of an American man on Death Row! So I put the whole thing in the "too-hard" basket. As it happened, however, I was scheduled to fly to eastern Canada for a conference that July. This made me wonder whether I might be able to do a detour and swing by Florida on my way up to Canada. Reorganising the flights was one thing. But working through the Florida Department of Corrections bureaucracy was quite another. Normally people just cannot visit Death Row. I would have to get permission in writing, and after much to-ing and fro-ing, I eventually I got an email from someone in the Public Affairs Office in Tallahassee who granted me a one-hour non-contact visit with Tommy Zeigler on Thursday 28 June, 2001, at 1pm. The security was colossal. I was tightly clutching the email from the Tallahassee official, which was just as well because the staff at Death Row had no record of my appointment and would have denied me admission. But having got this far, there was no way I was going to be turned back. After a flurry of phone calls by the staff, I was fingerprinted, had my hand stamped and my drivers licence confiscated, and my camera was taken away from me until I could begin the interview. This visit was something only God could have brought about. I was the first New Zealand journalist ever to have visited Death Row. I still believe it was one of God's miracles... And I got to meet Tommy! With heavy chains around his feet he shuffled into an interview cubicle on the other side of a thick glass partition. He was wearing the bright orange boiler suit that all prisoners are issued with. It must have been stifling hot, as Death Row is not air conditioned. "Very glad to see you, Ms Belding," he said, with his impeccable Southern manners. I felt humbled. He was not bitter, and we talked for over an hour, through a perforated metal disk set in the thick glass. Eventually a guard signalled time was up. Tommy writes wonderful letters to us - and to other friends here in NZ who have taken up Tommy's case. He even remembers birthdays! He is such a remarkable man and I am so grateful to know him.
I love the idea of our
joining a world-wide circle of prayer for a new trial! Absolutely!
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