Maurice Mitchell Paul (May 16, 1932 – December 29, 2016) was an American lawyer and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida.
Education and early career
Judge Paul was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1932. He grew up in a family of modest means at the height of the Great Depression and World War II. Starting when he was a young boy, he worked a variety of jobs to help his family. He delivered groceries by bicycle, worked summers at a pig farm in Georgia, picked fruit, delivered papers and gathered cans and bottles to make ends meet. Eventually, he made his way to the University of Florida where he received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree from the University of Florida in 1954.
While at the University of Florida, he participated in Reserve Officers' Training Corps, and, upon graduation, he served in the United States Air Force from 1954 to 1957, training in Nevada and California and eventually piloting bombers in the Strategic Air Command's atomic bomb fleet based in Riverside, California.
During his time in the Air Force, he married Eleanor James Paul, his inseparable companion until her death in June 2012. She was an emergency room nurse until 1963, when their son, James Jeffrey Paul, was born. James Jeffrey Paul was an author living in Orlando, Florida, and New York City.
After leaving the Air Force, Paul was admitted to the University of Florida College of Law, receiving his Bachelor of Laws, with honors and Order of the Coif in 1960. Paul then served as an interim instructor at the University of Florida College of Law in 1960.
Private legal practice
In 1961, Judge Paul moved to Orlando and spent a dozen years in private practice, working at Sanders, McEwan as an associate until becoming a partner at Akerman, Senterfitt in 1965. After that, he became a name partner in Pitts, Eubanks, Ross & Paul before going out on his own.
Notably, Judge Paul was involved in creating the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the immediate governing jurisdiction for the land of the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando. The district was conceived to have almost total autonomy within its borders, to allow Walt Disney to carry out his plans with more independence. Services such as land use regulation and planning, building codes, surface water control, drainage, waste treatment, utilities, roads, bridges, fire protection, emergency medical services and environmental services were overseen by the district, and the only areas where the district had to submit to the county and state were property taxes and elevator inspections. This was enshrined in the Reedy Creek Improvement Act.
State judicial service
Judge Paul was a circuit judge of the Ninth Judicial Circuit of Florida from 1973 to 1982.
In 1976, Judge Paul presided over the controversial murder trial of William "Tommy" Zeigler, who was accused of a quadruple murder in his furniture store on Christmas Eve, 1975, in Winter Garden, Florida. The jury found Zeigler guilty and recommended life imprisonment, but Paul overruled the jury's recommendation of a life sentence and sentenced Zeigler to death. The Florida Supreme Court, in a detailed 17-page opinion, affirmed the conviction, opining that "[t]he facts supporting the sentence of death are clear, convincing, and are established beyond a reasonable doubt."
Despite this ruling, Zeigler and his supporters have provided a steady stream of arguments calling into question the actions of the judiciary, state prosecutors and police. Zeigler's supporters argue that Judge Paul did not recuse himself even though shortly before the murders, Judge Paul and Zeigler had been character witnesses on opposing sides of another contentious case in which Zeigler's side won. In 1984, the Florida Supreme Court held that Zeigler had procedurally defaulted this claim because he could have raised it by the close of the trial but did not.