47 Years After His Death Sentence, Florida Court Orders DNA Testing for Tommy Zeigler

Nearly 47 years after being con­vict­ed of a quadru­ple mur­der, Florida death-row pris­on­er Tommy Zeigler has final­ly been per­mit­ted to inde­pen­dent­ly con­duct new DNA test­ing on evi­dence he claims will prove his innocence. 

Circuit Court Judge Patricia L. Strowbridge approved Zeigler’s request for DNA test­ing in October 2022. As soon as her rul­ing was final­ized in December, more than 100 pieces of pre­vi­ous­ly untest­ed evi­dence were shipped to a California lab to be test­ed at Zeigler’s own expense. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody sub­mit­ted an emer­gency appeal to the Florida Supreme Court on January 5, 2023 to stop the test­ing and return the evi­dence. The court reject­ed Moody’s appeal with­out expla­na­tion the same day.

In response, Zeigler’s attor­ney, Terry Hadly wrote in an email to the Tampa Bay Times that ​“This means that we can pro­ceed expe­di­tious­ly with the test­ing. Conceivably, the AG’s office could con­tin­ue to pur­sue the appeal, but the rul­ing is a clear sig­nal that they are not like­ly to succeed.”

Moody’s actions are part of a pat­tern of fight­ing DNA test­ing agree­ments made by reform pros­e­cu­tor Monique H. Worrell. In July 2022, the Florida Supreme Court sim­i­lar­ly reject­ed Moody’s motion to block DNA test­ing autho­rized in a court-approved agree­ment between Worrell and Henry Sireci, who has been on death-row for 46 years. Despite the court’s deci­sion in Sireci’s case, which Strowbridge cit­ed in her deci­sion regard­ing Zeigler, Moody’s office still attempt­ed to fight the agree­ment in Zeigler’s case.

This is the cul­mi­na­tion of a long legal process for Zeigler, who made his first DNA test­ing request in 1994. In 2001, DNA test­ing on por­tions of Zeigler’s cloth­ing found no trace of the vic­tims’ blood. Following those results, Zeigler’s lawyers request­ed access to more evi­dence and per­mis­sion to con­duct fur­ther tests at their own cost in 2003, but their requests were denied. Worrell had pre­vi­ous­ly reviewed Zeigler’s case as part of the new Conviction Integrity Unit cre­at­ed by then-State Attorney Aramis Ayala and urged Ayala to con­sent to test­ing. Ayala denied the request, rely­ing on the same erro­neous inter­pre­ta­tion of a 2001 DNA test­ing law in Florida as Moody. Like Sireci, Zeigler now has a chance to prove his inno­cence through DNA test­ing of evi­dence includ­ing nev­er-before-test­ed guns, fin­ger­nail clip­pings, and clothes of the vic­tims and the accused.