After Unanimous House Passage, Florida Senate Fails to Enact DNA Reforms

After receiv­ing unan­i­mous sup­port in the Florida House of Representatives, a bill that would have expand­ed access to post­con­vic­tion DNA test­ing failed in the Florida Senate when the leg­isla­tive body adjourned its 2020 leg­isla­tive ses­sion with­out tak­ing up the bill.

Introduced by State Representative Jamie Grant (pic­tured, R – Tampa) on February 5, 2020, CS/​HB 7077 sailed through the House of Representatives with ease, pass­ing the House Appropriations Committee on February 18 by a vote of 27 – 0 and the House Judiciary Committee by a 17 – 0 vote on February 27. It passed the full House by a vote of 114 – 0 on March 10. However, the Senate Judiciary Committee indef­i­nite­ly post­poned con­sid­er­a­tion of the pro­pos­al on March 14, and the bill died in committee. 

Representative Grant said the bill was inspired by the case of death-row pris­on­er Tommy Zeigler, who has main­tained his inno­cence for more than four decades but has been denied access to DNA test­ing that he argues could prove his case. Limited DNA test­ing that has been con­duct­ed in the case showed that the victim’s blood was not present on the clothes Zeigler was wear­ing the night the mur­der occurred. He has unsuc­cess­ful­ly sought addi­tion­al test­ing of fin­ger­nail scrap­ings from the vic­tim and blood from oth­er cloth­ing to fur­ther bol­ster his inno­cence case. In March 2019, Monique Haughton Worrell, the head of the Conviction Integrity Unity cre­at­ed by Orange/​Osceola County State Attorney Aramis Ayala, rec­om­mend­ed that pros­e­cu­tors sup­port Zeigler’s appli­ca­tion for DNA test­ing. However, doc­u­ments obtained in an open records request by the Tampa Bay Times show that, after Worrell left the posi­tion, the unit’s new direc­tor, Amanda Simpaio Bova, believed new test­ing would not ful­ly exon­er­ate Zeigler. Ayala then denied Zeigler’s request. 

Under the leg­is­la­tion pro­posed by Rep. Grant, DNA test­ing could be con­duct­ed even if it was only like­ly to pro­vide addi­tion­al evi­dence, rather than ful­ly exon­er­ate a pris­on­er. ​“I’ll keep work­ing on it until it’s done,” Grant said after the bill died in the Senate. ​“I think this is an exam­ple that some­times the process can be real­ly ugly.” David Michaeli, an attor­ney for Zeigler, was encour­aged by the unan­i­mous sup­port the bill received in the House. ​“How many bills accom­plish that?” he said. ​“It tells us some­thing about the com­mon sense wis­dom of test­ing and the fact that it is a nonpartisan issue.” 

A recent inves­ti­ga­tion by the Tampa Bay Times under­scores the dif­fi­cul­ty death-row pris­on­ers have had in obtain­ing post­con­vic­tion DNA test­ing. The Times found that 38 of the 46 Florida death-row pris­on­ers who sought DNA test­ing were turned down at least once by the courts. Nineteen were denied test­ing alto­geth­er, includ­ing eight who were lat­er exe­cut­ed. Prisoners in oth­er states have also faced chal­lenges in obtain­ing DNA test­ing. Since 2018, three pris­on­ers in Georgia have been exe­cut­ed with­out receiv­ing DNA test­ing that had the poten­tial to exon­er­ate them. The fam­i­lies of Sedley Alley in Tennessee and Ledell Lee in Arkansas are seek­ing posthu­mous DNA test­ing because, despite evi­dence of pos­si­ble inno­cence, both men’s requests were test­ing were denied before they were executed. 

Terry Hadley, one of Tommy Zeigler’s attor­neys, said Zeigler, who is 74, is ​“run­ning out of time” for DNA testing.