Florida Attorney General Fights to Block DNA Testing that Local Prosecutor Approved for Two Prisoners Who Have Been on Death Row More Than Four Decades

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (pic­tured) has filed motions in a Florida tri­al court seek­ing to block DNA test­ing that the local elect­ed State Attorney had agreed to and a judge had grant­ed in two 45-year-old Orange County death penalty cases. 

In plead­ings filed June 1 and June 2, 2021 in the Florida Ninth Circuit Court, Moody object­ed to DNA test­ing for Tommy Zeigler and Henry Sireci, both of whom were sen­tenced to death in 1976 and have long assert­ed their inno­cence. Six of Ziegler’s jurors vot­ed to sen­tence him to life, but his tri­al judge over­ride the jury’s life rec­om­men­da­tion and sen­tenced him to death.

Moody argued that State Attorney Monique H. Worrell lacked author­i­ty to con­sent to the test­ing, that Ziegler’s and Sireci’s requests for test­ing did not meet the require­ments of Florida state post-con­vic­tion law, and that Worrell failed to noti­fy the state attor­ney general’s office before agree­ing to make the evi­dence avail­able for eval­u­a­tion by inde­pen­dent lab­o­ra­to­ries. Both pris­on­ers had been grant­ed lim­it­ed DNA test­ing in the past that nei­ther exon­er­at­ed nor implicated them.

Worrell, who was elect­ed on a plat­form of crim­i­nal jus­tice reform, includ­ing reduced reliance on the death penal­ty, told the Tampa Bay Times that her deci­sion to agree to addi­tion­al test­ing ​“is just about the fact that there have been advance­ments in DNA sci­ence that have pro­duced exon­er­a­tions.” In August 2020, DNA evi­dence exon­er­at­ed Robert DuBoise, 37 years after his tri­al judge over­rode a jury rec­om­men­da­tion for life and sen­tenced DuBoise to death. “[W]hen you have some­one who is charged with mur­der, par­tic­u­lar­ly some­one who has been sen­tenced to death, I don’t think we have the lux­u­ry of ignor­ing advance­ments in sci­ence that may be able to prove their inno­cence,” Worrell said.

Ralph ​“Terry” Hadley, one of the lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Zeigler, ques­tioned Moody’s inter­ven­tion in the case to pre­vent DNA test­ing. ​“The state’s own expert tes­ti­fied that the DNA test­ing we had pro­posed would show if Tommy Zeigler is inno­cent or guilty,” Hadley said. ​“Why are they afraid of the truth? Why are they afraid to give us a chance?”

The court has delayed imple­men­ta­tion of its orders per­mit­ting the test­ing, but has not yet sched­uled a hear­ing on Moody’s motions.

Zeigler and Sireci have repeat­ed­ly attempt­ed to obtain DNA test­ing for near­ly two decades. Both were con­vict­ed based on high­ly questionable evidence. 

On Christmas Eve in 1975, Zeigler was shot and his wife, her par­ents, and a man who served as Zeigler’s handy­man were mur­dered in Zeigler’s fur­ni­ture store in Winter Garden, Florida. Zeigler was charged with the mur­ders. His post-con­vic­tion lawyers have pre­sent­ed evi­dence dis­cred­it­ing some of the key pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es and demon­strat­ing the implau­si­bil­i­ty of the prosecution’s the­o­ry that Zeigler shot him­self through the stom­ach to fake his own vic­tim­iza­tion. In a six-part inves­tiga­tive series in 2018, the Tampa Bay Times described the pri­or DNA evi­dence as incon­clu­sive but said it ​“appeared to sup­port his sto­ry that he was a vic­tim of a rob­bery at his fur­ni­ture store.” Advanced DNA test­ing, his lawyers argue, could pro­vide addi­tion­al evi­dence sup­port­ing his inno­cence claim and show­ing that pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied false­ly against him. 

“It is beyond my abil­i­ty to com­pre­hend why the attor­ney gen­er­al would try to stop test­ing that could poten­tial­ly prove Zeigler inno­cent when the same has been agreed to by the state attorney’s office,” Hadley said. ​“We’re not ask­ing for a free tick­et, just the chance to test at our expense the evi­dence to estab­lish guilt or inno­cence once and for all.”

Sireci’s con­vic­tion rest­ed on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a pros­e­cu­tion foren­sic wit­ness that a piece of hair found at the crime scene ​“in all prob­a­bil­i­ty” came from Sireci. Since the time of tri­al, how­ev­er, micro­scop­ic hair com­par­i­son has been wide­ly dis­cred­it­ed. The land­mark 2009 National Resource Council report, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward ​“found no sci­en­tif­ic sup­port for the use of hair com­par­isons for indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion in the absence of nuclear DNA.” Six years lat­er, in 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation for­mal­ly acknowl­edged that the FBI Laboratory’s micro­scop­ic hair com­par­i­son unit had for decades pro­vid­ed flawed foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny pur­port­ed­ly match­ing crime scene hair evi­dence to the hair of defen­dants charged with those crimes. 

Innocence Project Senior Litigation Counsel Nina Morrison, who rep­re­sents Sireci, told the Tampa Bay Times that the defense team was ​“quite pleased that the state attor­ney has now rec­og­nized that it’s in the inter­ests of jus­tice to do all pos­si­ble DNA test­ing before a man who has been main­tain­ing inno­cence for four-and-a-half decades is exe­cut­ed.” The Innocence Project did not com­ment on Moody’s effort to prevent testing. 

Florida has had more death-row exon­er­a­tions since 1972 than any oth­er state — now up to 30. ​“We there­fore have an oblig­a­tion to ensure that we don’t add to that num­ber in a way that can’t be reversed,” Worrell said. ​“I cer­tain­ly don’t want some­one inno­cent to be exe­cut­ed under my watch.”