Florida Supreme Court Rejects State Attorney General’s Attempt to Block DNA Testing in 46-Year-Old Death Penalty Case

The Florida Supreme Court has reject­ed an attempt by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to pre­vent DNA test­ing and fin­ger­print analy­sis of evi­dence lawyers for Henry Sireci (pic­tured) say could prove him inno­cent of a mur­der that sent him to death row 46 years ago.

State pros­e­cu­tors had sought to vacate two orders entered by the tri­al court on May 10, 2021 giv­ing court approval to sep­a­rate agree­ments between coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors and coun­sel for Sireci and a sec­ond death-row pris­on­er, Tommy Ziegler, to release phys­i­cal evi­dence to a pri­vate lab­o­ra­to­ry for foren­sic test­ing. Moody argued at the time that Orange/​Osceola County State Attorney Monique H. Worrell lacked the author­i­ty to con­sent to post-con­vic­tion DNA test­ing with­out the pri­or approval of the attor­ney general’s office. 

Florida Circuit Court Judge Wayne C. Wooten denied the motion on October 15, 2021, rul­ing in Sireci’s case that Moody’s office lacked stand­ing to con­test the agree­ment. The attor­ney general’s office then appealed that rul­ing, draw­ing crit­i­cism from Innocence Project of Florida exec­u­tive direc­tor Seth Miller that the effort was an ​“unseem­ly … friv­o­lous appeal … to run out the clock” in hopes that the then-76-year-old pris­on­ers would die before test­ing could be done. 

In a unan­i­mous one-page order issued July 1, 2022, the Florida Supreme Court sum­mar­i­ly dis­posed of the attor­ney general’s appeal, writ­ing: ​“We decline to vacate the tri­al court’s order and there­fore affirm” its ruling. 

Unless state pros­e­cu­tors seek recon­sid­er­a­tion of the court’s deci­sion, the rul­ing clears the way for DNA or fin­ger­print test­ing on a dozen cat­e­gories of phys­i­cal evi­dence in Sireci’s case.

Sireci and Zeigler were con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in cas­es tried in 1976 by the same Orange County pros­e­cu­tor before the same cir­cuit court judge. Neither man received a unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion for death; and, in Zeigler’s case, the judge over­rode the jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion of a life sen­tence. The United States Supreme Court struck down Florida’s sen­tenc­ing process in Hurst v. Florida in 2016, hold­ing that it vio­lat­ed a cap­i­tal defendant’s right to a unan­i­mous jury deter­mi­na­tion of all facts nec­es­sary to impose a death sen­tence. However, the Florida Supreme Court then ruled that it would not apply the Hurst rul­ing to cas­es like Sireci’s and Ziegler’s whose death sen­tences had been upheld on appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court decid­ed Ring v. Arizona — a pre­cur­sor to Hurst — in June 2002.

Both men have con­sis­tent­ly main­tained their inno­cence and have long sought DNA test­ing to bol­ster their inno­cence claims. A DPIC review of exon­er­a­tion data has found that cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing statutes that per­mit the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty after a non-unan­i­mous jury vote on sen­tenc­ing cre­ate a height­ened risk that an inno­cent per­son will be sen­tenced to death. 22 of the 24 Florida exon­er­a­tions for which the jury’s sen­tenc­ing vote is known (91.7%) have involved non-unan­i­mous jury votes for death or jury votes for life that were over­rid­den by the trial judge.

Sireci was sen­tenced to death for the stab­bing mur­der of an Orlando used car lot own­er in a motel room. A lab ana­lyst tes­ti­fied for the pros­e­cu­tion, using a since dis­cred­it­ed hair com­par­i­son method, that a hair found on the victim’s sock was ​“micro­scop­i­cal­ly iden­ti­cal” to Sireci’s hair. 

In agree­ing to DNA test­ing, Worrell said, ​“when 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. … I cer­tain­ly don’t want some­one inno­cent to be exe­cut­ed under my watch.”

Nina Morrison, who as Innocence Project Senior Litigation Counsel rep­re­sent­ed Sireci until she was con­firmed as a fed­er­al judge in June 2022, had praised Worrell’s deci­sion to agree to test­ing, say­ing the state attor­ney had ​“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 items approved for release for testing include:

• hair on the vic­tim’s sock, from beneath the vic­tim’s fin­ger­nails, from the victim’s shoul­der and lapel, and in his right hand;
• a bloody den­im jack­et, three tow­els, and hairs from the motel room;
• a bag thought to con­tain a hand­ker­chief and tow­el; and
• vials of mate­r­i­al from the victim’s chest and the side of his face.