Florida Trial Court Conditionally Approves DNA Testing for Tommy Ziegler in 46-Year-Old Death Penalty Case

In what the Tampa Bay Times described as ​“an epic turn­around” in a 46-year-old cap­i­tal case, a Florida tri­al judge is poised to order DNA test­ing of evi­dence death-row pris­on­er Tommy Zeigler has long assert­ed will prove him inno­cent of the quadru­ple mur­der for which he was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1975.

On October 27, 2022, Circuit Court Judge Patricia L. Strowbridge indi­cat­ed she was like­ly to sign an order direct­ing the pro­duc­tion of phys­i­cal evi­dence, includ­ing guns, fin­ger­nail clip­pings from the vic­tims, and clothes worn both by Ziegler and the mur­der vic­tims, for DNA test­ing agreed upon by lawyers for Ziegler and Orange/​Osceola County State Attorney Monique H. Worrell. Judge Strowbridge direct­ed the lawyers to rewrite and resub­mit the pro­posed order to include pro­ce­dur­al safe­guards relat­ing to the chain of cus­tody of the evi­dence, includ­ing infor­ma­tion relat­ed to the trans­porta­tion and stor­age of the evi­dence and who would be present for the testing. 

Strowbridge said that her deci­sion had been influ­enced by a July 2022 Florida Supreme Court deci­sion that sum­mar­i­ly reject­ed Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody’s motion to block DNA test­ing autho­rized in a court-approved agree­ment between Worrell and lawyers for Henry Sireci, who also has been on Florida’s death row for 46 years. Despite the Florida Supreme Court rul­ing, Moody’s office refused to rule out appeal­ing Strowbridge’s order. In a writ­ten state­ment to the Tampa Bay Times, spokesper­son Kylie Mason said that the attor­ney gen­er­al’s office would ​“ensure pros­e­cu­tors and defense coun­sel do not make side agree­ments in con­tra­dic­tion with exist­ing rules and statutes,” and that state pros­e­cu­tors would decide next steps when the order for Zeigler is signed.

Zeigler first request­ed DNA test­ing 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 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. Worrell wrote at the time, ​“Can the state of Florida moral­ly jus­ti­fy a decline to sup­port addi­tion­al test­ing? Absolutely not.” Ayala denied the request, explain­ing that DNA evi­dence alone would not exon­er­ate Zeigler since there was eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, as well.

Both Moody and Ayala have inter­pret­ed a 2001 DNA test­ing law in Florida as per­mit­ting DNA test­ing only in cas­es in which it would clear­ly exon­er­ate a pris­on­er, rather than requir­ing it in those cas­es with­out affect­ing a prosecutor’s dis­cre­tion to agree to test­ing in any case. One author of the DNA statute told the Tampa Bay Times that the law was designed to remove doubts as to guilt and that the pris­on­ers should be giv­en lib­er­al access to DNA test­ing. Despite the leg­isla­tive intent to broad­en access to DNA test­ing, an inves­ti­ga­tion by Tampa Bay Times reporter Leonora LaPeter Anton found that pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al and judi­cial rul­ings have rou­tine­ly denied access to DNA test­ing. Florida courts have refused death-row pris­on­ers access to DNA test­ing sev­en­ty times, deny­ing 19 men – eight of whom have been exe­cut­ed – any test­ing at all and pre­vent­ing nine oth­ers from obtain­ing test­ing of addi­tion­al evi­dence or more advanced DNA test­ing after ini­tial tests were inconclusive.

The Florida Supreme Court cleared the way in July 2022 for Henry Sireci to obtain DNA test­ing of numer­ous items of phys­i­cal evi­dence that he alleged will prove his inno­cence in a dif­fer­ent 46-year-old mur­der. Sireci was sen­tenced to death for the stab­bing mur­der of an Orlando used car lot own­er in a motel room based on junk sci­ence tes­ti­mo­ny that a hair found on the victim’s sock was ​“micro­scop­i­cal­ly iden­ti­cal” to Sireci’s hair.

In agree­ing to DNA test­ing in Sireci’s case, 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.”

In August 2020, DNA test­ing exon­er­at­ed Robert DuBoise who had been sen­tenced to death in Florida in 1983 for a rape and mur­der he did not com­mit. He had been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed based on junk-sci­ence bite-mark evi­dence and false tes­ti­mo­ny from a prison informant.