GIST: "For the second time this week, Florida’s attorney general asked a judge to block additional DNA testing in an Orange County death penalty case despite the region’s top prosecutor, Monique Worrell, having agreed to it. (First was Tommy Zeigler. HL);
Circuit Judge Wayne Wooten granted DNA testing last month in the case of 72-year-old Henry Sireci, who was convicted of fatally stabbing Orlando used car lot owner Howard Poteet and 7-Eleven clerk John Short within days of each other in 1975.
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As in the Tommy Zeigler case, Moody’s office said it was not contacted or consulted by defense attorneys or Worrell’s office before both agreed to additional DNA testing, despite serving as co-counsel in all post-conviction issues for death penalty cases. In a pair of motions, Moody’s office on Tuesday asked Wooten to block the release of evidence while he reconsiders his order allowing testing.
“The filing first became known last week due to a news report,” Chief Assistant Attorney General Scott A. Browne wrote. “The failure to provide notice is inexcusable because the Attorney General’s Office has been continuously representing the State in post-conviction proceedings in this case for decades.”
Worrell’s office declined to comment. Sireci’s attorneys did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
Previous DNA testing that prosecutors agreed to in 2010 has “failed to exonerate Sireci,” Browne wrote.
Worrell’s office agreed to additional testing in Sireci’s case “in light of subsequent advances in DNA and latent print technology,” according to a May 10 court order.
The items that were supposed to be tested included hair found on Poteet’s sock. During Sireci’s trial, a crime laboratory analyst who did a microscopic analysis of the hair said “in all probability” it belonged to Sireci — but that science has since been discredited, according to the Innocence Network.
The evidence was supposed to be tested at a California forensic lab and paid for by the Innocence Project, but Moody’s office argued it should be tested by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement unless Sireci’s attorneys could show why another lab should be used.
A spokesperson for the Innocence Project declined to comment.
The Attorney General’s Office argued Sireci’s request for additional testing does not comply with Florida’s procedural rules. Browne pointed to a Florida Supreme Court ruling, which found it was unlikely a jury would have acquitted Sireci even if prosecutors hadn’t introduced the microscopic hair analysis because seven people testified Sireci confessed to killing Poteet.
“Indeed, even at trial the identity of Sireci as the person who killed Mr. Poteet was not in dispute,” Browne said. “Defense counsel argued the State had not proved first-degree murder but conceded that Sireci was guilty of third-degree murder. Given these facts, Sireci’s successive attempt to obtain additional DNA testing had such a request been properly filed, should have been denied.”
Moody’s office has also sought to block DNA testing of evidence in the case against Zeigler, 75, who has spent more than four decades on death row after being convicted in the killings of his wife, her parents and a customer at the family’s Winter Garden furniture store in 1975."
The entire story can be read at:
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