SUB-HEADING: "An Orlando judge has denied the death row inmate’s appeal to set aside his conviction."
PHOTO CAPTION: "Tommy Zeigler listens to evidence presented to Circuit Court Judge Leticia Marques in December. Zeigler has been on Florida's death row since July 1976."
GIST: "Tommy Zeigler’s long, meandering fight to prove his innocence is likely over.
A Florida circuit judge has declined to overturn Zeigler’s 50-year-old murder conviction after a yearslong push to examine DNA evidence Zeigler insisted would prove he did not kill his family.
His lawyers say they will appeal the decision to the Florida Supreme Court.
“We’re crushingly disappointed,” said Zeigler’s longtime lawyer, Terry Hadley. “We thought the evidence was compelling and that it established reasonable doubt."
In her decision, issued late Friday, Orlando Circuit Judge Leticia Marques wrote that she would not be ordering a new trial for Zeigler. She said he had not proved that new evidence would result in an acquittal, and that’s the standard required by Florida law.
Her ruling came three months after a five-day hearing at a downtown Orlando courthouse.
Zeigler’s lawyers had argued that DNA evidence proved he did not kill his wife, Eunice Zeigler, or his in-laws, Perry and Virginia Edwards, at his family’s furniture store in Winter Garden on Christmas Eve 1975. A fourth person, Charlie Mays, an orange grove crew chief, also was found dead in the store, and Zeigler was shot in the stomach, though prosecutors argued he did that himself to throw police off.
RELATED: Read or listen to the Tampa Bay Times series about the Zeigler case
In her 44-page ruling, Marques said the new evidence had actually hurt Zeigler’s case. It showed he had shot, beaten and killed Mays, something his own DNA expert acknowledged at the December hearing, she observed. But at his 1976 trial, she said, Zeigler had denied killing Mays.
“At any retrial, defendant’s credibility would be subject to substantial and weighty attack,” she wrote. “Not only does the trial evidence refute defendant’s testimony, but the newly discovered evidence further impeaches him.”
Zeigler’s lawyers had argued that Mays was the more likely killer. They pointed to the lack of blood from his family members on Zeigler’s clothes.
But the judge wrote that the same could be said for Mays, who only had Perry Edwards’ blood on his lower pants. That blood could have come when Mays was fighting with Zeigler, she said.
“Following the logic of defendant’s own argument, Charlie Mays did not kill Perry, Virginia or Eunice,” Marques wrote. If that’s true, she said, then Zeigler beating Mays to death would not have been in self-defense.
Zeigler’s shoes did have two specks of blood from his father-in-law. But the Florida Supreme Court ruled long ago that the absence of Perry Edwards’ blood and the presence of Mays’ blood on Zeigler’s clothing did not exonerate Zeigler.
Zeigler, now 80, has maintained his innocence since the crime. He told police that he confronted two men in the store that night and thought he was being robbed.
Marques noted that Zeigler claimed to have been beaten throughout the store and thrown against furniture and walls. But, she said, the only injuries he suffered were the gunshot wound, a single bruise on the back of his head and two small abrasions.
“These injuries fall far from supporting that defendant was subject to a violent and lengthy battle with two unknown individuals,” the judge wrote.
Marques also mentioned a claim brought up in a 1989 resentencing, in which Zeigler talked to another death row inmate about confessing to the murders. The plan fell through, and Zeigler later said he did that out of desperation.
The judge also addressed the problems with Zeigler’s initial trial. “Over the years, defendant has raised issues of judicial bias, juror misconduct, and state misconduct,” Marques wrote. She said that might contribute to the public’s perception of the judicial system. But those issues have been raised and addressed in previous hearings, she said, so she is procedurally barred from considering them.
The DNA results released in January 2025 raised the possibility of another person at the scene, but no one has been linked to the case. Regardless, Marques said, that doesn’t mean that another person wasn’t part of Zeigler’s plan. His motive, according to the state, was $500,000 in life insurance on his wife.
Prosecutors had opposed Zeigler’s efforts to test his evidence for DNA at least six times over more than two decades. But after Ninth Judicial Circuit State Attorney Monique Worrell was elected in 2022, she agreed to grant the testing. She had reviewed his case as former head of the office’s conviction integrity unit and had argued at the time that the state had a “moral obligation” to grant the testing.
Later, she said she was not swayed by the DNA results.
At the hearing in December, attorneys working for Attorney General James Uthmeier challenged the scientific analysis. They argued that the DNA results were not conclusive enough to clear Zeigler. Now, the judge has agreed."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.tampabay.com/news/2026/03/06/after-50-years-final-verdict-tommy-zeigler/PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
