Video After The Jump
A man convicted of killing an 11-year-old girl & her babysitter more than three decades ago has been sentenced to death by a judge in southwest Florida. The sentencing came not long after Joseph Zieler elbowed his own attorney in the face in the courtroom.
Last month, 10 out of 12 jurors recommended that Zieler be sentenced to death. The same jury previously found Zieler, 60, guilty of 2 counts of first-degree murder in the 1990 murders of 11-year-old Robin Cornell and 32-year-old Lisa Story.
Before the sentence was officially handed down, Zieler appeared in court with his wrists shackled. He calls over attorney Kevin Shirley, who leaned forward to listen to something he assumed Zieler was going to whisper to him. Instead Zieler flung his elbow up & struck the side of Shirley's head.
Two bailiffs immediately tackled Zieler to the ground & escorted him out of the courtroom.
The outburst & sentencing came after a trial in which Zieler yelled at the jury & made vulgar gestures while he was on the witness stand.
Zieler was jailed on an unrelated assault charge in 2016 when his DNA matched to the cold-case murders of Cornell & Story.
The girl & the woman were found in a Cape Coral apartment in May 1990, officials said. Robin's mother had been out for the night & discovered the suffocated bodies when she returned the next morning. Investigators said both victims were sexually assaulted.
Zieler previously stunned the courtroom when he claimed he had slept with Cornell's mother a few months before the murder.
"I thought the only way my DNA could have got there was from me sleeping with Jan Cornell," he said.
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Source: CBS News
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