Prosecutors withdraw stolen-property charge against Mobile man who spent time on death row

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Prosecutors on Thursday withdraw a charge of receiving stolen property against a man who spent more than a decade on death row.

Then-Mobile County Circuit Judge Sarah Stewart, now the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, ruled in 2013 that William John Ziegler received ineffective legal representation from his original lawyers in the capital murder case. She threw out the conviction, and he later pleaded guilty to murder as part of a deal that allowed him to end his prison term with a sentence of time served.

The case before Mobile County Circuit Judge Vicki Davis on Thursday was a receiving stolen property charge arising from a stolen boat in 2023. Defense attorney Jeff Deen argued that Ziegler, 51, of Mobile could not be convicted of receiving stolen property since he already had been convicted and served time in Mississippi for theft of the boat.

Deen cited a 1980 Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals case.

“Judge Davis kind of questioned the judicial – best word to put it – judicial economy of doing that,” he told FOX10 News. “He’s already done three years in prison. He’s on parole. It was beating a dead horse, and the prosecutor wisely decided to go ahead and dismiss the case.”

Ziegler’s original capital murder conviction stemmed from the stabbing death of Russell Allen Baker Jr. at Peach Place Inn apartments on Leroy Stevens Road in February 2000.

Stewart, who presided over Ziegler’s post-appeal legal challenge, wrote a 218-page order concluding that the criminal justice system failed him at every turn. She found that Ziegler’s lawyers offered only a cursory defense, with one of the attorneys throwing away key evidence that could have allowed them to make a compelling argument that one of his co-defendants used his car to move Baker or his body.

The judge also found that prosecutors and law enforcement investigators failed to turn over key evidence.

The Mobile County criminal charge now has been dismissed, but Ziegler will continue to be under parole supervision for the Mississippi conviction.