Florida Man to Face Execution After Supreme Court Upholds 1990 Double Murder Conviction

The Florida Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty for a North Fort Myers man convicted of r--- and murdering a woman and a child in 1990. Joseph Zieler, 64, is facing capital punishment for the s—-- abuse and killings of 11-year-old Robin Cornell and 32-year-old Lisa Story.

It took investigators 26 years to crack the case, as the advancement in DNA technology led to Zieler’s identification as a suspect in 2016. Finally, in June 2023, he was sentenced to death. On April 17, 2026, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier confirmed that the Capital Appeals Division had secured a death sentence for the convict.

“This depraved criminal managed to sleep at night for decades as he evaded justice for the r--- and murder of a little girl and her babysitter. Due to the tireless work of Assistant Attorney General Christina Pacheco, and with support from the Solicitor General’s Office, we affirmed the ultimate form of punishment, and he will never see the outside of a prison cell again,” Uthmeier said in a statement.

The murders happened in May 1990 when Robin's mother, Jan Cornell, left their Cape Coral apartment to watch a basketball game on TV with her now-husband, Donnie Battista. According to court documents, Lisa had moved in with Jan just a day before, and agreed to babysit Robin in her absence.

Jan planned to return early in the morning as she had to head to work. When she arrived at her apartment shortly after 4 a.m., she was shocked to see Lisa’s body in her bedroom. Jan then ran to the other room, only to find her daughter dead on the floor. Jan called emergency services, and detectives concluded that somebody had barged into the home.

The medical examiner determined that both Robin and Lisa had been s—---- abused and suffocated to death. Law enforcement officers collected DNA samples from the crime scene, which were tested again in 2002 and 2012. However, the samples did not lead to any suspects.

Finally, in 2016, the DNA matched that of Zieler in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Combined DNA Index System. Zieler’s DNA had been collected for investigation into an unrelated case.

As law enforcement agencies began questioning Zieler, he became nervous. He was eventually charged with first-degree murder, s—-- battery with a deadly weapon, and s—-- battery on a child under 12 years of age.

Zieler’s trial began in May 2023. Before the trial, Florida passed a new death penalty law, under which prosecutors no longer needed a unanimous jury to secure a death sentence; instead, a supermajority of eight jurors was sufficient to recommend capital punishment.

In his defense, Zieler claimed that his DNA might have been found at the crime scene because he had been intimate with Jan in her bedroom in 1989. However, Jan denied ever seeing him. Zieler also claimed that he was locked up in a Maryland jail at the time of Robin and Lisa’s murders; however, arrest records contradicted these claims.