The Florida Supreme Court has upheld a death sentence for Joseph Zieler, convicted of murdering an 11-year-old girl and her babysitter in 1990. The court denied Zielher's appeal, stating that the death penalty is one of the first under a new state law that requires only an 8-4 vote in favor of execution. Ziezer was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in 2000 and was jailed on an unrelated assault charge in 2016 when his DNA was matched to the cold-case murders. The victims were found in a Cape Coral apartment in 1990 and were sexually assaulted.