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…