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Medical examiner will get new trial in death of wife
©Associated Press TALLAHASSEE -- An appeals court on Friday ordered a new trial for Dr. William Sybers, a former Bay County medical examiner convicted in 2001 for the murder of his wife a decade earlier. The 1st District Court of Appeal ruled that evidence from a key test indicating Sybers' wife was fatally drugged should not have been admitted at trial because it could not be duplicated. Sybers was a district medical examiner in 1991 when his wife, Kay, 52, died suddenly at their Panama City Beach home. Sybers initially refused to permit an autopsy, relenting only after the body was embalmed. The autopsy failed to disclose a cause of death. Nine years later, a new testing technique turned up succinylcholine, a drug commonly used to relax muscles during surgery, in tissue samples retained from the autopsy. A Pensacola jury convicted Sybers of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. The trial judge allowed the evidence of succinylcholine partly because other courts had allowed introduction of expert evidence concerning its detection in embalmed tissue. Florida evidence rules allow "novel scientific evidence" only when it is "sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance" in the field. Judge Peter D. Webster wrote in the court's opinion, "We conclude that the state has failed to carry its burden of establishing by independent and impartial proof that the scientific principles underlying the testing . . . are generally accepted in the relevant scientific community." "Obviously, we're thrilled," said Amy Adelson, a lawyer for Sybers. She said the appeals court agreed that the conviction was based on "junk science." She noted that the FBI couldn't reproduce the results of the independent laboratory that originally did the test that found the material present. A spokesman for Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist said the state would decide next week whether to appeal the ruling or proceed toward a retrial.
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From the Times state desk
From the state wire
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