State v. Miller
| Decision Date | 05 October 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 114,373,114,373 |
| Citation | 427 P.3d 907 |
| Parties | STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Martin K. MILLER, Appellant. |
| Court | Kansas Supreme Court |
Richard Ney, of Ney, Adams & Miller, of Wichita, argued the cause, and David L. Miller, of the same firm, was with him on the briefs for appellant.
Andrew D. Bauch, assistant district attorney, argued the cause, and Kate Duncan Butler, assistant district attorney, Charles E. Branson, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, were on the brief for appellee.
Martin K. Miller appeals his latest conviction by a Douglas County jury for the premeditated first-degree murder of his wife, Mary Miller. He was first convicted of the murder in 2005, and that jury verdict was affirmed by this court. State v. Miller , 284 Kan. 682, 163 P.3d 267 (2007) ( Miller I ). In 2012, the Court of Appeals granted Miller's motion for postconviction relief and ordered a new trial. Miller v. State , No. 103915, 2012 WL 401601, at *9 (Kan. App. 2012) (unpublished opinion). This court affirmed the Court of Appeals' decision to order a new trial. Miller v. State , 298 Kan. 921, 940, 318 P.3d 155 (2014) ( Miller II ). Upon retrial, the new jury also convicted Miller of premeditated first-degree murder, and, again, he directly appeals to this court. K.S.A. 2017 Supp. 22-3601(b)(3) ().
Miller raises 10 issues in this appeal, albeit we take the liberty of consolidating or separating the issues when we see fit to do so, as well as rearranging the order in which we address them. Ultimately, we affirm Miller's conviction and his hard-25 life sentence.
The morning of July 28, 2004, Miller called police to report that he had found his wife dead in their bedroom. He contended that she died of natural causes, but the State prosecuted Miller on the theory that he had strangled his wife to pursue a "double life" that included an extramarital affair and an obsession with pornography.
In 2005, following a well-publicized trial in Douglas County District Court, a jury convicted Miller of premeditated first-degree murder. Notwithstanding the trial court's erroneous admission of some pornography evidence, this court affirmed the conviction on direct appeal in 2007.
The following year, Miller filed a K.S.A. 60-1507 motion for postconviction relief alleging that both his trial counsel and his appellate counsel had provided unconstitutionally defective representation. The district court denied the motion. But on appeal, the Court of Appeals concluded that Miller's appellate counsel performed below constitutional standards by failing to find and assert a structural error in the burden of proof jury instruction. Miller , 2012 WL 401601, at *8. This court affirmed the reversal of Miller's conviction and remanded for a new trial, holding "that appellate counsel's failure to challenge the written instruction was objectively unreasonable and prejudicial," because "[t]he incorrect jury instruction constituted structural error." Miller II , 298 Kan. at 923, 318 P.3d 155.
Miller's retrial began March 30, 2015. The jury heard testimony from the police officers who had responded to Miller's 911 call. The officers found Mary lying in her bed and determined that she was dead. An officer heard the Millers' 14-year-old daughter, Melodie, relate to her father that she had awakened during the night to hear her mother scream and her father's voice. When Miller denied being in Mary's room, the officers separated Miller, Melodie, and the Millers' 11-year-old son, Matthew, for individual interviewing.
The officers related that Miller told them that he had gone to bed around 11 p.m.; that Mary joined him after he was asleep; and that he got out of bed around 2 a.m. with a severe headache and a pain in his hip. After taking aspirin
, he fell asleep in the living room recliner, until he was awakened by Mary's alarm clock at 6 a.m. He said that he did not attempt to resuscitate her, but instead called the police.
Melodie testified at trial that she had been on her computer until midnight. She heard someone come out of her parents' bedroom, go into Miller's office, and turn on the computer. She assumed it was her father. Melodie said that, during the night, she awoke to hear her mother screaming, multiple times, She also heard her father saying, When Melodie was again awakened by sirens, she went to her parents' room to find her mother on the bed and her father crying. He told her that he did not believe Mary was alive.
Matthew testified at trial that he also woke in the middle of the night and heard his mother "screaming." He said her voice sounded "labored, or like she couldn't get enough breath in." Matthew also heard Miller saying, After the noise stopped, he observed Miller walk down the hall.
Melodie also testified regarding Miller's relationship with Carrie Lester (formerly Parbs), which she deemed to be inappropriate. Lester also testified at trial, relating in detail her four-year sexual affair with Miller. Lester also testified about Laura Miller (formerly Cuthbertson), who subsequently had a romantic relationship with Miller and eventually became Miller's wife.
Unlike his first trial, Miller elected not to testify in his own defense. The State, over Miller's objection, moved on the first day of trial to admit Miller's testimony from the first trial. After giving Miller the opportunity to argue the legal basis upon which his prior testimony was inadmissible at retrial, the trial court permitted a redacted version to be read to the jury.
In his first trial testimony, Miller said that he retired to bed around 11 p.m., but got up around midnight with hip pain. After checking on Melodie and turning off her laptop, he went to the kitchen for his medicine. While waiting for the medication to take effect, he briefly did a search on his computer with the terms, "[s]leep patterns" and "deep sleep patterns." He then fell asleep on the living room recliner until about 3 a.m., when he arose to go to the master bathroom, where he believes he fell asleep on the toilet. Later, he was awakened by Mary making "an outburst of sound." He went to Mary, telling her to calm down and breathe. When her breathing became normal, he returned to the living room to go back to sleep.
Dr. Erik Mitchell, the forensic pathologist who first examined Mary at her home and later performed the autopsy, testified at the retrial. At the home, Dr. Mitchell had observed petechiae
in Mary's eyes and white foam, or edema, coming from her nose. He did not observe any other external injuries. Dr. Mitchell testified that a "[v]ery high percentage of people with strangulation [deaths] have the petechiae," and he explained that edema frequently occurs in asphyxia
deaths. During the autopsy, Dr. Mitchell discovered a flame hemorrhage of the sternohyoid muscle at the level of the voice box and believed that this condition was caused by physical injury or pressure to the area. Dr. Mitchell also discovered some bruising to Mary's scalp as a result of physical trauma that had occurred within a day or two of death.
Dr. Mitchell concluded that Mary had died from asphyxiation
, as a result of compression to her neck applied by another person. He classified her death as a homicide and clarified that the results of the investigation into her death played a role in his ultimate conclusion.
Miller called two experts to offer contrasting, alternate explanations for Mary's death. Dr. Cyril Wecht testified that the lack of any external injuries on Mary or Miller, as well as Mary having an intact hyoid bone and no cyanosis or discoloration of her face, did not support a finding of strangulation. Dr. Wecht believed Mary likely died of a natural cause such as from stress-induced cardiomyopathy
, or difficulty breathing, which usually occurs in postmenopausal women, or from a seizure or anaphylactic shock from the herbal remedies and medications found in the home. The other expert, Dr. Ivan Osorio, opined that Mary died from a prolonged epileptic seizure, explaining that her injuries were consistent with this type of convulsion and that an "epileptic cry," which can be words or sounds, is invariably the first visible and audible manifestation of an epileptic convulsion. Dr. Osorio thought Mary's history of suffering migraines and possible use of ginseng increased her likelihood of having a seizure.
In response, the State presented the rebuttal testimony of its expert, Dr. Kris Sperry. Dr. Sperry disagreed with both of the defense experts' opinions.
The State employed the same "double-life" theory on retrial to explain Miller's motive to kill his wife. The State contended that Miller's public persona was that of a church-going family man who coached the girls' volleyball team, while privately he had been involved in an extramarital sexual relationship with Lester for four years and was active on a number of internet dating sites. The State argued that Miller got rid of his wife to pursue his more passionate life, financed by Mary's $300,000 life insurance policy.
Procedurally, before the retrial, Miller moved for a change of venue, arguing that the public's knowledge of his first trial prejudiced him and prevented a fair trial in Douglas County. Miller also filed a motion to disqualify the Douglas County District Attorney's Office (DA) from prosecuting his case, claiming that a prosecutor's relationship with Miller's son created a conflict of interest and that the DA's Office had come into possession of privileged information. Both motions were denied.
Miller also filed multiple motions in limine, seeking to exclude evidence the State intended to offer to establish Miller's motive. Miller argued, in part, that his willingness to stipulate to the element of motive and intent of the...
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