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Thread: James Aaron Miller - Arkansas

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    James Aaron Miller - Arkansas




    Facts of the Crime:

    Convicted and sentenced to death in the murder of Bridgette Barr, 28, Sydney Barr, 5, and Garrett Barr, 2. Police said at the time that Barr's two children were visiting their mother for the Christmas holiday season, and normally lived with their father in Muldrow, Okla. Authorities found the bodies December 26, 2006, after police were called by Miller's father, who asked that police check on the family. Autopsy results showed that Bridgette Barr was strangled, Sydney was stabbed in the neck and Garrett was smothered. The autopsy showed the 2-year-old's body was placed for a time in a heated oven but was found by police in a bathtub. A police report said Miller lived with the bodies for about five days before their discovery. Investigators said Miller confessed to killing the mother and daughter but said he didn't remember killing Garrett, though he assumed he must have done it. Police who searched the home found a bottle of window cleaner, allegedly used by Miller to try to clean up blood stains. Officers said there were signs the walls and carpeting had been cleaned as well.

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    FORT SMITH, Ark. (AP) - Testimony is to begin Monday in the trial of a man accused of killing his girlfriend and her two young children during the 2006 Christmas holidays.

    A jury has been selected in the capital murder trial of James Aaron Miller of Fort Smith. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

    Miller is accused of killing Bridgette Barr, 28, Sydney Barr, 5, and Garrett Barr, 2. Police said at the time that Barr's two children were visiting their mother for the Christmas holiday season, and normally lived with their father in Muldrow, Okla.

    Authorities found the bodies Dec. 26, 2006, after police were called by Miller's father, who asked that police check on the family. Autopsy results showed that Bridgette Barr was strangled, Sydney was stabbed in the neck and Garrett was smothered. The autopsy showed the 2-year-old's body was placed for a time in a heated oven but was found by police in a bathtub.

    A police report said Miller lived with the bodies for about five days before their discovery. Investigators said Miller confessed to killing the mother and daughter but said he didn't remember killing Garrett, though he assumed he must have done it.

    Police who searched the home found a bottle of window cleaner, allegedly used by Miller to try to clean up blood stains. Officers said there were signs the walls and carpeting had been cleaned as well.

    Attorneys for Miller claim he was suffering from a mental defect, and didn't understand at the time that his actions were criminal. Circuit Judge James Cox denied a defense request that Miller's confession not be allowed at trial as well as a motion to have the trial moved from Fort Smith. Cox has issued a gag order in the case.

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    FORT SMITH, Ark. -- The Sebastian County murder trial of James Aaron Miller could go to the jury soon.

    Miller is accused of killing his girlfriend and her two small children in 2006 in their Fort Smith apartment.

    Wednesday in court, Miller said for the first time he remembered the murders and said he wants to receive the death penalty.

    Miller refused to look at autopsy pictures and broke down several times as did members of the audience.

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    A jury found James Aaron Miller guilty of three counts of capital murder about 3:30 p.m. Friday afternoon.

    Jury Returns Guilty Verdict In Miller Murder Trial

    The same jury was scheduled to begin deliberating Miller’s sentence at 4 p.m. Friday. The jury could vote to impose a death sentence on Miller.

    Miller was accused of killing Bridgette Barr and her two young children around Christmas 2006.

    Wednesday in court, Miller said for the first time he remembered the murders and said he wants to receive the death penalty.

    Miller refused to look at autopsy pictures and broke down several times as did members of the audience.

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    A Sebastian County Circuit Court jury sentenced James Aaron Miller to death Friday night after convicting him of three counts of capital murder.

    Miller was convicted of the Dec. 22, 2006, strangulation deaths of Miller’s girlfriend Bridgette Barr, 28, and her two children, daughter Sydney, 5, and son Garrett, 2.

    Miller also stabbed Sydney six times in her neck, prosecutors said. He placed Garrett’s body in a hot oven in what prosecutors said was an attempt to cremate him.

    After the killings, Miller “huffed” paint and glue until he ran out of the intoxicants and left on Christmas Day 2006, prosecutors said.

    At trial, the defense said Miller, 32, was borderline mentally retarded and asked the jury to impose life in prison without parole, the only other sentencing option for capital murder.

    But Prosecuting Attorney Gunner DeLay said crimes Miller committed were so awful, horrific and heinous that the only punishment that fits is the death penalty.

    “The verdict was just, and I’m proud of the jury,” Delay said after the verdict, which was delivered about 9 p.m. “They followed the law as instructed.” DeLay told jurors he believed there were several aggravating circumstances that justified Miller receiving the death penalty. Among them were that Miller knowingly caused the death of one or more people in one episode, that the murders were carried out in an especially cruel or depraved manner, and that he knew two of the victims to be younger than 12.

    Miller also had committed a previous felony that involved violence or the risk of death. In 1999, he received a three-year suspended sentence after being convicted in Sebastian County of felony aggravated assault of his then-wife Sherry Miller.

    During the penalty phase of the trial, relatives of Barr and her children read emotion-charged victim-impact statements to the jury. The father of Sydney and Garrett, Ray Barr of Muldrow, Okla., said he fought for a year after divorcing Bridgette Barr to get custody of the children because he knew what type of man Miller was.

    Gaining custody was not enough to protect them from Miller, who killed the children while they visiting Bridgette Barr.

    Ray Barr said when he received a Dec. 26, 2006, telephone call from Fort Smith police, “I went from having it all to losing everything.” The children’s grandmother, Linda McCormick of Roland, Okla., recalled in her statement how excited Sydney and Garrett were about the approach of that Christmas as they helped her decorate her home.

    McCormick said her son, Ray Barr, thinks every day since their death about how frightened Sydney and Garrett must have been as they faced death and that he could not be there to protect them.

    “Sydney and Garrett posed no threat to James Aaron Miller,” McCormick said. “They had no chance to defend themselves.” Ryan Baxter, a brother of Bridgette Barr, said his sister loved laughter and never met a stranger. She also loved being a mother, something she had wanted since she was a little girl.

    “Bridgette was a person who chose to see the good in people, which is how she ended up in this situation,” he said.

    Paris attorney David Rush argued to jurors that executing Miller was not justified because of his diminished mental capacity. Doctors for the defense testified during the trial that Miller is borderline retarded.

    “He’s a child in the body of an adult,” Rush said.

    He recalled testimony that Miller had done poorly in school and that his parents learned at an early age that their son had mental deficits.

    Miller’s adoptive father, Randy Miller of Van Buren, asked the relatives of Barr and her children to consider letting Miller live out his days in prison “as he himself asks why.” Rush appealed to the jury to sentence Miller to life in prison. He said a death sentence would mean years of appeals. There was the possibility that the case could be reversed and the drama of the last five days would have to be replayed.

    “Lock him away and let him deal with his own demons, and maybe he’ll find redemption,” Rush had argued.

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    January 7, 2010

    Court tosses death sentence for man who killed 3

    LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The Arkansas Supreme Court has ordered a new sentencing for a death row inmate convicted of killing his girlfriend and her two young children around the holidays in 2006.

    Justices on Thursday upheld James Aaron Miller's murder conviction but ordered that he be resentenced.

    Miller was convicted of killing Bridgette Barr, 5-year-old Sydney Barr and 2-year-old Garrett Barr while the children visited their mother in Fort Smith for Christmas. The children lived with their father in Oklahoma.

    Justices ruled that two witnesses should not have been allowed to recommend that the jury impose the death penalty during the sentencing phase.

    Justices rejected Miller's argument that the bodies were discovered during a warrantless search of his apartment.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100107/...k_three_dead_1

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    Ark. Supreme Court denies petition in murder case

    FORT SMITH, Ark. — The Arkansas Supreme Court has denied a petition by the Attorney General to clarify its ruling granting a new sentencing hearing for a man convicted of killing three people in 2006.

    The court released its decision Friday in the case of James Miller, who was found guilty in deaths of Bridgette Barr, 5-year-old Sydney Barr and 2-year-old Garrett Barr in Fort Smith. The children were visiting their mother from Oklahoma.

    The court upheld Miller’s murder convictions but said family members shouldn’t have been allowed to recommend that he get the death penalty when they testified during his original sentencing

    http://www.hcnonline.com/articles/20...brfs021310.txt


    PER CURIAM ORDERS

    REHEARING DENIED: Petition for rehearing was denied today in the following case.
    CR08-1297. James Aaron Miller v. State of Arkansas, from Sebastian Circuit, Fort Smith District.

    http://courts.arkansas.gov/court_opi...2/20100212.htm

  8. #8
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    Inmate Personal Information
    DOB: 01/18/1976
    Race: White
    Gender: Male


    Crime and Trial Information
    * County of conviction: Sebastian
    * Number of counts: Three
    * Race of Victims: All White
    * Gender of Victims: 2 Female/1 Male
    * Date of crime: Dec. 22‐26, 2006
    * Date of Sentencing: 04/04/2008


    Legal Status
    Current proceedings:
    Remanded for new penalty phase


    Attorney
    At trial:
    Coy Rush, Jr.


    Court Opinions
    Miller v. State, 2010 WL 129708 (Ark. Jan. 7, 2010) (remanding for new penalty phase because two victim‐impact witnesses improperly recommended to the jury that they impose the deathpenalty).


    Legal Issues
    On direct appeal:
    (1) suppression of evidence from search of home and Miller's statements
    (2) fair cross section claim
    (3) competency
    (4) mental retardation
    (5) admission of photographs
    (6) hearsay in expert testimony
    (7) improper rebuttal testimony
    (8) instruction on voluntary intoxication
    (9) victim‐impact witnesses recommended death penalty

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    Ark. judge sets deadline for submission of reports

    FORT SMITH, Ark. (AP) - A Sebastian County Circuit Court judge has set a Jan. 21 deadline for attorneys for a man convicted of killing his girlfriend and her two young children to turn over psychological tests conducted on their client to prosecutors.

    Judge James Cox set the deadline Friday during a hearing in the case of James Miller.

    The Northwest Arkansas Times reports that a jury convicted Miller of capital murder in the April 2008 strangulation deaths of 28-year-old Bridgette Barr and her children, 2-year-old Garrett and 5-year-old Sydney in Fort Smith. The Arkansas Supreme Court threw out the death penalty last year and ordered a new sentencing hearing.

    Prosecuting Attorney Dan Shue filed a motion, saying the reports were overdue.

    Miller's attorney, James Wyatt, says his team isn't trying to hold anything back.

    http://www.katv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13808692

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    Sentencing Trial Begins In Triple Slaying

    The court, prosecution and defense spent about three hours Friday narrowing the pool of potential jurors for the upcoming sentencing trial of convicted triple murderer James Aaron Miller.

    In April 2008, a Sebastian County jury found Miller, 35, guilty of three counts of capital murder in connection with the December 2006 slayings of his girlfriend, Bridgette Barr, and her two children, Sydney and Garrett Barr. He was sentenced to death.

    The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled Jan. 7, 2009, that the convictions could stand but the sentences should be reversed and retried because the penalty phase of the trial contained errors relating to the victim-impact statements.

    Two relatives of the victims should not have been allowed to testify that Miller deserved to be executed, the court found.

    The jury for Miller's resentencing trial will be chosen Feb. 17 and 18, with the trial scheduled to begin Feb. 22.

    Questionnaires were mailed to 196 potential jurors, 192 were returned, and on Friday Circuit Court Judge James Cox excused 62 people from the jury selection process, based on information provided in the questionnaires.

    Prior to the hearing, Cox, Prosecuting Attorney Dan Shue and Little Rock attorney James Wyatt, appointed to represent Miller, reviewed the questionnaires and made lists of potential jurors they believed should be excused.

    Several were excused because they had previously planned vacations or out-of-town work obligations, health reasons, child-care issues or religious beliefs that would prevent them from considering a full range of punishment, either life in prison or death.

    Most of those excused expressed an unwillingness to either consider the death penalty or any punishment other than death.

    Cox also took up a request by Wyatt to hold a pretrial hearing to determine if Miller is retarded and therefore ineligible for the death penalty.

    Wyatt told the court that Miller was recently examined by a neuropsychologist who determined Miller is mentally retarded, and proposed holding a hearing Feb. 21, although state offices are closed that day for Presidents Day.

    But Cox said it would require too much staff and security on a holiday to hold a hearing on Feb. 21, and Shue said he wasn't sure he could have his experts available, since Friday was the first time he was told the defense expert would only be available Feb. 21 and 22.

    The limited availability of the neuropsychologist means Wyatt must ask the state's permission to call him during the state's presentation of its case.

    When Shue asked Cox if he was ordering the state to agree to Wyatt calling his neuropsychologist during the state's case, Cox said no, but at the end of the hearing said he expected the state to accommodate Wyatt.

    Shue said his concern was whether he could have his experts available to hear Wyatt's expert testify, which is needed because they will be testifying to rebut that testimony.

    Shue told Cox he will inform him of the state's position on the matter by Monday.

    Cox also heard from Fort Smith attorney David Borland on behalf of Miller's mother and his two children, who are subpoenaed by the defense to testify.

    Borland filed a motion to quash the subpoenas, but Cox said he couldn't grant that request, and urged Borland and Wyatt to reach a compromise on the issue.

    Miller was present for the hearing, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, his hands cuffed to a belly chain and shackles on his ankles, with two bailiffs standing next to the defense table for the duration of the hearing.

    He only spoke when, at the end of the hearing, Cox asked if he understood what was going on. Miller replied he did not.

    http://www.swtimes.com/week-in-revie...cc4c002e0.html

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