Blood thirsty AZ jury sentences bi-polar man with tough childhood to death

[ChandlerJr]

A jury on Thursday sentenced a former Scottsdale businessman to death in the slaughter of five members of a Mesa family, including two children.

Rejecting arguments that William Craig Miller, 34, suffers from bipolar disorder and should receive a life sentence, jurors doled out the ultimate sentence for a defendant they previously found guilty of one of the bloodiest mass murders in Mesa history.

The Maricopa County Superior Court jury deliberated for six hours after a 1 ½ month trial. They sentenced Miller to death on all five counts of first-degree murder and to 20 years each on four counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder.


The gruesome, Feb. 21, 2006 murders included the execution-style slayings of Tammy Lovell, 32, who was shot three times in the back of her head while she knelt in a fetal position. Her son Jacob, 10, was shot in the forehead at point-blank range and her daughter Cassandra, 15, also was shot to death.

Miller also shot to death Steven Duffy, 30, a Navy veteran, and his younger brother Shane, 18, in a killing spree that prosecutors said was motivated by his desire to prevent Steven Duffy and Tammy Lovell from testifying against him in an arson case.

http://www.azcentral.com/community/mesa/articles/2011/09/22/20110922mesa-miller-death-sentence-murder.html#ixzz1YkI4EesH

Miller's attorney claims Miller is bi-polar and had a tough childhood so they should go a little easy on him.

[white_wolf]

1. We need to stop this.

We really need to take this anger towards Davis's execution and channel it into a movement to abolish the death penalty once and for all. This is our "peculiar institution" and we need to oppose it as strongly as slavery was opposed by the abolitionists.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[sasha031]

5. agreed...

[Lost-in-FL]

8. +1, nt

[Luminous Animal]

13. Including the OP.

[aikoaiko]

78. I find the comforting and coddling of heinous criminals among DU anti-death penalty advocates....

very deeply disturbing.


No, not really, but hopefully you see how your disparaging comment directed at DU members is not any more effective than my sarcastic comment.

[Confusious]

3. Well, I suggest focusing on the number of people found innocent

After the fact.

You aren't going to win with someone like this as your poster child.

I don't like the fact that so many innocent get caught up on death row, but this guy.... could care less. He killed way to many people for me. If he got life in prison, it should be behind more then a few locked doors and a couple feet of concrete, and that would just be his cell.

[white_wolf]

7. The DP is state sanctioned murder. Nothing more than that.

To support it for anyone, is to support the state's ability to murder its citizens. That should never be allowed, no matter what crimes were committed.

[Confusious]

12. So is war different?

I would just like to see your reasoning, not trying to be an ass. and not that I disagree with you either.

[Luminous Animal]

18. War is state sanctioned murder. With a huge monetary pay off for a select few.

[Confusious]

20. So you would propose taking the right of defense

away from the state? and give it to whom?

Or are we the only nasty war mongering country out there?

[Luminous Animal]

29. War has always been waged by the polical and economic elite who have the resources

to propagandized an economic beleaguered population. In every case of war, including our current global war on terror, dissidents are spied on, indicted, and arrested.

[Confusious]

33. Would you say that about the civil war?

The revolutionary war? World war 1? World war 2?

[white_wolf]

42. The Civil War was very much an economic and political struggle.

The Revolutionary War was fought for a bunch of rich white landowners. It was dressed up as a struggle for liberty, but it was only liberty for the upper class.

[nadinbrzezinski]

43. The revolutionary war is a lot more complex than that

Given what led to it... yes it was led by elites, but it also came from the botton up, starting with movements in oh New Jersey, where people fought the landed elite to keep their lands forty years before Concord, for example. Yeoman farmers were not the elite.

Just clarifying because history is a lot more complex.

For the record there were seven or eight different movements that in the end preceded the war but radicalized the colonies.

[white_wolf]

46. True. Howard Zinn talks about this a lot in his book.

However, he is very quick to point out how after the Revolution, the former revolutionaries were very quick to put down any threat to their power. Washington had men executed for trying to defect, because they were not getting paid. Shay's rebellion was one other instance. He mentions various riots and how harsh the punishment was for the leaders of those rebellions. He quotes Adams who said: "In monarchy the crime of treason may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death."

[nadinbrzezinski]

49. Yes the counter revolution is always fun

but to say that it was an elite revolution is too simplistic and even Zinn would tell you that, if he could

IF (most likely when) this disparate revolt becomes an actual one... if it succeeds you will see something similar for whoever comes up on top. It happens in EVERY revolution

[white_wolf]

50. Good point...

Perhaps I should have said "The revolutionary war seemed to benefit the elites far more than the lower class."

[nadinbrzezinski]

52. That be more accurate

my only observation is that all revolutions benefit the new elites far more than the base, every time... I don't care where.

[Confusious]

44. Yes, but it did achieve some good things

There is nothing in this world that is all good/ all bad. Sometimes you take the bad with the good/ good with the bad. I thing what differentiates people is how much poo they're going to take on their ice cream before they can't take anymore.

[Withywindle]

48. When was the last time the US fought a war of DEFENSE?

And by that, I mean, another country's troops invading us on our soil? (And no, I don't think the Civil War counts. If we'd let the CSA states go, what would really have been lost?)


Is there another example more recent than 1812 that I'm not aware of?



Why yes, I am glad we had an army to send to help in WWII. But it was really the Soviets that beat Hitler, honestly. I do think the US should have an army capable of responding to calls when a real global threat comes around, but no, I am not interested in sending our forces into bullshit ideological wars like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (either the early-90s version or the current one), Afghanistan, et al.

FORMER imperial powers are much better places to live after they've learned some humility. Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, the UK, etc., have all become much more humane to their own citizens on their own lands after getting their asses roundly (deservedly) kicked abroad. I only regret the fact that I probably won't live long enough to see the US reach that wiser point of view.

[nadinbrzezinski]

51. Well VERY TECHNICALLY if you want to go there

1848... but of course there are TWO disparate versions of events at the Nueces River.

:hide:

A clear invasion, 1812

[Withywindle]

56. OK, that case is debatable.

Granted.


Also, I kind of want to rethink my OP in the light of all Native American resistance battles against European-American "settlers." There is no more clear-cut example of a foreign invasion on American soil than that.

Post-Declaration of Indepedence, ranking official federal stuff, yah. I'm from a long line of Baltimoreans on my dad's side, which is why I will always defend the national anthem, because it was scrawled down quickly by POW Francis Scott Key, waiting to see if the US flag would still be there in the morning or not (and if it wasn't, he'd probably be shot.)


War. Invasion. It's never clear-cut, and the more sure you are that your country has the moral high ground, the more you need to study history and check yourself. I know this is falling on deaf ears, because our enemies are those who think that their vision of White Christian Straight Upper-Class America always has the upper hand, by power of being WCSU-CA.

[nadinbrzezinski]

58. Very technically depends on WHICH version you

chose to read and believe. The truth is somewhere in between. What is clear is that one of the two versions did suffer an invasion and it was not the US.

[Withywindle]

60. Totally agreed and I'm with you on that.

Let's put it this way: has there EVER been any occasion when the US military was put to truly honestly good uses with no ulterior motives any later than 1945?


Arguably Serbia. Arguably they SHOULD have been deployed to Rwanda in the 90s.



Does ANY of this wouldashouldacoulda justify the fact that military cuts are apparently off the table in all that RW rhetoric of budget-balancing?

[nadinbrzezinski]

61. I agree on Serbia and Rwanda

The reason why I used that long gone incident... is to show a little about how propaganda works.

Sadly it is mostly an inside joke. I wonder how many people knew what we were talking about.

Last time we were in Mexico we went to the Museum of National History... let's just say it is cool to see Santa Anna's wood leg. A whole different thing than modern prosthetics,

[Withywindle]

63. I'm not Mexican, not know the complex issues invovled.

but the crime reports coming out of there are so horrific, I could support sending some US troops there. IF, and only IF, I had assurance that they would actually protect the people....and not be so poorly paid that they'd be susceptible to bribes just to eat and send some money home.

[nadinbrzezinski]

64. They are already there

:-)

Mostly special forces types.

SHHH this is like a super duper secret that the Mexican Media ran as an expose.

Army troops are also training with their US Counterparts in the US.

[Withywindle]

66. Well, I hope they do some good.

I don't have high hopes, but I will definitely pray for them to succeed--and by 'succeed' I mean make things a little bit easier for the local people. No matter how skeptical I am about that.

[Confusious]

73. I was asking hypothetical questions

Look up the definition of hypothetical

[white_wolf]

22. I actually don't think war is different.

I feel that killing in war is murder, as well. However,I am not a pacifist, if I ever found a cause that I felt was worth fighting for, I would probably fight and accept the fact that I,in my eyes, committed murder. If I survived said war, I would do my best to make amends for what I did. I will say I haven't found a cause worth fighting for. I know that sound hypocritical, though I will say that honestly I feel the generals and politicians are more guilty of murder during war than the common soldiers, especially if there is a draft.

[Confusious]

37. What about the civil war? Would you have fought in that?

World war 2?

A war where people invaded your country? Taking for instance, that we were a better country then we are now? Would you fight for that?

Hypotheticals all, of course.

[white_wolf]

41. I'll try and address these.

The Civil War, I would have, because I consider slavery a terrible thing and it needed to be abolished. I wouldn't like the killing and I would try my best later to make amends, but I would consider the end of slavery to be a cause worth fighting for.

World War two, is a harder one for me to judge. Nazism was a terrible evil,but our actions in the war were also terrible. For instance, I could never condone the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and if I was the pilot ordered to drop those bombs or even the fire-bombs of Dresden,which killed 100s of civilians, I would have refused and take my chances with the courts.

As to your final scenario, if say we underwent a socialist revolution and become an actual socialist state and we were invaded by various capitalist nations, I would fight to defend it, as I feel capitalism is nothing more than another type of slavery. For instances, if I was in Spain during the Civil War, I would have fought alongside the anarchists.

[Name removed]

72. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Luminous Animal]

14. So, you are an advocate for torture.

[Confusious]

19. Really? where did I say THAT?

Maybe you're reading things that aren't there. Time for new glasses.

And sorry, I don't have any sympathy for that guy. If you do... well, that makes me worry.

[Luminous Animal]

25. Isolation is torture.

[Confusious]

36. Did I say isolation?

I'm pretty sure I didn't. Did I mean isolation? Pretty sure I didn't.

[Luminous Animal]

54. So, what are you advocating here. Death? Isolation? These are your words.

"If he got life in prison, it should be behind more then a few locked doors and a couple feet of concrete, and that would just be his cell."

If I've misinterpreted, stand up for yourself and make it clear.

[Luminous Animal]

68. Kee-ricks

[Confusious]

71. Maybe you could be a bit more imaginative

Is there some other reason you would want to lock something behind a bunch of doors and concrete?

[Luminous Animal]

76. I don't want to lock anyone behnd a bunch of doors and concrete, That is torture.

Which, apparently, you advocate.

[Confusious]

85. since you seem to be so simple minded

and can't think of anything but torture

To keep him from ever getting out again. NOT ONE PIECE OF SECURITY, SEVERAL.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. No this guy is not a poster child

BUT... bipolar is a real disease and life should have been the sentence.

This brings me to the other issue... in this country voices in your head are never taken seriously... (In other words mental illness is not taken seriously)

[white_wolf]

23. Unless those voices tell you to run for President, then people believe you.

Seriously, how many GOP candidates have claimed God told them to run?

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. Yup and I am hopping they are plaiyng a fundy base

and not actually hearing voices in their heads.

[Confusious]

32. I suffer from a mental illness

I haven't killed anyone.

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. And your point? Not everybody who does

will kill or main. In fact that will be a VERY SMALL percentage.

[Confusious]

35. My point is, bipolar is eay to fix

He didn't get help. Should it be taken into account? Yea. If he's a danger to society like that, he should spend the rest of his life on Thorazine and never be released.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. Fully agreed, why he should be sent to the hospital

for the criminally insane.

Exactly... and it is also cheaper than execution.

As to why he had no treatment, we have no clue... there is a chance that it never became an issue or was medicated. Not an excuse, just a fact... you know this better than I do... but mental illness is really not taken seriously.

[Confusious]

39. I'm sorry, I have little sympathy for the mental illness defense

or the bad childhood defense. I had both, I didn't kill anyone. Now if you want to get help for it, I think it should be free. As long as you don't hurt anyone else, it should be taken into account on a lot of things.

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. Alas we agree though that he should be sent

for life...

And the defense may not wash with you... but courts are obligated to take all that into account at the sentencing phase. It is just the way it is.

[Luminous Animal]

55. What? Are you a psychiatrist? Because if you are, you'd be extraordinary incompetent.

[Confusious]

70. Are you a dick? because your doing a good job at being one.

manic–depressive disorder

Lithium. Been in enough groups to know what it does.

[MadHound]

81. The man was mentally ill at the time he committed these murders

What, you don't think there should be mitigating circumstances?

While he is in prison, he will get the medical care needed to treat his condition. When he is once again in control of himself and looks back over what he has done, his regret will be overwhelming.

[Confusious]

86. Somehow I doubt that

The only thing he'll be sorry about is that he got caught.

being bipolar doesn't mean you don't know right from wrong. and I highly doubt he has it anyway.

[patrice]

4. What GOOD does the DP do? Shouldn't we oppose evil with good? Life-in-prison, with

no parole, and dignified work the profits/benefits of which go to victims, takes evil and does good with it.

[aikoaiko]

79. Someone will soon be by to accuse you of advocating for turning prisoners in slave labor.

[glinda]

6. Are they testing the waters to see how far they can go with who they kill?

[Confusious]

10. Who? The killer? or the state?

Doesn't seem like there's much of a question about whether this guy did it. He wasn't no delicate flower.

[MrSlayer]

9. Sorry. A tough childhood is no excuse.

Many people have tough childhoods and don't slaughter women and children. This is a classic case where the DP should be used. And he killed people to prevent them from testifying against him in an arson case. Bi-polar my ass.

[white_wolf]

11. I don't care if he is guilty or not. The DP is barbaric.

It is state sanctioned murder. We need to abandoned our dark ages notions of justice.

[Luminous Animal]

17. It is amazing to me how people can remove themselves from the action of the state.

We are the state. And we murder in cold calculation.

[blueamy66]

80. I don't know....

hmmm.....an injection in the arm or shooting a 10 YEAR OLD KID TO DEATH with a gun?

just asking.....

[Occulus]

16. Inhuman.

And monstrous.

Shame on you.

The death penalty is always inhumanly monstrous, as are its advocates.

[MrSlayer]

27. Just because you say it does not make it true.

What this guy did was inhuman. He deserves to pay the ultimate price. That's justice.

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. And what the state will do is also barbaric

two wrongs do not make a right...

What I read in your post is blood lust... it does not stop murders, (especially with mentally ill people), it has zero deterrent, and it is far more costly than simply life and throwing a way the key... oh and the families, most of the time they find no closure either.

That is the reality of it.

As much as you'd like to kill each and every murderer walking the land... and a few crimes are that bad... it is the moral cost to the nation that is at stake... and how the nation becomes like the criminal. I don't expect you to understand it. You either get it, or you don't... it is one of those things.

But purely on economics, the state of AZ will spend MORE money to execute the gentleman than they would to keep him behind bars, preferably at the psychiatric ward. So on those grounds alone it makes no sense.

[MrSlayer]

57. It shouldn't cost that much.

A length of rope is fairly cheap. It's the endless appeals process that costs the money. This guy is clearly guilty, take him and hang him right now and it costs very little.

[nadinbrzezinski]

59. It is barbaric, and by the way if you do the hanging wrong

perhaps the person loses a head, literally.

No, we should abolish it... the ethical cost is something you do not understand. I actually, seriously pity you.

Oh and before you give me but victims... I have worked with victims. Victims of murder, victims of rape and victims of genocide... so don't even bring that one out.

[MrSlayer]

62. No reason to be insulting.

I don't need your pity because I am not pathetic. Save that for someone who deserves it. And why shouldn't I bring up the victims? That's what all anti-DPers do, disqualify empathy to the victims. If someone killed my family members, I would want to kill the criminals myself as most anyone would. That's what it's all about, justice for the victims and justice for society. And so what if his head comes off during the hanging? Dead is dead. What did this piece of garbage care about whether or not he blew the head clean off of a ten year old boy? This person is not worthy of being kept alive. He forfeited that right by proving his inability to live in a civilized manner. He killed multiple times with malice aforethought.

[nadinbrzezinski]

65. Here is where the DP gets really REALLY absuive

of families. The promise is that there will be closure. Granted a few get it... but too few. Most of the families realize... sooner or later, anywhere from hours (last night) to days, at times months, that the promise of closure is not there.

They get revictimized by the system that promised something they cannot deliver.

And like most death penalty cases, another family is about to go through that hell again and realize after the execution that the pain never goes away.

It is best, would be best, if we helped them become survivors... not people seeking revenge that really are not helped by it.

Yes, as I said I have worked with real victims. This is not theory.

Alas the Warden last night said the same thing on the Ed show, a man who has CARRIED out a few executions... and repeated this today.

So as I said, don't even bring them out. They become victims all over again.

[Occulus]

87. No, it's inhuman, and monstrous.

I will not compromise on this.

It may be deserved. It may be justice. It is still inhuman and monstrous.

As are its supporters.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. acually you should read a tad into bipolar disorder

but what is at stake is not him... it is the moral cost to the nation... and lord knows we are paying in spades.

[MrSlayer]

28. It's a lawyer trying to use that as an excuse.

Because the lawyer says it, doesn't mean he actually has the disorder at all.

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. Go on... since you probably KNOW he was never tested

and the lawyer is making it up RIGHT?

What I read is blood lust, pure and simple.

[tuckessee]

15. I could care less about his childhood.

Too bad Ms. Lovell's son Jacob, 10, didn't to finish his childhood because of the premeditated actions of a homicidal maniac.

That being said I am against the death penalty because of a long history outrageous cases like Mr. Davis.

[minavasht]

45. Call me

if they need a volunteer to pull the switch.

[Name removed]

47. Deleted message

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[Kalidurga]

53. I understand the desire for justice...

but I don't think execution is justice. A person can only die once that includes the victim and the murderer who may end up executed. So the murderer is executed now what, justice has been served? It doesn't take away all the pain the murderer has caused, it might in fact add to it. There is nothing that we can do that would actually amount to justice. The best we can do is protect ourselves from people like this and lock them up for life.

[minavasht]

84. You cannot bring back the victims

But you can make damn sure there are no other victims.
People locked behind bars can still hurt and kill other inmates and prison guards. What can you do to them if they kill again, keep them locked after they die?
They can also escape or they can be released early.

[Name removed]

74. Deleted message

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[JVS]

67. There are two issues combined here that are really not more interesting together than the sum of...

their parts.

The first issue is the death penalty. DU has had that argument. I'm not interested in discussing that further because it always returns to the same cycle of argumentation/personal attacks.


The second issue I find more interesting. That issue is to what degree do various mental illnesses reduce culpability for a crime. Is bipolar disorder a severe enough impairment that the sufferer is no longer able to engage in moral choices or is somehow diminished in this ability? If so, then regardless of one's position on the first issue, leniency is in order. Conversely, if it is not then there is nothing wrong with applying the full penalty of the law in this cause, and the only reasonable objections to this are grounded in the first issue.

[Name removed]

69. Deleted message

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[Selatius]

75. I'm against the death penalty, but this guy's crime is incredibly horrible.

I would favor a life sentence with no possibility for parole for this person.

[cutlassmama]

77. "slaughter of five members of a Mesa family, including two children."

This pretty much sums up why he got what he did.

[originalpckelly]

82. When an individual with a mental illness is accused of a crime...

a higher burden of proof should be needed, that not only must the conditions of the crime be proved, but also that the prosecutors should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the individuals mental illness did not distort the decision making capacity of the accused.

We must be very careful not to let the biased reporting of The Arizona Republic persuade us to a different view.

We need a three tiered possibility system:
1. An individual with a mental illness allegedly committed a criminal act, which cannot proved beyond a reasonable doubt to have been committed by the individual, or that their illness was NOT a part of the reason the act occurred.

2. An individual with a mental illness allegedly committed a criminal act, which can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to have been committed by the individual, but it cannot beyond shown the by the same burden of proof that the individuals illness did NOT have a role in the act.

3. An individual with a mental illness allegedly committed a criminal act, which can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to have been committed by the individual, and it can also be shown that their illness did NOT impact their decision making beyond a reasonable doubt.

In case 1:
The individual should be free to go, but perhaps we should have a parole system to keep an eye on them just to make sure that other people are fine.

In case 2:
The individual should be committed to a mental hospital which will treat their illness, and should have the future possibility of returning to public life once whatever symptoms they have are controlled well. They should not however, be free in the traditional sense of the word. They should have to submit to a surveillance program, be implanted with a device that will continuously monitor their drug compliance and if they fail to comply automatically dose them with a tranquilizer, and will also function in case of emergency, by police or other first responder control, dose them with a tranquilizer.

In case 3:
The individual should be committed to a mental hospital which will treat their illness, and have a similar sentencing guideline when compared to a traditional criminal act.

These cases should be dealt with in a specialized court system, much like the juvenile system, and the definition of mental illness should really include a wider array of brain illnesses.

[LadyInAZ]

83. As a resident of AZ....

there is lot of talk about bi-polar population... I had been told bi-polar people are considered a danger to themselves and others... not knowing right from wrong... what behavior is appropriate, what action is acceptable in society... I have met a few people who are taking medicine and not taking medicine as bi-polar... what I noticed on a whole they are deceiving, cunning, manipulative people... who gets away with many things... general people are afraid of them... always them to rant and rave... I have also seen bi-polar people threaten others publicly and get away with it... I think some do hide behind the fact the laws at time protects them because of the illness... and they do use that to their advantage... is it really fair to the family victims for this guy to get off lightly... I don’t think so... take ones life should be dealt with no matter if his mental illness has cause it or not.... we have hospitals and experts to help these individuals... to prevent this sort of situation from happening.... this is where the system failed... people with mental illness should be diagnosis and treated.... and that treatment should be forced.... to eliminated situation like this... I thought the purpose of a mental hospital is to treat and help these individual with cooping skills to function normal in society... well it didn’t happen in this case... perhaps a better mental illness prevention treatment program is needed to reduce these sort of situation....