Jury finds Fayette man guilty in slaying
Tears flowed from families on both sides of the courtroom Thursday when Thomas Miller II was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to a mandatory term of life in prison without parole. Fayette County jurors convicted the 32-year-old Masontown man in the shooting death of Charles D. Springer after four hours of deliberations.
The verdict brought relief to Springer’s tearful stepfather, Andrew “Boo” King, who was also shot by Miller last May 12. King, who still has a bullet in his chest from the shooting, said the ordeal has been hard on him, but said he testified truthfully and was pleased with the outcome.
In addition to murder, Miller was convicted of aggravated assault and recklessly endangering another person for shooting King. He was acquitted of attempted homicide regarding King.
Judge John F. Wagner Jr., who presided over the case, will sentence Miller for the assault and reckless endangerment convictions next week. That term can run in addition to or at the same time as his life sentence.
District Attorney Nancy D. Vernon, who tried the case along with deputy prosecutor John A. Kopas III, said she was pleased with the verdict.
“The jury obviously took their oath very seriously and made a very difficult decision based upon the evidence,” she said.
Defense attorney Mark Morrison said he was “upset and concerned about the verdict.”
“I believe (the verdict) indicates certain problems in the system and the way we do things,” he said.
“The more I practice, the more I see as the defendant you have to give the jury a reason not to convict,” he said.
That is contrary to the law of the prosecution having the burden of proving its case.
Morrison argued that Miller should be found not guilty because he was acting in self-defense when he fired a 12-gauge shotgun at Springer and King when they pursued a fight with him. Vernon, however, presented Springer and King as having stopped by the side of the road for a talk near Miller’s parents’ home, where he and his son were staying. Miller, said Vernon, came out of the house and started the argument.
While commonwealth testimony painted Miller as the aggressor, defense testimony claimed that King and Springer intentionally went to the Miller home to start a fight. Miller’s parents and son all testified that they heard the men yelling that if Miller wouldn’t come out of the house they would shoot at the home.
When Miller came outside with a gun, Morrison told jurors, he was defending his family.
“We have to be able to protect our homes. We have to be able to protect our families and our children,” said Morrison in his closing remarks.
“If we need to, we need to be able to protect ourselves,” he continued.
He also asked jurors to question why King and Springer did not merely drive away from the scene and asked the jurors to remember that decisions were made quickly, within minutes, and without the hindsight the panel had been afforded.
“There but for the grace of God go I. You never know what tomorrow brings. The sun will come up, but you never know how the day will end,” Morrison told the panel.
Vernon took a different approach, asking jurors to remember that neither Springer nor King was armed when Miller shot them.
“This is what (Springer) was armed with, ladies and gentlemen, a lighter and a cigarette, when he was shot dead,” said Vernon.
She also told the four-woman, eight-man panel to consider that after the initial confrontation with Springer and King, Miller went into his parents’ home and retrieved a shotgun. Then, he came outside and “ambushed” Springer and King from behind their Chevrolet Blazer, she said.
Vernon also noted that Miller fled immediately after the shooting. He was captured two days later in Cleveland, Ohio. On the way there, he told police, he stopped in West Virginia to dye his blond hair black.
“But for the grace of God you don’t have two homicides before you,” said Vernon, mimicking Morrison’s earlier argument. “But (King) still has to live with that piece of lead inside him.”
Closing arguments scheduled to start first thing in the morning were delayed when Morrison asked Wagner if he could reopen his defense case to present evidence from state police trooper James Custer. The trooper did an interview with Eric Springer the day after the shooting that Morrison only became aware of Wednesday afternoon.
In that interview, Springer told Custer that he never heard his half brother, Charles Springer, talk about Miller, implying that they had more contact than Eric Springer testified to on Wednesday.
During his testimony, Springer said that he barely knew his half brother and had only seen him on two occasions. The men share the same father, according to testimony.
Eric Springer’s testimony related to the trial because he and Miller tussled at an Adah bar about two weeks prior to the shooting. Morrison’s defense intimated that Charles Springer and King may have stopped at Miller’s parents’ home to seek some sort of revenge for the fight.
Ultimately, Wagner decided that Morrison could not reopen his case, noting that he found no big inconsistency between Springer’s statement to Custer and his testimony in court.
After the verdict was read, Morrison said he would appeal after sentencing and felt that Wagner’s refusal to allow Custer’s testimony would be one of the issues he cites.
He also suggested that the first-degree murder verdict, the most severe homicide verdict, could be indicative of jurors’ difficulty in understanding the charge of the law read to them in criminal cases. That charge includes definitions for crimes that must be met in order to come back with a guilty verdict.
“Because we aren’t allowed to know what they say in the jury room, we don’t know if they really understand the law,” said Morrison.