For years, Chuck Poehlman couldn't imagine anything less than an execution for the man who sexually assaulted and strangled his 17-year-old daughter after hiring her to baby-sit his nephew. Even after the convicted killer's death sentence was overturned, Poehlman was adamant that prosecutors ought to pursue the death penalty the second time around.
But the Carroll County man has relented, finally signing off this year on a plea agreement designed to end the years of roller coaster-like appeals that so many victims' families experience in capital cases while also ensuring that a murderer will spend most, and perhaps all, of his life behind bars.
John A. Miller IV is scheduled to be sentenced today in Baltimore County Circuit Court, where the maximum sentence that can be imposed is life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the plea agreement that he accepted in August.
Poehlman, in an interview earlier this year, said he was "trying to adopt a little more distance and spirituality."
"It was out of my control that Shen got murdered, out of my control that John Miller got the death penalty, out of my control that the judges overturned it," he said then. "It's all out of my control."
Today's hearing, though, might not bring the finality that prosecutors and defense attorneys had hoped for when they crafted the plea agreement.
Miller, 35, has since filed a motion to withdraw the guilty plea that he entered in August, arguing that his lawyers "tricked" him into accepting prosecutors' offer and asking the judge to appoint new counsel to represent him.
Defense attorney Jerri Peyton-Braden, a public defender who has represented Miller since 1998, declined to comment on the case or today's hearing.
Prosecutor Robin S. Coffin has worked on the case just as long.
"The Poehlmans would love it to end now," she said.
Shen Poehlman was killed July 28, 1998, not long after graduating from Liberty High School, where she was a tennis champion, the prom queen and an honors student. She had won a scholarship to study marine biology at Florida State University and was scheduled to leave for school just two weeks after her death.
On July 27, Shen spent the day at a Reisterstown pool where a friend of hers was working that summer as a lifeguard. The pool was associated with an apartment complex where Miller was living with his girlfriend, according to a transcript of the statement of facts that was read at the August plea hearing.
As Shen was leaving the pool that day, Miller approached her, asked if she did any baby-sitting and told her he had a nephew coming into town the next day. Shen agreed to watch the boy for five hours at $10 per hour.
Later that night, when Miller called to work out the details, he asked Shen to meet him the next morning at the pool and said he would then take her to the baby-sitting job.
"When Shen hung up the phone, she shared the information with her girlfriends. They were very concerned," Coffin, the prosecutor, said during the plea hearing. "They said to her, 'You don't really know this man. He hasn't given you an address.'"
The girls agreed that Shen would page or call her two friends the next morning after she started the baby-sitting job to let them know that she was OK. But they didn't hear from her.
And when Shen failed to show up at work by 5 o'clock that evening, "their concern was enormous," Coffin said.
About 3:30 a.m. the next day, police found Shen's car parked about a mile from Miller's apartment. In the back seat, they found her strangled and covered with a blanket. She was not wearing shoes, according to the statement of facts.
A jury convicted Miller in February 2000 of first-degree murder, a first-degree sexual offense, robbery and false imprisonment and unanimously agreed that he be sentenced to death.
At that sentencing hearing, Chuck Poehlman declined in court to accept Miller's apology. He was equally steadfast four years later when Maryland's highest court overturned Miller's death sentence and granted him a new sentencing hearing.
"I want John Miller to know that I want him dead," Poehlman told The Sun at the time. "I want him off the Earth. I don't believe we should breathe the same air that he breathes."
But so much anger and waiting can weigh on a person.
"In John Miller's original case, it was a unanimous jury decision that he be executed. There was no hesitation of his guilt or innocence," Poehlman said in an interview in May, as his daughter's killer was considering the plea agreement offered by prosecutors with his consent.
"It's a legal process," he said, "but the legal process goes on and on and on."
Poehlman said capital punishment has become such a political issue in the United States that it "has nothing to do with justice."
"In some countries, they'd hand him over to the family. They'd hand him over to me," he said in the May interview. "Not that I want blood on my hands. Not that I want to take a life. But I was happy with the jury's decision."
He later added, "I've kind of gotten over the anger of the incident, I can say. I don't forgive John Miller, but I'm not angry. There are moments when I break down, moments when I cry, moments when I miss my daughter very terribly. But from a spiritual point of view, I believe I have to move on, I have to move away from it."
Attempts to reach Poehlman this week were unsuccessful.
As one resentencing hearing date after another was postponed, Coffin said, prosecutors "reached out" to the Poehlman family, trying to "do something to resolve the case that everyone can live with."
She said she discussed possible plea offers with the family and then made an offer to Miller's attorneys with the consent of Chuck Poehlman and others in Shen's family.
"Yes, it was a big deal," she said of the family's decision.
Chuck Poehlman had been the lone holdout within his family when Miller offered in 1999 to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. With the father unwilling to sign off on a plea deal, prosecutors took the case to a jury in Western Maryland, where the trial was moved.
"He is a different man than the man I went to trial with in Cumberland," Coffin said of Shen's father. "On so many levels, that's a wonderful thing. He is committed to justice for his daughter, but he doesn't feel the need to personally do it."
She added, "If justice is served, it's served. They're not driving it."
The plea agreement was accepted Aug. 23 by Baltimore County Circuit Judge Lawrence Daniels, who presided over the case after it was returned to Baltimore County.
Under the terms of the agreement, Daniels granted the defendant a new trial only on the first-degree murder charge. Miller then pleaded guilty to that count. And prosecutors withdrew the notice of their intention to seek a death sentence. The agreement and the guilty plea stripped Miller of all but a few extremely limited rights to appeal the new murder conviction.
"It was important for the Poehlmans to get the guilty. It was important on a number of different levels," said Coffin, the prosecutor.
"The length of this just makes me crazy," she said, noting that it's been more than three years since Miller's death sentence was reversed. "Goodness gracious, that's just not fair to them."
jennifer.mcmenamin@baltsun.com
Timeline
July 28, 1998: Shen Dullea Poehlman, 17, goes to the Reisterstown apartment of John A. Miller IV after agreeing to a baby-sitting job.
July 29, 1999: Police find Shen's body in her car, parked about a mile from the apartment Miller shared with his then-girlfriend.
Feb. 3, 2000: Miller is convicted of first-degree murder, a first-degree sexual offense, robbery and false imprisonment.
Feb. 9, 2000: The jury that convicted Miller unanimously agrees to sentence him to death.
Feb. 19, 2004: Maryland Court of Appeals overturns Miller's death sentence. Three of the seven judges disagreed with the state law governing how juries decide whether to impose a death sentence. Two of those judges, along with a fourth judge, believed that Miller should get a new trial because, they determined, a state witness may have lied about whether he had a deal with prosecutors.
Aug. 23, 2007: At a Baltimore County Circuit Court hearing, Miller is granted a new trial on the murder charge, and pleads guilty. Prosecutors withdraw the notice of their intention to seek the death penalty.
Oct. 17, 2007: Miller is scheduled to be sentenced. Baltimore County prosecutors have said they plan to ask for a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole while defense attorneys can argue for a paroleable life sentence.