‘We have serial killers living among us’: DA seeks death penalty in 2 more murder cases
In the summer of 2014, a man known as Broadway gunned down Tremayne Richardson in a latenight drug deal gone bad. It was a brazen outdoor slaying that left Richardson’s body riddled with gunshots, a bag of Transformers-stamped ecstasy pills in his hand.
Police arrested 28-year-old Jeremy Wayne Miller and charged him with murder. But after he got out on bond, Miller was arrested in another slaying — and this time prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. It’s one of two cases in recent months in which the Harris County District Attorney’s Office has notified defense attorneys of plans to pursue the state’s harshest punishment. In the other case, 22year-old Julius Merchant is accused of terrorizing a woman and killing her husband during a home invasion, the last in a series of alleged break-ins and assaults across the county.
“They’re suspected of a lot of murdering, raping and robbing activity, and we believe the evidence is going to show that both of these individuals committed capital murder and that they present a future danger to society,” First Assistant District Attorney David Mitcham said of the two cases, which are unrelated. “We have serial killers living among us.”
The two cases bring to eight the number of local cases for which the district attorney’s office is seeking the death penalty. That represents an increase from a year ago, but it’s still down from previous administrations, when prosecutors were sometimes handling more than a dozen pending death cases at once.
“We use the death penalty extremely carefully and sparingly,” Mitcham said. “We are mindful of the grave nature of this kind of state action and it’s only used in the worst of the worst cases.”
Jeremy Wayne Miller
Miller’s criminal history dates back to at least 2011, when he was convicted of robbery and sentenced to two years in prison, according to court records. After his release, he racked up a short string of other arrests and convictions and in late 2014 authorities
collared him in connection with both Richardson’s slaying and an unrelated shooting a month later.
A judge set his bail at $150,000 for the murder charge, a move Mitcham said prosecutors “vociferously opposed.” In January 2015 he bonded out of jail and was released under supervision, given an ankle monitor and ordered to stay away from guns, court records show.
Six months later, according to prosecutors, Miller killed security guard Daniel Arp as he patrolled the back parking lot of an apartment complex in the 8200 block of Park Place. It’s not clear what motivated the killing, but investigators later used the ankle monitor’s GPS data to tie Miller to the scene.
When police finally showed up at his apartment to arrest him, Miller refused to come out, sparking a SWAT standoff. Then, after the tactical team burst in and handcuffed him, prosecutors say Miller tried escaping and swiping a cop’s gun on the way, sparking a struggled that netted two more felony charges.
Now, he’s in jail without bond and facing a total of five felonies, including the capital murder charge for which prosecutors are seeking a death sentence. The district attorney’s office notified the defense in March of prosecutor’s plans to seek the state’s harshest punishment, court records show.
In a statement to the Chronicle, Miller’s defense team — attorneys Patrick McCann, Gerald Bourque and Tyrone Moncriffe — didn’t protest his guilt, but said that if he’s spared, the 28-year-old could “influence lives for the better” from behind bars.
“Killing Mr. Miller does nothing for deterrence nor does it truly achieve just retribution,” they said, calling the long appeals process a “gauntlet of tragedy” for family members of both sides of the case. “The case will last many years, even decades on appeal. Why do such a terrible thing to two different families when it serves no purpose?”
Julius Merchant
In April 2016, prosecutors say, Merchant started following a woman who had just climbed out of an Uber in the 9500 block of Meyer Forest. As she opened the door, he allegedly ran up to her and punched her in the face, then dragged her into her apartment, choked her and raped her.
One morning the next month, he allegedly knocked on the door of a Riviera East apartment in the 500 block of Normandy. A 29-year-old mother of two — whose children and husband had already left for school and work — answered. According to prosecutors, Merchant asked for someone who didn’t live there, and the woman told him he had the wrong house. She closed the door, but a minute later, he knocked again and this time when she opened up he allegedly pulled out a gun and forced his way inside.
He demanded money, prosecutors say, then forced her to perform oral sex at gunpoint before raping her repeatedly. Eventually, he barricaded her in the master bedroom closet, stole some of her belongings and fled. The woman used the pointed end of a clothing iron to create a hole in the closet door and free herself.
Later that same month, he allegedly knocked on the door of Cynthia and David Macias, asking for a woman named Leslie. After explaining that there was no one there by that name, Cynthia closed the door. A couple minutes later, Merchant kicked it open and ran into the Westbury home with a gun, prosecutors said. When David came out of the bathroom to confront the invader, Merchant allegedly shot him to death and then pistol-whipped his wife.
Before he fled, according to prosecutors, Merchant swiped Cynthia’s purse, wedding ring and phones — a last-minute steal that landed him in custody. Later that day, police tracked the wounded woman’s phone to the Interstate Motel on East Freeway and found Merchant along with the stolen goods.
In addition to the trio of charges from the 2016 rampage, Merchant is also facing one count of evading arrest from 2014, when he refused to pull over for a routine traffic stop and sparked a police chase. The case initially netted a deferred adjudication, but then Merchant stopped showing up to probation and the court put out a warrant for his arrest.
Merchant’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Gatekeepers’ for death
Before deciding whether to seek a death sentence, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office capital review committee evaluates each case and votes on how to proceed. Anywhere from five to a dozen senior prosecutors meet to go over the facts, along with any materials submitted by the defense suggesting why a death sentence may not be appropriate.
“We are gatekeepers for the use of the death penalty, which is the most serious action a government can take against an individual,” Ogg told the Chronicle last year. “That is why we bring our most experienced legal minds to the table to make these decisions.”
Four of the cases in which the committee opted to pursue a death sentence were holdovers from the previous administration. Once Ogg took office, her team again reviewed and decided to seek the ultimate punishment against accused killers David Ray Conley III, Ronald Haskell, Steven Alexander Hobbs and Lucky Ward.
The first new case in which Ogg’s office decided to push for a death sentence was that of Omar Torres, a suspected MS-13 gang member accused of killing one man then ordering a hit from jail to knock off the teenage informant who helped land him behind bars.
A few months later, prosecutors decided to seek the same sentence against another one of the seven men linked to the informant’s slaying, Douglas “Terror” Alexander Herrera-Hernandez.
Even as she’s added death penalty cases to the court dockets, Ogg’s office has decided to no longer pursue the harsh punishment in at least nine cases headed for death row under previous administrations, including some men who were sent back for retrials.
Since Ogg took office at the start of 2017, a number of convicted killers — including Duane Buck, Calvin Hunter, Michael Norris and Robert Campbell — were taken off of death row and instead given sentences that amount to life behind bars.
Ogg has pushed for the same fate in the case of intellectually disabled death row prisoner Bobby Moore, but the case is still winding its way through the courts.