Narcotics investigation begins
all of the felony counts. West Palm Beach Police stand by the arrest and won’t comment on the defense claim, department spokesman Sgt. David Lefont said. Ramsey says she’ll prove the fix by highlighting the use of the confidential informant in a two-year undercover investigation of Miller, which began within months of his acquittal in the Chick-fil-A slaying.
Miller had no history of illegal drug use or drug arrests until this case, Ramsey said.
The entrapment defense relies on the public disclosure of the police informant’s identity, she said. She wants Circuit Judge Cheryl Caracuzzo to order prosecutors to give it up.
Ramsey argues that although police reports say the informant first tipped off the cops about Miller, it appears the police decided to go after Miller and sought the informant’s help.
While Miller is reasonably certain about the person’s identity, he needs to know for sure so he can provide witnesses to testify about his interactions with the informant, Ramsey explained.
The State Attorney’s Office opposes any move to name the police source. The prosecutor also told the judge the disclosure is unwarranted because the informant isn’t a prosecution witness, and wasn’t involved in the drug deals that led to Miller’s arrest.
Assistant State Attorney John Parnofiello said an undercover cop is the one who bought the heroin from Miller that resulted in the charges: trafficking in heroin; possession of heroin with intent to sell; and two counts of sale of heroin.
The judge, however, has decided to hold a private hearing with the confidential informant and the lawyers before ruling.
Caracuzzo wrote this hearing will help her determine “whether the disclosure would be relevant and helpful to the defense,” as well as whether keeping the name a secret infringes on Miller’s right to a fair trial. Megrath, 18, was bound to a chair with duct tape in an employee bathroom and shot once in the back of the head after the restaurant in the old Palm Beach Mall had closed for the night.
Miller, a former employee, was arrested in 2000, but the charges were dropped a year later after prosecutors said they couldn’t support an initial claim of a 100 percent DNA match to Miller from a ski mask discarded near a mall trash bin.
Miller was re-arrested in 2007, after more DNA testing, and new evidence allegedly linking Miller to a note left at the crime scene. Miller’s 2009 trial ended in a hung jury.
But a second trial that year ended with Miller convicted of murder, robbery, burglary and kidnapping.
Miller later won a third trial. Miller’s lawyers pointed to another man’s confession and a lack of hard evidence, and the jury returned a not guilty verdict in less than three hours.
The West Palm Beach police narcotics investigation of Miller began at the end of 2014, court records show. That’s when the cops got a tip from an informant — the defense contends it’s the same one whose identity is shielded — that Miller was dealing under the street name “Red.”
Police arranged for the informant to make heroin buys from Miller in January and February 2015, but follow-up attempts to have Miller deal with an undercover cop failed when Miller blew off the cop.
The investigation of Miller resumed in February 2016, records show. Six months later, it heated up when a “past proven reliable confidential source” — believed to be the same person from the 2014 tip — told cops about “Red.”
Police then arranged to have an officer pose as a heroin addict looking to buy the narcotics from Miller, which led to a series of phone calls and transactions from Aug. 11 through Sept. 13, at locations in West Palm Beach and Riviera Beach, records show.
Miller sold the heroin in capsules, exchanging the pills for cash payments of $300 and $600, with Miller delivering the drugs in his Chevrolet cargo van, according to reports.
Miller was arrested Sept. 16, 2016 inside the Palm Beach County Courthouse, just before he was set to give a luncheon speech about his prison life to a defense attorneys group.
mjfreeman@sunsentinel .com, 561-243-6642 or Twitter @marcjfreeman