Former murder suspect arrested

Acquitted of 1999 killing, he’s held at courthouse on heroin charges

Jesse Lee Miller Jr. arrived at the Palm Beach County Courthouse, ready to talk to a roomful of attorneys at a luncheon. His topic: How he spent seven years in prison before his 2014 acquittal in the murder of a Chick-fil-A manager.

But to Miller’s surprise, cops were waiting to arrest him on heroin-dealing charges once he walked past the building’s metal detectors before noon Sept. 16. They didn’t let the guest speaker reach the first-floor Judicial Dining Room.

Described by his lawyer as “confused and shocked by the circumstances” that day, Miller, 34, suddenly was back in trouble with the law after two years earlier avoiding a potential life sentence.

Now, he faces up to 90 years in prison if convicted on two counts of trafficking in heroin and two counts of sale of heroin.

The case, set for trial Feb. 6, so far has

featured attempts by attorney Glenn Mitchell to disqualify both prosecutors and the trial judge over allegations of bias.

And the arrest has soured relations between the State Attorney’s Office and the group of defense lawyers that had invited Miller to the courthouse lunch.

As part of their grievance, the Palm Beach Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys canceled an annual charity softball game versus prosecutors that was to be played Nov. 19 to benefit the homeless.

“Clearly this is a small gesture of our disappointment in the State Attorney’s Office,” the group’s board of directors wrote to State Attorney Dave Aronberg.

The defense attorneys expressed their disgust over being made “unwittingly complicit” in Miller’s arrest, and as a result it “jeopardized the faith that our clients — the people you prosecute — have in the attorneys who defend them.”

But prosecutors explained in a court pleading that “the courthouse was an ideal location” to apprehend an alleged drug trafficker and previously convicted felon then suspected of owning weapons.

The drug case against Miller began in August, when police got a tip from a confidential informant that Miller was dealing under the street name “Red,” according to court records.

The cops then arranged to have an undercover 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 various 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 2002 Chevrolet cargo van, according to police reports.

Police made secret audio and video recordings of the sales, and at one point installed a tracking device on the van, records show. A judge signed an arrest warrant on Aug. 15, which led to the arrest at the courthouse the next day.

Prosecutors knew Miller was billed as one of four speakers for the event sponsored by the defense attorneys group. Invitations had been sent out for the lunch and panel discussion titled “Ethical Obligations of Trial Counsel to Convicted and Imprisoned Clients.”

The main presenters for the program were Public Defender Carey Haughwout and Assistant Public Defender Elizabeth Ramsey — they were Miller’s lawyers at his murder trial in the summer of 2014.

Fliers for the event included a brief description of Miller’s experience with the criminal justice system and the Chick-fil-A murder case, one of the most highprofile local prosecutions of the last two decades.

On May 1, 1999, night manager Nicholas 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.

In 2003, a jury convicted Otto Wright, now 35, in the murder, based on a confession that he was the lookout for the Chick-fil-A robbery committed with two accomplices. He did not name Miller as one of his accomplices. Wright, who later recanted, is serving a life sentence.

Miller was re-arrested in 2007, after more DNA testing, and new evidence allegedly linking Miller to a hand-printed note left at the crime scene.

At Miller’s first trial, in 2009, the jury failed to reach a verdict. But a second jury that same year convicted Miller of murder, robbery, burglary and kidnapping charges. In 2012, Miller won an appeal, which granted the third trial in 2014.

During the trial, the prosecutors dropped the robbery, burglary and kidnapping charges after the defense argued a statute of limitations for those counts had expired.

Miller was not labeled as the shooter, but prosecutors told the jury he had been overheard making a death threat against Megrath after Megrath reported Miller for stealing from the store; Miller’s DNA was a solid match to the ski mask; and Miller wrote the note, with the apparent combination to a safe, left after the murder.

Megrath was a Forest Hill High honors student, and was filling in for another manager on the night he died.

Haughwout and Ramsey insisted Miller, a father of three, wasn’t at all involved in the tragedy — they pointed to Wright’s confession and a lack of hard evidence.

The jury deliberated less than three hours. After the verdict, Miller smiled and thanked God as he walked out of the courthouse.

Devastated and angry over Miller’s acquittal, Mike Megrath, father of the slain teenager, said news of Miller’s latest arrest “makes me happy.”

Megrath said he didn’t know about it until a call from the Sun Sentinel on Wednesday.

“It’s getting him off the streets and putting him where he belongs,” he said.

Miller has been held at the Palm Beach County Jail since Dec. 1.

That’s when Circuit Judge Samantha Schosberg Feuer agreed to prosecutor Aaron Papero’s request to revoke Miller’s $50,000 bond, which was granted after his initial arrest on two of the charges.

Papero has written in court pleadings that Miller, before his arrest, was considered “potentially armed and dangerous,” pointing to a police search of his West Palm Beach home that found a handgun, a rifle and more than 760 rounds of rifle ammunition.

Among the complaints by Mitchell, the attorney for Miller, is that Judge Schosberg Feuer should be removed because at a hearing she allegedly rolled her eyes at Mitchell and closed her eyes “acting as if she was about to fall asleep” while Mitchell addressed the court.

He also said the judge must have ordered deputies to stand nearby so Miller could “immediately be grabbed and taken into custody.”

On Dec. 13, Schosberg Feuer signed an order refusing to disqualify herself, calling the defense claim “legally insufficient.” Mitchell has filed an appeal.

Mitchell has also filed a motion to disqualify the State Attorney’s Office over an allegation that Chief Assistant State Attorney Adrienne Ellis, a former defense attorney who previously represented Miller, was improperly involved in the latest drug investigation and prosecution.

Miller