Man cleared in Chick-fil-A death gets prison for drugs

Jesse Lee Miller takes plea deal for selling heroin to officer.

Nearly two decades after the execution of an 18-yearold Forest Hill High School student at a West Palm Beach Chick-fil-A, the former co-worker once convicted, then exonerated of his murder is now headed to prison on a heroin trafficking charge.

Jesse Lee Miller, 36, of West Palm Beach turned himself in Friday. He will go to prison as part of a five-year prison plea deal he accepted nearly two years after West Palm Beach police say he sold a total of 90 heroin capsules to an undercover officer as part of a sting operation. He could have faced up to 35 years in prison on the heroin trafficking and possession charges.

Miller’s controversial September 2016 arrest at the Palm Beach County Courthouse, where he was set to give a speech to a luncheon in recognition of his 2014 jury exoneration for the 1999 murder of Nicholas Megrath, caused a rift between local prosecutors and public defenders and sparked allegations that police targeted Miller because of his acquittal.

Back then, members of the Palm Beach Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers responded with outrage, saying prosecutors and police found out about the luncheon and deliberately used the occasion to arrest Miller to make it appear that defense attorneys were complicit in bringing him down. PBACDL members withdrew their participation in an annual charity softball game between local prosecutors and defense attorneys in protest of the circumstances surrounding Miller’s arrest.

“Clearly, this is a small gesture of our disappointment in the State Attorney’s office, but it reflects the larger perception that your office has no interest in creating a professional working environment with the criminal defenses bar,” then-PBACDL President Christine Garaghty wrote to Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg in a Sept. 23, 2016, letter.

Miller, meanwhile, returned to jail and was set to stand trial April 30. Earlier this month, however, Assistant State Attorney John Parnofiello and Assistant Public Defender Elizabeth Ramsey told Circuit Judge Cheryl Caracuzzo they had reached a plea deal.

In exchange for Miller’s two guilty pleas, Parnofiello agreed to drop two related charges of selling and trafficking in heroin.

Caracuzzo, in accepting the plea agreement, gave Miller credit for the more than 16 months he has spent behind bars since his 2016 arrest.

Court records show Caracuzzo allowed Miller to be released from the Palm Beach County Jail on April 11 to spend more than a week free before he turned himself in Friday. As part of the agreement, he would have been sentenced to 20 years in prison had he failed to turn himself in on time.

Police first arrested Miller as a teenager in September 2000, more than a year after the May 1999 murder of Megrath. Police found Megrath, who worked with Miller at the Chick-fil-A inside the Palm Beach Mall, sitting in a chair, shot once through the head, with duct tape covering his mouth, hands and feet.

Prosecutors’ theory of the case from the start was that Miller was angry at Megrath for telling store managers that he improperly sold a box of chicken nuggets after the restaurant was closed and allegedly pocketed the money — a revelation that got the then 17-year-old Miller booted from a supervisor’s training program at the restaurant and eventually led to his dismissal.

Police were forced to release Miller less than a year later after they admitted they were wrong in saying that Miller’s DNA was a “match” to DNA found on a ski mask left at the murder scene.

Authorities arrested Miller again in 2007 after they said handwriting samples from a note left at the scene linked him to the case. They promised stronger DNA ties as well.

Miller’s first trial in 2009 ended in a mistrial after the jury could not reach a verdict. Another jury convicted him five months later, and he was sentenced to life in prison, but that conviction was overturned in 2012 after an appellate court ruled a previous judge allowed prosecution witnesses to improperly bolster testimony regarding the handwriting samples.

In Miller’s third trial, Ramsey and Palm Beach County Public Defender Carey Haughwout represented Miller, and a jury in that case took just two hours to acquit him.

Another man, Otto Wright, was also convicted in Megrath’s death and is currently serving a life sentence. Wright has claimed he is innocent.