State high court upholds death sentences of Kissimmee cop killer

The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected an appeal by a man sentenced to death in the 2017 murders of two Kissimmee police officers.

Justices unanimously upheld the first-degree murder convictions and death sentences of Everett Miller, who fatally shot officers Matthew Baxter and Sam Howard.

Miller, now 52, raised a series of issues in the appeal, including that the murders were not premeditated and that prosecutors were improperly allowed to inject issues about race and religion into the case that prevented him from getting a fair sentencing. Miller, who is Black, had made what the Supreme Court described as “antiwhite” Facebook posts and had anti-law enforcement views.

“The state’s plausible theory was that Miller became radicalized online and adopted an extremist anti-government and anti-law-enforcement belief system under which he came to view — and abhor — all law enforcement as the tyrannical arm of a racist and oppressive system,” Thursday’s opinion said. “So much so that police officers, no matter their skin color, represented a constant threat to Black people, including Miller. The evidence contextualized the things going on in Miller’s mind, with his anti-white posts being intimately tied up with his view of the police as institutionally racist.

“The items presented could help show that Miller had anger and hatred that could lead to the very violence in which he engaged, and against precisely the victims he chose. Allowing the state to show that Miller acted on the hatred of law enforcement fueled by that mindset was not unfairly prejudicial.”