Original article no longer available
Deseret News
Ann Tracy Ph.D, Executive Director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, confirmed that this man was on antidepressants at the time of the murder.
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
Associated Press
TOOELE A man who stabbed his wife to death with a screwdriver as sheriff’s deputies wrestled him will spend six years to life in prison. Convicted murder Charles Miller makes an emotional final statement before he was sentenced.
Charles Miller, who pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, a first-degree felony, with a weapons enhancement, was sentenced Monday by 3rd District Judge David Young.
Miller, 51, was originally charged with capital homicide for the death of his 39-year-old wife, who was seeking a divorce from him in 2001. He also was charged with aggravated assault, a third-degree felony.
Ron Yengich, the defendant’s attorney, said the death penalty wasn’t justified because it was a crime of passion and that Miller had no previous run-ins with the law. Miller pleaded guilty in exchange for the possibility of parole.
“He probably won’t see the Board of Pardons for a hearing for 10-12 years,” Yengich told The Associated Press. “I don’t think he got off easy. The last time I looked, life in prison wasn’t easy.”
Prosecutors said Miller became enraged after his wife got a protective order against him. Both Sharon and Charles Miller had filed for protective orders against each other on June 4, 2001.
The next day when Sharon Miller came to the Tooele County Courthouse to check on her order, her husband was waiting for her and slammed his pickup truck into her Ford Expedition, tipping it over.
Police said Charles Miller then leaped into his wife’s vehicle and stabbed her repeatedly in the neck and chest with a screwdriver while sheriff’s deputies tried to pull him off.
Sharon Miller died in a hospital five days later.