The Maryland Court of Appeals overturned the death...

The Maryland Court of Appeals overturned the death sentence of John A. Miller IV, the man convicted in 2000 of killing 17-year-old Shen D. Poehlman. The Court gave two reasons for moving Miller off death row. They agreed with a legal argument that challenges an aspect of Maryland's death penalty law, and to the evidence that a state witness may have lied about a deal with prosecutors. According to court testimony, Miller had met Poehlman at a swimming pool in July 1998 and lured her to his apartment with the promise of a baby-sitting job. When she went to his home the next day, prosecutors said, Miller sexually assaulted the teen-ager and strangled her. The judges of the Court of Appeals said they disagreed with Maryland's law governing how juries decide whether to impose a death sentence. In order to sentence someone to death, juries must decide that the aggravating factors outweigh by a preponderance any mitigating factors. Ehree judges said that the legal standard for this step should be beyond a reasonable doubt, not a preponderance of the evidence, and that Miller should receive a new sentencing hearing. Two of those judges, along with a fourth judge, believed that Miller should get a new trial because, they determined, a state witness may have lied about whether he had a deal with prosecutors. One of the witnesses in Miller's case was an inmate at the county jail named Clarence Bobbitt, whom Miller met while awaiting trial. Bobbitt testified that Miller had told him that his sexual activity with Poehlman was not consensual as Miller's defense attorneys claimed. The jury's finding that Miller had sexually assaulted the girl was the only aggravating circumstance to support a death sentence, according to court records. During Miller's trial, Bobbitt denied that prosecutors had promised him any leniency in his own criminal matters in return for the testimony. But 2 years later defense attorneys found evidence that they said indicated that Bobbitt had an agreement with prosecutors. Prosecutors deny that they made any deal with Bobbitt, according to court papers.