USA - Oklahoma. Prosecutors no longer seeking death penalty against Victor Cornell Miller.

Tulsa County prosecutors no longer seeking death penalty against Victor Cornell Miller. First Assistant District Attorney John David Luton announced in court today that he will no longer seek the death penalty for Miller. Luton said the decision came after talking with the victims' family members. "The consensus of the family was that this was a way to create some finality in the case," Luton said, noting that the matter is already 16 years old. Miller, 52, Black, was convicted in the shooting deaths of Mary Agnes Bowles, 77, and Jerald Thurman, 44. Prosecutors maintained that Miller shot Thurman before Miller's accomplice, John Fitzgerald Hanson, shot Bowles. Thurman's son, Jake Thurman, said Wednesday that while this was not his preferred outcome of the case, he and his family are ready to move on. "I'm not really happy with all of it, but at the same time I'm happy that the family will get some closure and not have to keep opening the wound and stitching it closed again," he said. At a trial in 2002, Miller was convicted of both murders and was sentenced to die for killing Thurman. He got a no-parole life term for Bowles' murder. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals court overturned those convictions and sentences in 2004 and granted Miller a new trial. He was convicted by another jury in 2008 and was sentenced to death for both murders. The appeals court in 2013 (see Sept. 6) affirmed Miller's 2 1st-degree murder convictions but modified his death sentence for one of the murder convictions to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In that decision, the Court of Criminal Appeals directed the Tulsa County District Court to resentence Miller for the other murder conviction, with the death penalty still on the table. Since the state is no longer seeking the death penalty, a Tulsa County judge will have the option of sentencing Miller to life without parole or life with the possibility of parole after serving at least 85 % of his sentence in prison. For calculation, a life sentence is usually equated to 45 years. District Judge Dana Kuehn is scheduled to sentence Miller on Dec. 18, court minutes show.