Opinion ID: 507326
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Preparation of Miller's Defense

Text: 16 Upon Miller's arraignment, Herbert J. Bundock, a public defender in Fairfield County since 1962, was appointed by the court to represent him. Joseph T. Gormley, Jr., the State's attorney in charge of the prosecution, informed Bundock that Dr. Robert Miller believed Miller could be found not guilty by reason of insanity. Gormley stated that if Miller would agree to plead insanity, the State would present only a prima facie case. 17 Bundock interviewed Miller, Miller's father (Miller Sr.) and Dr. Williams, and reviewed Miller's psychiatric records. Miller Sr. told Bundock that Miller had telephoned Miller Sr. in February and said he had signed a confession but that he was sick and would have signed anything. 18 Miller told Bundock that during the first several interrogations, the investigators had repeatedly tried to get him to confess to the murders, but that Miller had denied killing the women. He said Dr. Robert Miller too had tried to get him to confess and had shown him a statement that he could sign in order to plead not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, but that his response was to ask Dr. Miller whether the latter want[ed Miller] to ... confess to something I didn't do. Miller stated that he had eventually confessed while under the influence of the medication given him and that Dr. Miller and another doctor had broken him down. Bundock did not interview Dr. Miller or anyone else on the staff of Fairfield Hills. 19 Miller told Bundock he had given the confessions on February 29, March 2, and March 10 because he was frightened and was afraid of receiving a beating, and because the detectives told him that unless he confessed he would lose his job and his family would suffer. He was also concerned that, because he had admitted adulterous conduct with black women, the police would arrest him for adultery and his wife would divorce him. He told Bundock that the detectives had asked him leading questions and he merely gave them the right answers. They had shown him pictures of the murder scenes many times; when they drove him to the site of the murders and asked him if they were in the right place, he had said I think so to please them. 20 Bundock had Miller evaluated by a court-appointed psychiatrist and in mid-December 1973 received a report. The report stated that although it was certain that Miller is and has been chronically psychotic and delusional and totally incapable of discerning right from wrong, and that [t]he force of his insanity drove him into the midst of the daily life of the people he is accused of having murdered, the psychiatrist had no certain idea whether Miller had actually committed the murders.