- May 1, 2024
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Paul Miller took the stand in his own murder case Wednesday, his testimony spanning almost two hours in a courtroom that grew tenser the longer he spoke.
After brief examination from his attorney, Douglas Williams, during which Miller said he was afraid of Dana Mulhall, the man he shot five times on March 14, 2012, prosecuting attorney Jacquelyn Roys stepped forward to question him.
Miller grew increasingly aggravated as the cross-examination progressed, calling Roys “crazy” on more than one occasion and resisting answering questions that he said he already answered. He accused Roys of twisting his words to suit her needs.
“You took your gun and aimed it — " Roys began to say.
Miller interrupted and said he did not aim the gun at Mulhall; he pointed it at him.
“What’s the difference between aiming and pointing a gun?” Roys asked.
“What’s the difference, what’s the difference?” Miller said. “I can’t believe you would ask me such a stupid question.”
Roys adopted a harsh tone as she questioned Miller, who is charged with second-degree murder, and her manner bordered exasperation as she parsed Miller’s testimony, asking for clarification and seldom getting the answer she asked for. Whether tactic or not, her questioning sufficiently aggravated Miller, who said more than once that he didn’t want to talk to her anymore.
At one point, Circuit Judge J. David Walsh told the two of them to stop arguing and instead engage in an exchange of questions and answers.
Miller told the court that he acted only out of fear for his life and the lives of his two small dogs.
“I shot the man because I didn’t want him to shoot me, and that’s about all there is to it,” Miller said.
On Jan. 21, 2012, Miller called 911 and said Mulhall was threatening him, his wife, Derrol Miller, and their two dogs, yelling and cursing about their barking. Paul Miller said Mulhall threatened to kill him and the dogs, so he called 911. Police responded and filed an incident report.
The evening of the shooting, Miller was in his garage getting ready to go fishing the next day when he heard Mulhall yelling at his dogs outside, he said. Miller left his garage, walked through his living room and onto his screened porch. As he did, he heard Mulhall’s front door slam.
He said he was nervous about what would happen next. Thinking Mulhall might try to kills his dogs, he retrieved a loaded pistol from his living room and went to sit on his porch. As he did, he heard Mulhall’s door slam again, and his neighbor came to the white picket fence that divides the two men’s yards and began to shake it, yelling and cursing.
Miller said he approached Mulhall, holding the gun in his right hand, which he kept behind his back. Miller said he thought Mulhall had gone into his house to retrieve a gun and that during their argument, he’d told Miller he was armed.
Miller said he told Mulhall to calm down, that they could work it out.
Then, he said Mulhall moved toward the street as if he were going to come around the fence and onto Miller’s property. At the same time, Mulhall reached his left hand behind him. Miller said he thought Mulhall was reaching for a gun.
So Miller shot. Five times.
“I was afraid he was going to come out with that gun and shoot my brains out,” Miller said. “I thought I had missed every time, until he fell to the ground, and then I knew he hit him.”
Miller then went into his house and called 911.
When Miller finished his story, Roys asked him why he retrieved a gun, rather than the phone, from his living room.
“If you would have used your phone and not your gun, Mr. Mulhall would still be alive,” Roys said.
But Miller said he felt threatened, so his first thought was protection. He said it never entered his mind to call 911.
“But it entered your mind to go and get a loaded pistol and wait on your porch?” Roys said. “You wanted to kill him.”
“You’re crazy,” Miller said.
Roys also asked why he never mentioned that Mulhall had reached for a gun during his initial depositions. Miller said the police confused him with their circular questions and said he thought they were trying to trap him.
“Much like how you’re doing now,” Miller said.
Autopsy results: Mulhall was hit first from the front, then from the back
Mulhall was killed by five bullets. The first three struck him from the front; the final two from the back.
As the prosecution concluded its case against Paul Miller in court Wednesday morning, Roys called Predrag Bulic, chief medical examiner for District 23 of the Florida State Office of the Medical Examiner, to the stand. Bulic led the autopsy on Mulhall the morning after his death.
Using photos taken during the autopsy and a laser pointer to demonstrate, Bullock explained Mulhall’s injuries one by one. He sustained two minor gunshot wounds to each of his legs and a lethal wound to his chest.
That wound, Bulic said, traveled from the right side of Mulhall’s chest and exited through his back, puncturing his heart, lungs, diaphragm and stomach along the way. The punctures caused major hemorrhaging and spilled the contents of Mulhall’s stomach into his abdominal cavity.
He was then shot twice from behind.
The shots were fired from an undetermined distance of greater than three feet, Bulic said, basing his estimation on the trajectory of the bullet wounds through Mulhall’s body. Another witness, Maria Pagan, who works for the firearms division of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, later testified that no gunshot residue was found on Mulhall’s shirt, indicating that he was not shot from close range (although the residue could have been tainted by blood or lost when paramedics moved his body).
The shots to Mulhall’s back had an abnormally steep trajectory as they traveled through Mulhall’s body, meaning he was probably turned and slouched toward the ground when he was hit, Bulic said.
Roys turned away from the witness stand and bent her back so it was nearly parallel to the floor.
“Is this how the defendant would have been positioned when the bullet struck him?” she asked.
“Yes,” Bulic said.
Mulhall’s position showed that he was retreating when as Miller shot, Roys argued.
However, during cross-examination of Bulic, defense attorney Carine Jarosz verified that the trajectory of the bullets that struck Mulhall from the front — the first that hit him — suggested that Mulhall was moving forward, toward his shooter.
Mulhall’s blood alcohol content at the time of his death was 0.188, more than twice the legal limit. However, his liver showed signs of alcoholism, Bulic said, indicating that he had a higher tolerance than most to alcohol.
“Do you have an opinion as to the manner of death?” Roys asked.
“Yes," Bulic said. "The manner of death is homicide."
Miller will finish his testimony when court resumes Thursday morning. The defense will then proceed with its case.
