Sheriff: Murderer's claimed contact with 2 jurors in court elevator didn't happen exactly as he says
Corrected: A convicted double murderer in Pennsylvania is seeking a new trial in his latest case based on his claim to have had unsupervised contact, in a courthouse elevator, with two of the jurors who later convicted him.
The November encounter occurred after he became separated from the court deputies who were escorting him, handcuffed, Jeffrey Eldon Miles Sr. said in a filed motion. Franklin County sheriff Dane Anthony said in a Thursday press release that “The incident did not unfold exactly as Mr. Miles has indicated,” the Herald-Mail reports.
Anthony also said his investigation “did not yield any gross negligence” on the part of his staff, citing the “performance-hindering challenges” of the courthouse’s layout. He declined to discuss the incident in detail, saying that a lawyer had advised him not to do so.
In his filing, the 51-year-old Miles said he was left alone on the elevator, which then opened on a floor where two jurors were waiting to board it. In addition to arguing that the close encounter could have changed their thinking about his case, requiring a reversal of his November conviction, Miles also points out the worst-case scenario that could have ensued.
He could have taken a juror hostage, or potentially simply ridden the elevator down to the ground alone and escaped, or been physically attacked by an angry family member of a victim, he writes.
Miles is currently serving two consecutive life terms. In addition to his November first-degree murder conviction for the 1995 slaying of Angie Daley, he pleaded guilty last year in the 2010 slaying of Kristi Dawn Hoke, the Herald-Mail reported at the time. Prosecutors had been seeking the death penalty in Hoke’s case, saying in court documents that she was a confidential informant.
The Shippensburg News Chronicle (sub. req.) and another Herald-Mail article provide additional details.
Corrected on Dec. 22 to say that Miles is seeking a new trial, not a mistrial.
