Canal killings trial: Miller deserves death sentence for brutal murders, judge told

It's possible, prosecutor Vince Imbordino said Thursday, that he was was about to try to persuade Judge Suzanne Cohen to make a decision she didn't want to make.

It might be true, Imbordino said, it might not be.

"Obviously," he told the judge, "none of us know what you're thinking."

Cohen's face gave nothing away.

The decision Imbordino was referring to is whether Cohen will sentence Bryan Miller to death for the murders of Angela Brosso and Melanie Bernas in Phoenix 30 years ago.

The judge is in the unusual position of deciding alone if Miller will receive the death penalty, a decision whose moral weight is typically borne collectively by jurors.

He was found guilty of the two murders in April after a six-month bench trial, at which he pleaded not guilty for reasons of insanity.

Imbordino said Miller's defense attorney Richard Parker had argued the day prior that a death sentence wasn't necessary for justice.

"(He argued) that the defendant is a broken man and that he doesn't deserve to be executed," Imbordino said. "My response to that is, who deserves to be executed depends upon what they did."

What Miller did deserved execution, he said.

Canal killings trial: Bryan Miller's attorney asks for mercy as sentencing nears

'This murder was horrific'

Brosso was stabbed in the back on the evening of Nov. 8, 1992 as she cycled along a bike path close to her apartment home by Cactus Road and Interstate 17.

After inflicting the fatal wound, Imbordino said, Miller, then 20, dragged her off the path to a darker area and "butchered" her.

"I know we don’t like looking at these pictures, but this is what he did to Angela," he said, as he displayed a photo to Cohen, the image hidden from the public.

"Just think of the time and the effort that was required to butcher this young woman, to have to turn her over side to side in order to try to transect her body and her lower spine," he said. "And take off her head."

Brosso's body was found where she was mutilated, and her head located 11 days later in the Arizona Canal.

Imbordino said it was unknown if Miller had carried her head to the canal the night he killed her or kept it somewhere for a period of time.

"You could take the position that every murder is bad," he said. "This murder was horrific."

On Sept. 21, 1993, he killed Bernas, by the I-17 underpass near Castles and Coasters, close to where Brosso's head was found.

The 17-year-old high school student is also believed to have been cycling along the canal when she was attacked.

Miller stabbed her, dragged her over the asphalt, cut across her neck and carved letters and a cross into her chest before dressing her in a turquoise bodysuit and dumping her into the canal, Imbordino said. The prosecutor suggested the carvings were a deliberate choice to mislead investigators, the bodysuit and disposal of her cut clothing clear signs of conscious planning.

Bernas, like Brosso, was also sexually assaulted during the attack, Imbordino said.

"The evidence not clear whether she was alive or dead, but most likely dead. Thank goodness," he said, before adding: "Hard to say that."

'He did not give them a chance'

"He did not give them a chance to live their lives," Imbordino said. "He chose to take that from them for his own sexual pleasure."

The murders were driven by Miller's sexual sadism, Imbordino said, not by anger he harbored toward his mother, whose parenting was a significant focus of the trial.

"A sexual sadist, and this defendant is such, has the ability to control their urges," he said. "He chose not to control them when he murdered Melanie and Angela."

Imbordino asked where Miller's humanity and empathy — qualities Parker pointed to on Wednesday — were when he murdered Brosso and Bernas.

"You may decide that today they're there," he told Cohen. "But they weren't there when it mattered the most."

In a brief statement delivered to court Monday, Imbordino said, Miller had expressed no remorse for the murders.

"I didn't hear him say he was remorseful for killing Melanie and Angela," he said. "I didn't hear those words. And somebody could say, 'Well, you have to read between the lines.'"

But Cohen had to decide if Miller was deserving of mercy, Imbordino said.

"One might say that if you're asking for mercy, perhaps — perhaps — it might be more warranted if you admitted what you did, if you took responsibility for what you did," he said.

"Just to say, 'I'm sorry.'"

Past images: 'Canal killings': Judge hears about Bryan Miller's 'Zombie Hunter' persona

Mitigating circumstances questioned

Imbordino cast a skeptical eye over a list of 86 mitigating circumstances submitted by the defense.

He suggested it had been inflated, giving as an example that three separate entries — "traumatic death of father", "loss of parental figure" and "death of parent at an early age" — appeared to all address Miller's father dying when he was five.

"I don’t mean to minimize the loss of your father at an early age," Imbordino said. "My point is they listed three mitigating circumstances for what was one."

Other things on the list were unproven (Miller's autism spectrum disorder) or irrelevant (his being an only child) or contradicted by other parts of the defense case (the fact he had positive friendships), Imbordino said.

He wasn't trying to say Miller's childhood was normal, Imbordino said, though he reminded Cohen that Miller's mother Ellen, who died in 2010, has not been able to defend herself against the claims of physical and emotional abuse.

In a brief rebuttal, Parker said Imbordino seemed to love using the phrase "sexual sadist."

"They're painting Brian as a sexual sadist because they want you to think of him as a monster," he said. "That's the framing they want you to use when making a life and death decision."

In fact, Parker said, sexual sadism disorder is a mental health disorder, and one of many reasons for a life sentence.

"The world is not black and white," Parker told Cohen, as he argued Miller's actions were shaped by his traumatic childhood. "Bryan was not born a sexual sadist."

The backstory: The man accused in the Phoenix canal killings goes to trial 30 years after 2 women died

'They didn't get to choose'

Imbordino told Cohen that whatever mitigating circumstances she felt existed, they did not warrant leniency.

"What he stole from these young women deserves execution," he said. The planning, the thinking, the brutality, the gravity of the murders, the impact on the families — it all had to be considered.

"This will sound harsh, I'm sure," Imbordino said, as he drew to a close.

"Angela and Melanie didn't get to choose when they died. They didn't get to choose the day, the hour, the moment."

"This defendant deserves to know the day, the hour, of his death, for what he did."

Cohen said she is aiming to hand down the sentence on June 7, but the date may change.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Canal killings: Miller deserves death sentence for murders, judge told