Woman who said hallucination told her to kill gets sentenced to decades in prison

A Northern Kentucky woman will spend decades behind bars for intentionally and fatally striking a pedestrian with her car in the parking lot of a shopping center in Covington’s Latonia neighborhood.

In March, a Kenton County jury found 47-year-old Miller guilty of murder but mentally ill. Circuit Judge Kathy Lape sentenced her on Tuesday to 30 years in prison – a punishment that matches the jury’s recommendation.

Miller revved her engine and sped up on 54-year-old Frank Harris before running into him on March 29, 2021, prosecutors said at trial, pointing to a video of the killing captured on a nearby store’s security camera.

A witness said the collision sent Harris roughly 10 feet into the air and the man landed head-first onto the sidewalk along Winston Avenue. He died at the scene.

“You revved your engine and you hit this man,” Lape said, describing the surveillance video played at trial as “frightening.”

Miller and her lawyers argued at trial that she was legally insane when she struck Harris. Jurors disagreed but found that Miller was suffering from mental illness at the time.

The verdict means Miller will be housed at a correctional facility but offered treatment until either a medical professional decides it is no longer necessary or her sentence expires, according to state law.

Miller’s attorneys asked the judge to issue a lighter sentence than what jurors recommended, adding that her deafness could make her isolated and vulnerable in prison. Miller, who communicates through writing and sign language, did not make a statement in court.

“What happened to Frank Harris was a tragedy, I don’t think anyone can deny that,” said Christopher Meier, Miller’s public defender. “I think it’s something that Miss Miller is fully remorseful over.”

While prosecutors couldn't point to a precise motivation for Miller killing a stranger, they said she was hospitalized in 2016 for homicidal ideations and, almost four months before Harris’ death, she allegedly tried to strangle a man sitting in his car using a cord or rope.

Miller was never charged in that incident because the victim didn’t file a complaint, though prosecutors say it’s evidence that she has a history of homicidal intentions.

“Marsha Miller is a scary individual,” said Kenton County Commonwealth’s Attorney Rob Sanders. “She’s been homicidal, we know, for years.”

At trial, Miller’s attorneys said there is only one explanation that makes sense: severe mental illness prevented her from realizing what she was doing.

Since the time Miller was a teenager, she has suffered from hallucinations, Meier said previously. Specifically, she's been haunted by figures she refers to as “the man in the black suit” and “the man in the plain clothes.”

While she was driving to get some food, Meier said, Miller hallucinated that the man in the black suit appeared in her car and directed her to turn into the shopping center’s parking lot.

Miller saw the man in plain clothes standing in the parking lot and the man in black instructed her to strike the other man, Meier said, adding Miller believed that doing so would bring an end to her hallucinations.

It wasn’t until Miller saw the blood on her windshield that she realized she hit a real person, according to Meier.

Ultimately, jurors never heard testimony from a doctor who could speak to Miller’s account of her hallucinations due to an error in the report provided to prosecutors in discovery, which misstated Miller's diagnosis.

While a licensed clinical psychologist who evaluated Miller found she suffers from psychosis, he testified that he couldn’t find her criminally insane.

“The fact remains that you killed an innocent person,” Lape told Miller before handing down the sentence.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: NKY woman who said hallucination told her to kill stranger gets prison