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From death row, a message of hope

The Rev. Thom Miller found his faith while in prison for stabbing a man. Now, he councils prisoners, some on death row.

CLEARWATER - When David Brewer walked out of Death Row 6 into the hallway at the Mansfield Correctional Institution in Ohio, the Rev. Thom Miller broke down.

Miller tried to hide his emotions as guards fiddled with Brewer's handcuffs and leg shackles. He turned his head so no one could see his tears and shaking shoulders.

Miller, 48, who lives in Mansfield, Ohio, knew the prison.

A former inmate, he remembered the white soap, the "Rec Cage" where prisoners ran around and the bulletproof glass where their families would visit via telephone. Prisoners wore blue shirts and navy pants. A bright red stripe down the legs meant they were waiting to die.

But Miller still wasn't prepared when he saw Brewer being escorted out the cell where Miller himself had lived for more than two years and had met Brewer, a convicted murderer. He returned not as a friend, but as Brewer's spiritual adviser.

When Miller speaks at the Royalty Theatre in Clearwater tonight, he hopes to bring a message of redemption and forgiveness to anyone willing to listen.

"You don't have to keep doing what you're doing," he says. "God has a way for you to change."

Miller was raised for 11 years in the projects in Cleveland. He never knew his father. His family was so poor his mother made her children eat Corn Flakes with coffee instead of milk.

There was a gym near his house where boxers trained. They were into gambling and drugs. Miller started following them.

"Mom's scrubbing people's underwear, and we're starving," he said. "And they're taking people's gambling money, and I'm eating corned beef."

He found out there was money in drug-dealing and it was easy. No GED was necessary. He never went past the ninth grade.

Miller lived a life of crime, drugs and violence. He was shot three times. He fathered 12 children with five different women. He went to jail more than 20 times for crimes ranging from breaking and entering to grand theft to felonious assault.

But he had money and a good lawyer. He was never incarcerated for more than a month. On his release, his partners were outside of the jail waiting in a limousine.

Then Miller got in a bar fight over a song on the jukebox and stabbed a man in the heart. The man did not die. Two years later, in 1991, Miller was sentenced to 15 years. He was assigned to the most violent area of the prison.

Growing up, Miller didn't believe in God. There were no chapel services, no ministers who made the rounds. The closest he had ever gotten to a sanctuary was playing basketball in a church gym.

But in prison, he had a lot of time to think. Christians had less trouble than he did.

"They were just nicer people," he said. "Even when you're serving Satan, you see the power of a Christian just the way it is. I wasn't sure what I was after. I wanted to be better than what I was."

Two months into his prison sentence, Miller stole another inmate's Bible. One verse in particular, Matthew 25:36, spoke to him: "I was in prison and you came unto me." And on Dec. 4, 1991, he got down on his knees in a prison cell and prayed for the first time.

"I said, "God, If you're real and you really did come for someone like me, you got to help me, because I can't go home to my children' the way I was."

Miller volunteered to work on death row and lived in "the hole" for more than two years, from 1992 to 1994.

He remembers one Christmas when he was there.

A death row inmate kept trying to call his family collect, and they kept refusing the charges. He heard the man say, "Please, Christmas," when he was asked to say his name.

"You could tell they didn't accept the call," Miller said. "I have never been the same."

Miller walked out of prison after more than eight years. He was married 11 days later to Julia Miller, 46. The two had met through Diamond Hill Cathedral's prison ministry in Mansfield. Now they are both ordained ministers and run the Special Visit Prison Ministry at numerous jails and prisons in Ohio.

Even his brother, Richard Miller, who lives in Largo, sees the difference.

"I didn't talk to him for three years when he got out of prison because I didn't believe that Thom Miller had changed," said Richard Miller, who owns a carpet cleaning business and co-owns RAM Media Group. "He's definitely a changed person."

Thom Miller said he saw his faith in action when David Brewer was executed on April 29 by lethal injection.

Miller had baptized Brewer in a plastic laundry cart in the "Rec Cage" a month before. Brewer had confessed to sexually assaulting and killing 21-year-old Sherry Byrne in 1985.

"David was tired," Miller said. "He had been there 18 years, living in that concrete cell. The way he looked at it was punishment for crime."

Miller escorted Brewer to the death house. He left as the medical personnel got Brewer ready for the injection. When Miller returned, he talked to Brewer through the glass.

Ten minutes before the execution, Brewer stood up and said, "I'm ready. Thom, I'm ready. Let's do it. I'm going to go home and meet Jesus. It's going to be okay. It's over with."

He put his hand up against Miller's through the glass, and said, "Thanks."

For Miller, the comfort is in knowing that Brewer is with Jesus Christ. And that he got to be part of it.

"That was my job," he said. "To see if he understood what Jesus was. And understand that he could be forgiven. That God had made a way through Jesus Christ."

- Megan Scott can be reached at 727 771-4303 or mscott@sptimes.com

The Rev. Thom Miller, a former inmate who lived on death row for more than two years, will speak at 7 p.m. today at the Royalty Theatre, 405 Cleveland St., Clearwater. Tickets are $10, but no one will be turned away. For more information, call (727) 441-8868.