Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 25, 2001
LARGO -- One by one, relatives of Andre Miller told a judge about the loss they have endured in the five years since Miller was killed on a night of racial disturbances in St. Petersburg.
"Everyone loved Andre Miller," said Elizabeth Barnes, his girlfriend and mother of his 7-year-old daughter. "Nobody in the world had anything bad to say about him."
But for all their loss, some in Miller's family said they didn't want the death penalty for his killer, Jermaine Green. "I do forgive him," Barnes said.
A judge and jury obliged.
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Bruce Boyer sentenced Green to life in prison without parole on Wednesday after a jury recommended that sentence over the death penalty.
Jurors, who convicted Green of first-degree murder earlier this month, deliberated for about two hours before making the recommendation after the penalty phase of his murder trial.
Moments after his sentencing, Green, 28, repaid the sympathy and compassion of Miller's family by glaring at them and uttering a profane insult before bailiffs led him away.
Miller's family sat in disbelief, someone saying loudly, "What's that for?"
Patricia Booker, Miller's mother, said afterward that she was relieved that nearly five years to the day of her son's killing she finally has a measure of finality and justice.
"I wish I had some words today other than telling you I have closure," she said.
Miller was driving home from his job as a cook at Leverock's on St. Pete Beach when he pulled his car into the Pinellas Pointe Apartments at 2175 62nd Place S just after midnight on Oct. 25, 1996.
Prosecutors say that Green along with Wakeene Blanche, 25, and Antron Peterson, 22, were already in the parking lot breaking into cars, taking advantage of police distracted by the disturbance.
Peterson said he bolted as Miller, 26, got out of his car. He heard shots behind him and assumed Miller was armed and firing at him. But prosecutors Kendall Davidson and Dawn Hofman said Miller was unarmed. Miller was killed instantly by a shot between his eyes fired from about three feet.
For three years, the case went unsolved. Police discovered the murder weapon under a bed in Green's apartment when they responded to a fight there months after the killing. But they had no evidence showing he was the killer.
Then in 1999, a tip led police to Peterson, stepson of police Sgt. Al White, a close friend of former police Chief Goliath Davis.
Detectives, eager to solve the case, testified that they offered Peterson immunity up front if he were to tell them his story. Peterson agreed and was never charged with a crime, though he also could have been charged with first-degree murder.
Defense attorney Dick Watts questioned giving Green the death penalty when Peterson walked away "without even a day in jail."
Green's family insist he is innocent.
"If he did do it, I don't think he did it intentionally," Green's father, Thomas Green Jr., told the judge. "He's not a troublemaker."