CUMBERLAND -- Lawyers for John A. Miller IV, an unemployed store clerk charged with murder in the strangulation death last year of a 17-year-old Carroll County girl, asked a judge yesterday to limit the evidence that could be used to decide whether their client should be sentenced to death in a trial scheduled to begin next month.
In a series of motions addressing the sentencing hearing that would take place if Miller is convicted, Assistant Public Defenders Jerri A. Peyton-Braden and Jerome M. Levine asked Allegany County Circuit Judge Gary G. Leasure to restrict the "victim impact statements" that could be presented by relatives of the slain girl, Shen D. Poehlman.
Poehlman, an Eldersburg tennis star who had won an academic scholarship to Florida State University, was found dead in her car at a Reisterstown apartment complex July 29, 1998 -- a day after she had agreed to baby-sit for a stranger who approached her at a swimming pool.
Miller, 27, a former high school baseball star from Rochester, N.Y., who had lived in Maryland for a few months before his arrest, is charged with first-degree murder, attempted rape, first-degree sex offense, robbery and false imprisonment.
The trial was moved from Baltimore County at the request of the defense after the case received extensive media coverage.
Baltimore County prosecutors agreed to restrictions in the defense motions, including one that would allow only a single family member to testify during a sentencing hearing.
Leasure did not rule immediately on other defense motions that were contested by prosecutors, such as a request to bar victim impact statements that included Poehlman's "background and life history."
Defense lawyers also asked the judge to rule that prosecutors' pursuit of the death penalty in the case is unconstitutional.
After an hourlong hearing attended by several friends and relatives of the victim, lawyers for the two sides met in the judge's chambers. At the request of defense lawyers, portions of a pre-sentence investigation of Miller prepared by state correctional officials were eliminated. Lawyers would not give details of what was taken out.
In October, Leasure ruled that Miller's statements to police after the girl's death can be presented to jurors.
Yesterday, the judge set a schedule for the trial, which is to begin Jan. 24. He set aside four days for jury selection and said testimony would begin Jan. 28.
