It has been a decade since Chuck Poehlman unzipped the body bag to see the thick purple bruise around his daughter's neck and the shoe imprint left on her chest by the man who stood on top of her as he strangled the life out of her with a belt.
Family members attended countless court hearings as John A. Miller IV was tried, convicted of killing 17-year-old Shen Poehlman and sentenced to death.
There have been more court dates since that sentence was overturned and Miller agreed to plead guilty if prosecutors dropped their pursuit of a second death sentence, only to have him spend the past 15 months trying to undo that agreement.
But yesterday, the Poehlman family attended what they hope will be their last sentencing hearing. A Baltimore County judge denied Miller's latest request for a new trial and sentenced him to life in prison without possibility of parole.
"I've been through this for 10 years, hearing about all the rights he has," Chuck Poehlman told the judge in remarks so wrought with emotion that attorneys, court personnel and even the defendant's mother choked up or wept as he spoke. "I'm tired of seeing him. I'm tired of hearing about his rights."
Although Miller's defense attorney asked the judge to preserve some hope - however dim and distant - of release for Miller, Baltimore County Circuit Judge Lawrence R. Daniels said the facts of the case would not permit him to do so.
"The crime that was committed was vicious, cruel, heartless, cold. The adjectives I could string together to describe Shen Poehlman's death could not describe the horror and the terror that this young woman felt in the final moments of her life," he said. "I look to the future and consider the possibility of John Miller walking among us as a free man and I have to say I am totally revulsed by that possibility."
Miller, 36, who suffers from bipolar disorder and has spent the years since being moved off death row in solitary confinement at Supermax, had no visible reaction to the new sentence. And when given a chance to address the judge, Miller declined. Instead, his lawyer read a transcript of the defendant's apology and remarks from 2000 when he asked jurors to spare his life at his first sentencing hearing.
The resolution of the case leaves Miller with few appeal options and the Poehlman family - for the first time in a long while - without a court date on their calendars.
