A state appeals court for the second time has thrown out the death sentences of Victor Cornell Miller in the high-profile killings of a retired Tulsa banker and an Owasso trucking company owner 14 years ago.
In a decision filed Friday, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Miller’s first-degree murder convictions but modified one of his sentences to life without the possibility of parole and reversed a second sentence, sending the case back to district court for a resentencing.
Miller had claimed that errors occurred during his most recent trial, including prosecutorial misconduct and problems with jury selection and a victim impact statement.
The state’s high court in criminal matters heard oral arguments in Miller’s case last October.
Miller has been convicted twice of the 1999 shooting deaths of Mary Agnes Bowles, a 77-year-old retired Tulsa banker and a former St. Francis Hospital Auxiliary president, and Jerald Thurman, the 44-year-old owner of Townsley Trucking of Owasso.
Bowles was kidnapped from a Tulsa Promenade mall parking lot on Aug. 31, 1999, and was driven to a secluded area in northern Tulsa County, where she was killed. Thurman happened to be picking up a load of dirt in the area at the time and also was killed.
Prosecutors maintained that Miller shot Thurman before his accomplice, John Fitzgerald Hanson, also known as George John Hanson, shot Bowles.
At a trial in 2002, Miller was convicted of both murders and was sentenced to die for Thurman’s murder. He received a no-parole life term for Bowles’ murder.
The Court of Criminal Appeals overturned those convictions and sentences in 2004 and granted a new trial. He was convicted again and sentenced to death for both murders during the second trial in 2008.
On Friday the appeals court modified his sentence in the Bowles murder and ordered a new sentencing for the Thurman murder.
At his co-defendant’s original trial in 2001, a jury sentenced Hanson to death for murdering Bowles and imposed a no-parole life prison term for Thurman’s murder. The Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the convictions in 2003 but threw out Hanson’s death sentence.
At a resentencing trial, Hanson was again sentenced to death, and the Court of Criminal Appeals upheld that sentence in 2009.
Local
An investigation into a Tulsa dentist has revealed that one person contracted hepatitis C as a result of a visit to that practice, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health and Tulsa Health Department.
Continuing coverage: Read more on the investigation here.
The bus had two occupants, a driver and an 8-year-old girl. The driver had a suspended license, police said.
