A defense attorney for Bryan Miller, who murdered and mutilated two young women in Phoenix 30 years ago, has urged a judge to spare him from the death penalty.
“Sentencing Bryan to life in prison is a harsh sentence and an appropriate sentence,” attorney Denise Dees told Judge Suzanne Cohen this week.
“There’ll be no risk to society in allowing Bryan to endure the rest of his life in a prison cell.”
The penalty phase in the capital murder trial began in the Maricopa County Superior Court Tuesday, a week after Miller was found guilty of murdering Angela Brosso and Melanie Bernas.
Cohen handed down the verdict after deliberating alone in the bench trial.
Dees said the defense accepted the guilty verdict and knew the judge had not taken her responsibility lightly.
“Going forward, that responsibility is not going to get any easier,” she told Cohen. “The next decision falls on your shoulders and your shoulders alone. And that is whether Bryan lives or dies.”
Dees pointed to Miller’s love for his daughter, his “model” behavior in prison and his enduring bonds with friends and family as reasons for a life sentence.
“Thirty years ago Bryan committed horrible acts,” she said. “But Bryan is not a horrible person.”
The murders of two women
Miller, 50, was convicted of kidnapping, murdering and attempting to sexually assault Brosso and Bernas in the early 1990s, when he was 20 years old.
Brosso’s headless, mutilated body was found on the morning of Nov. 9, 1992, just east of the apartment building where she lived by Cactus Road and Interstate 17. She had gone out for a bike ride along the canal the night before and never returned home.
Her head was found 11 days later in the Arizona Canal where it runs by Metrocenter.
Bernas was found dead in the same canal on the morning of Sept. 22, 1993. She is also believed to have been out riding along the canal when she was attacked. She had received the same fatal stab wound to the back as Brosso, and had cuts to her chest and neck.
Both women had been sexually assaulted as or after they died, a man’s DNA recovered from vaginal swabs.
It wasn’t matched to Miller until 2015, when new forensic techniques led to a breakthrough in the case.
He pleaded not guilty for reasons of insanity. His attorneys argued he was in the grip of a dissociative trauma state caused by childhood abuse at the hands of his mother, Ellen, when he killed Brosso and Bernas.
Though the defense was rejected, Miller’s mental health and childhood is expected to again loom large in the penalty phase.
“Bryan didn’t choose to have Ellen as a mother,” Dees said. “Bryan didn’t choose to have these exposures to violence and sex in early childhood and adolescence. But for that trauma, these offenses would not have occurred.”
Before Dees spoke, Cohen heard victim impact statements from Brosso’s mother, Linda, and Bernas’s sister, Jill. Both women spoke of the immense, unrelenting pain and grief they had endured since the murders.
Jill said it had been difficult to hear weeks of testimony about Miller’s traumatic experiences, which paled in comparison to what was done to the two young women.
“If you happened to join the trial at any time after the first two weeks, you’d have thought the defendant was the victim in this case,” she said.
As she began her address, Dees acknowledged the family statements, saying she could not imagine how difficult delivering them must have been.
“I’m sorry they had to give those statements,” she said. “I’m sorry that we’re here today.”
‘I knew something bad was going to happen’
The defense played a recorded interview with Pinky Katayama, who was a neighbor of Miller’s for two years when he was a child in Hawaii.
Katayama said Ellen treated Miller “like a dog.” She would say awful things to him, like “I wish you were dead” and “You’re not worth anything,” she said, and once saw Ellen backhand her son across the face.
She said she called Child Protective Services at least three times to report that Miller was being abused, but nothing was ever done.
Katayama said Ellen and Miller moved away suddenly, shortly after she had accused Ellen of stealing, and she had no idea where they had gone. She wished she knew, she said, so she could keep tabs on Miller.
“I knew he’d need help,” she said. “That he’d need somebody in his corner.”
But she heard nothing about the mother and son for decades — until she got a call from a member of Miller’s defense team.
When she heard the call was about Bryan Miller, Katayama said her mind leapt to one thing.
“I said, ‘I hope he killed her,’” she said. “And that’s not a nice thing to say. I mean, you know. If you had to kill somebody, you should kill the one who hurt you.
“But I just knew something bad was going to happen with them.”
‘I will always support him’
Donna Grimmer wept at points in her testimony as she recalled memories of her brother Paul, Miller’s father, who died in 1977.
She met Miller, then five, for the first time at Paul’s funeral, recalling him as a “happy little boy” who was running around the funeral home talking to everybody.
They reconnected in 1994 and she took Miller to Paul’s grave, she said. Years later, they began to keep in touch on Facebook.
She was thankful Miller was in her life, Grimmer said, “because to me, that means I have part of my brother back.”
Under cross-examination, Grimmer said she knew what Miller had done to Brosso and Bernas and supported him regardless.
“I don’t like what he did, if he did it,” she said. “But he’s still my nephew. And I will always love him and I will always support him in every way I can.”
Other defense witnesses this week included a high school friend of Miller’s who said he carried her books to class when she had a sprained ankle, and a specialist in childhood emotional disorders.
The case returns to court Thursday.