- March 5, 2025
Paul Miller will spend life in prison for shooting his neighbor Dana Mulhall to death in 2012, a judge ruled during a sentencing hearing Tuesday.
Miller, 66, will not be eligible for parole. He was found guilty of second-degree murder at trial last month.
“The seriousness of this crime, in the court’s opinion, stuns the senses of reasonable people,” Circuit Judge J. David Walsh said. “There is no sentence that is appropriate in this matter except for the maximum allowed by law.”
Before sentencing, Dana Mulhall’s sister, Karen Mulhall, asked Walsh to sentence Miller to life, saying that he tore apart her family by shooting Dana Mulhall during an argument over a barking dog. After she testified, she read a letter written by her brother, Michael Mulhall, her voice unsteady as she did so.
Michael Mulhall wrote about how he and his brother frequently hunted with one another, noting that none of their guns was kept in Florida, because they only hunted in the northeastern United States. To Michael Mulhall, that makes his brother’s death all the more painful.
“Because of Dana’s hunting experience, he knew when that bullet ripped through his chest that he was going to die,” Michael Mulhall’s letter read. “I can see him scared and trying to get away. He had no chance and nowhere to go. To make things worse, he had to feel four more bullets hit him.”
The image has haunted him and his family since the shooting in early 2012, Michael Mulhall wrote in his letter — so much so that just before Miller went to trial, Michael Mulhall visited his brother’s former house and stood in his yard where he died.
Miller was just yards away in his house, awaiting trial. Michael Miller had often dreamed about exacting revenge himself, and the temptation was great. Instead, he walked away. Miller should have shown the same self-restraint, Michael Mulhall wrote.
“The revenge we’ll have to settle for is knowing that Paul Miller will die in prison,” Michael Mulhall wrote, echoing his sister’s plea for a life sentence.
Miller’s defense attorneys asked Walsh to give Miller the minimum allowed sentence of 25 years with the possibility of parole, saying his poor health and age made a shorter sentence appropriate.
“Even if he did get out on parole, he would be a very old man at 91 years old and wouldn’t be a threat to anyone,” defense attorney Douglas Williams said.
Just before he was sentenced, Miller addressed the court, apologizing to Mulhall’s family as well as his own for the grief his actions caused. Later in the sentencing hearing, prosecution criticized Miller for failing to show remorse for Mulhall’s death throughout his trial.
But Walsh said Miller’s level of remorse was not a factor in the sentencing; the crime itself was. Miller was given credit for the time he served in jail while awaiting sentence and will be transported to a state prison facility.
