- March 6, 2025
Paul Miller has sat through eight pretrial hearings since March 2012, when he shot and killed his neighbor, an act he said was done in self-defense. At each hearing, he comes to the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center dressed in a button-up shirt and khakis, and sits in the courthouse’s straight-backed, wooden benches for anywhere from 10 minutes to four hours as he waits for his case to be called from the others on that day’s docket.
Each time, his wife sits beside him, her arm wrapped around his as they wait.
When Miller’s name was called for his pretrial Wednesday, he stood up and walked to the front of the courtroom, his shoulders a bit hunched, as if he were weary. He did not pause as he approached the gate to the stand as most do; he has done this before. He stood before a judge, his hands clasped in front of him, waiting for the hearing to begin.
Usually, Miller’s defense attorney would request a continuance on the case so another witness could be interviewed or, more recently, so a linguist could analyze Miller’s Tennessee-influenced dialect.
But this time, things were different.
“Your honor, at this time we would like to announce we’re ready for trial,” Douglas Williams, Miller’s defense attorney, said.
His trial will start with jury selection on May 20. Miller faces second-degree murder charges after shooting his neighbor, Dana Mulhall, during an argument over barking dogs, on March 14, 2012.
Williams indicated at a past hearing that he will be invoking a stand-your-ground defense, in accordance with Florida Statute 776.013, which says a person “who is not engaged in unlawful activity and who is attacked … has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he or she reasonably believe it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself, or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”
A similar statute, 776.012, justifies the use of deadly force to stop a person from forcibly entering a dwelling, residence or occupied vehicle of the person using the force.
Miller reported the shooting to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office right after it happened and told deputies that Mulhall made a gesture that he interpreted as threatening. In response, Miller fired five shots. Three of them hit Mulhall. The two had argued in the past.
Investigators did not arrest Miller at first, but eventually charged him with second-degree murder, in which the act is not premeditated.
His trial is expected to last two weeks.
