- March 5, 2025
Court recessed, and Paul Miller walked slowly from the room. His wife held the heavy courtroom door for him, but Miller passed her by. He stood alone in the hallway, his shoulders hunched, gazing out the court’s floor-length windows to the parking lot four floors below.
These could be his last days of freedom.
People milled in the hallway behind him: attorneys, bailiffs, people who came to watch the first day of the long-anticipated second-degree murder case. Miller’s family members, too, waited behind him. He turned once, briefly, and scanned the faces around him before returning to the window as if they weren’t there. He rested his head on the window pane.
Everyone in and around Courtroom 401 was there because of Miller, the man accused of killing his neighbor last March.
Thirty-two potential jurors spent all day Monday being screened through hours of intensive questions about their personal lives, their thoughts on gun control, their fluency in local news — all were at the courtroom because of Miller. The handful of audience members, the four attorneys with their boxes of paperwork, the result of hours of investigation and research into case law, were there because of him. Miller was the star of the show, but he was the least vocal of them all.
He spoke just three times Monday, and each time, he uttered the same three words: “Yes, your honor.”
Miller’s long-anticipated trial comes after he shot his neighbor, Dana Mulhall, on March 14, 2012, with a Kel-Tek 9mm handgun. The two had a rocky relationship, and that night, as Mulhall returned home from a local bar, they began to argue over Miller’s barking dog.
Later, Miller would say his neighbor made a threatening gesture, perhaps as though he were reaching for a gun in his back pocket.
That’s when Miller pulled the trigger. Five pulls, five bullets, five holes in Mulhall. Two of the bullets hit Mulhall in his back, suggesting the man had turned in retreat. He died the same day.
Miller insisted to investigators that he felt threatened by his neighbor. As his trial opened Monday, defense attorney Douglas Williams referenced a 911 call Miller placed in January 2012 regarding his neighbor’s behavior. His daughter said during deposition that her father confided to her just one week before the shooting that he was afraid of Mulhall.
After he shot, Miller called 911 and told dispatchers he’d shot his neighbor.
“He begged me to,” Miller said.
Miller was arrested three days after the shooting, enough time for investigators to determine they had a case against him. He was later released on $300,000 bail.
As he sat in court Monday, Miller looked weary of the process. His wife, who accompanied him to his many lengthy pretrial hearings, brought faded couch cushions to place on the harsh, wooden benches.
The jury, whose backs had straightened and whose attention had heightened when the judge announced the trial they were sitting was a murder case, wilted as the hours of tedious questioning went on. If convicted, Miller faces life in prison. But as the hours melted away, the solemn courthouse atmosphere did, too. In its place: fidgeting and sideways glances to the clock.
As Miller stared out the window Monday, his expression was neutral. He spoke to no one. His wife approached him and wrapped his arm around hers, a silent invitation to leave. They left the court together, carrying their couch cushions with them, on their way home just in time for dinner.
Miller’s trial is expected to last a week and a half. For daily updates, check www.palmcoastobserver.com.
