Prosecutors say Miller killed 69-year-old William Corporon and Corporon’s 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, outside a Jewish community center before shooting 53-year-old Terri LaManno outside a nearby Jewish retirement home in April 2014.
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Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross Jr., has been on record saying he’s suffering from chronic emphysema and wanted to kill Jewish people before he died. The panel of nine men and eight women will be randomly narrowed to 12 jurors and five alternates after closing arguments. “He’d been plotting and scheming and premeditating his actions for weeks”.
If convicted, Miller could receive the death penalty. He has pleaded not guilty. All three victims were Christian.
“Our people have a right to survive inherently and the right to preserve our heritage and our culture and a safe future for white children”, said Cross, who is acting as his own attorney. Jurors were removed from the courtroom for a time.
The prosecutor used one of Miller’s quotes as his opening statement: “My name’s Glenn Miller, I am an anti-Semite, I hate goddamned Jews”.
With no legal background and a stated disdain for government, Cross was admonished during earlier hearings for loudly interrupting Johnson County District Judge Thomas Kelly Ryan and making disparaging remarks toward members of the court.
Ryan ruled last month that Cross will not be allowed to use a “compelling necessity” defense to justify the killings. Judge Ryan responded, once again claiming the present phase of the trial was not the place to present evidence, but was to determine whether he committed capital murder.
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Cross has said in court that he chose to represent himself because he did not trust his three state-appointed public defenders. Stand-by attorney Mark Manna told the judge he had given Cross guidelines on how to do them and was hesitant to do more in his current capacity.
