Nearly 37 years after he was convicted of murdering Lee Standifer, a 21-year-old Knoxville woman he'd been dating, David Earl Miller has been executed in the electric chair. Miller was pronounced dead at 7:25 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 6. His last words were "Beats being on death row."
Miller is the second Tennessee prisoner to be killed by electrocution in as many months. Edmund Zagorski was executed in the electric chair in November. After going nearly a decade without an execution, Tennessee has now carried out three at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville this year. Miller, the longest-serving prisoner on Tennessee's death row, had been awaiting death for nearly 37 years.
The Scene offered Miller the chance to give a statement before his death, and sent questions to him through his attorneys, but he declined.
The brutal murder for which Miller was sentenced to death took place on May 20, 1981. After the two had gone on a date, Miller killed Standifer — who was intellectually disabled — by bludgeoning her with a fireplace poker before stabbing her dead body numerous times. Prosecutors asserted at the trial that the murder had taken place after Miller sexually assaulted Standifer. The state’s medical examiner found evidence that sexual intercourse had taken place, but Standifer’s body showed no signs of sexual assault. The court determined that there was not enough evidence of sexual assault to put it before the jury. Later, during Miller’s sentencing, a different judge allowed prosecutors to present that charge to a jury, but the jury rejected it.
Gov. Bill Haslam announced just after noon on Thursday that he would not intervene to stop the execution, despite a plea for clemency from Miller's attorneys that detailed the condemned man's horrific history of mental illness and childhood physical and sexual abuse. As a young boy, Miller was allegedly raped by his mother on multiple occasions, and brutally beaten by his stepfather. Miller's attorneys note that by age 10 he had attempted to kill himself twice and was already drinking alcohol. Sexual abuse, mental illness and addiction would be a theme throughout his life, up until the night he killed Lee Standifer.
Miller had a daughter of his own, Stephanie Thoman, who was just 2 years old when her father was sent to prison. She first remembers meeting him when she was 12 and has maintained a relationship with him since.
“I think that he’s a kind person," she told the Scene earlier this week, when asked to describe her 61-year-old father as he is today. "He’s quiet. He kind of stays to himself. It’s hard to imagine him getting mad.”
Lee Standifer's 84-year-old mother, Helen, lives in Arizona now. She did not make the trip to see the man who murdered her daughter put to death.
“I don’t see that it accomplishes anything at all," she told the Scene in an interview. "It’s immaterial. It doesn’t bring my daughter back, it doesn’t accomplish anything. Frankly, I don’t see any reason to be there.”
