12 years ago, schoolmate's punch took a life

Josh never regained consciousness and died two days later. Newspapers around the country printed the story. A state legislator made Miller a poster boy for school-bullying legislation he sponsored and passed in the heat of the news. Radio talk jocks broadcast callers who opined freely about what ought to be done to Miller.

Six months later and weeks after the infamous Columbine school shootings, Miller was tried as an adult, found guilty of felony murder and sentenced to life in prison. National media such as CNN and Esquire magazine came to Woodstock.

In the years since, Miller has been largely forgotten except by those involved.

Ellis Prince, who was then Josh's 26-year-old youth pastor at Summit Baptist Church, remembers his first experiences helping teenagers, Josh's friends, deal with grief and anger at Miller and the line of news trucks with satellite dishes cruising for interviews.

"This wasn't Michael Jackson; this was their friend, Josh. They didn't want Josh to be celebritized or abused," Prince said from Baltimore, where he now pastors a church.

That media circus atmosphere still exists in Miller's head if not in the neighborhood where it happened.

He has time daily to think about the incident from his cell in Central State Prison near Macon, where he turned 27 last September. He will be eligible for parole in two years and is indignant that he has served as long as he has.

"I didn't do nothing that the judge didn't do, that the DA didn't do in their lifetimes," he postulated. "I got in a fistfight, but I was subjected to life in prison because of a freak accident."

John and Vickie Belluardo, Josh's parents, told CNN in an interview that aired in 2000 that not only Miller but his parents ought to be in prison for their lack of discipline. The Millers at least have a chance to get their son back. The consequences for their son and lives are permanent, they said.

When contacted at his North Georgia home for an interview, John Belluardo's voice cracked as he declined to talk. The family has been largely silent through the years, though they did send messages to media at one point that their son was not bullied by Miller, the one point in which they agree with him.

"There are bullies in the world, but I am not a bully. ... This was just a fight," Miller said in an interview last summer.

His record, used liberally during the trial by then-prosecutor Rachelle Carnesale, disagrees with his self-assessment.

In middle school, Miller had been called in for discipline more than 30 times and was suspended 11 times. Teachers testified that Miller would curse them and was disruptive, throwing items, shouting and interrupting classes. Miller tripped and shoved students and spit in one girl's face. His principal testified that they suggested counseling for Miller, but that the boy's parents were not always cooperative with their suggestions about discipline.

Bus mates described him as a 115-pound terror who intimidated, threatened and mocked boys and girls with equal disdain. He had punched another neighborhood boy from behind in an earlier confrontation.

On the other hand, Miller's Boy Scout leader told detectives Miller was no trouble with the 25 others in the troop.

Miller says now he was acting out in anger, trying to get kicked out of school. His family had moved to Woodstock from New York after sixth grade, and he was hoping to force his parents to send him back to live with family.

Allen and Robin Miller could not be reached.

Miller said he had calmed down after middle school, but the day of the fatal attack, Miller was harassing Josh, and students on the bus told detectives he was a habitual problem. The two boys, who lived in houses facing each other across Shallow Cove, did not get along, the students said.

Josh was a school wrestler and larger than Miller, and would sometimes exchange schoolboy bluster with him. This day, Miller heaped abuse on Josh, calling him names and challenging him. Josh turned to him and told him to come to his yard for a fight.

"I didn't think I could beat him," Miller said.

That is why he punched him from behind after they stepped off the bus, he said.

Josh fell to his knees at the first blow, and Miller moved to his front and hit him again and threw a kick before walking away. Detectives picked him up later as he drove past in a car.

A medical examiner agreed in court testimony about Miller's punch being a freak accident. It had a 1-in-2,300 chance of rupturing the small blood vessel that flooded Josh's brain with blood, killing him, court records say.

Alicia Lanier, now 30, lived in a home that shared backyards with the Belluardos and remembers the media furor the killing created.

Twelve years removed from the fog of headlines and radio talk show diatribes, she assesses the tragedy. Miller had been a problem boy, with a bad mouth and attitude, she said. But Josh was not bullied by him. In her family, Josh himself had a reputation for minor troublemaking and gave grief short of blows to her brother, Alec Adams.

"He would throw rocks at our dogs and stuff like that. Just boy stuff," Lanier said.

Miller said that he should not have walked away unpunished just because he was a juvenile.

"I should have gotten some time out of it. I took a child's life. I took it from his family," he said.

But a life sentence? he asked. That is the same sentence some of his prison-mates have for killing people during carjackings.

"The whole world knows I didn’t mean for this to happen," he said.

District Attorney Gary Moss does not waver from his choice to try Miller as an adult under the felony murder rule. That rule says if someone commits a felony, in this case aggravated assault, and a victim dies, the person can be tried for murder even if murder was not the intent.

Not long before the trial, the state passed a crackdown law on those committing violent crimes, saying 15-year-olds charged with murder should be tried as adults.

"He killed somebody, and a jury decided it was murder," Moss said. "He was fairly convicted."

And at every level of appeal, judges affirmed the conviction and turned back arguments that the publicity and notoriety of the Columbine shootings affected the trial's  outcome.

Moss said his staff won the case, "But I feel bad for everybody. I feel bad for Josh's family. And I feel bad for Jonathan's family. As I said then, there's no joy in our hearts today because these two families have suffered serious losses."

Carnesale, who now is acting director of the state Office of the Child Advocate, also viewed it as a tragedy for everyone involved, including Miller. But as for his being freed: "That is a decision for the parole board," she said.