Miller sentenced to 50 years

ANTIGO — Thursday morning, Judge John Rhode sentenced a local man that was convicted of sexually assaulting his stepdaughter to 50 years in prison.

In February, a jury convicted Robert Miller, 31, of 12 separate felonies, including first-degree sexual assault, first-degree child sex assault with a child under the age of 16 through the use or threat of force and incest with a child by a stepparent.

The victim in the case reported Miller, her stepfather, to the Antigo Police Department in November 2021. She said he had been assaulting her since she was approximately three years old, when the family was living outside of Wisconsin, up until that very week.

District Attorney Kelly Hays read a scathing victim impact statement the victim had written at the onset of the sentencing hearing.

“I believe he deserves nothing,” it read. “He deserves no love, no compassion, and no mercy, because he showed me none of that. He stripped me of my innocence, took away my childhood, and made it to where I can’t trust a man. I hope the people he will be staying in prison with treat him with as much respect as I was given, which was none. I hope he hates himself every second of every day, I hope he feels guilty for everything he put me through, and I hope he rots in that cell. I believe he deserves nothing. I hope he is in prison for the rest of his life.”

Hays — who suggested during the trial that the specificity of the victim’s story proved its veracity — said that if Miller was not given the maximum sentence, he would likely offend again, and again avoid punishment for a long period of time due to his manipulative nature.

“He manipulated the victim with these offenses by telling her not to tell anybody, by abusing her through years, making her think that nobody was going to believe her, because nobody did for the longest time,” Hays said. “The victim disclosed if not exactly what was happening, at least the fact that something was of concern numerous times, and each time, the defendant manipulated his way out of anything happening. He manipulated his wife. He manipulated their friends. He talked his way out of any consequence or any stopping of these sexual assaults for years.”

In his statement, Miller — who said during the trial that his stepdaughter, apparently 12 at the time, had accused him after he had refused to allow her to stay overnight at her boyfriend’s house — maintained his innocence. Prior to the trial, he said his own attorney John Zich had advised him to accept a plea deal, but that he hadn’t, something he said only an innocent man would do.

“[I’ve been told] to write a heartfelt apology to read out to everyone here and the alleged victim, to grovel for forgiveness. I cannot,” Miller said. “If anyone in this room knows how they would write or say out loud an apology for such a horrible thing that they did not do, I invite them to tutor me on it. I cannot apologize for something I did not do. I’ve become a statistic. Never a moment in my life did I imagine such a thing.”

John Zich, Miller’s attorney, in his request of a 25 year sentence, asked Rhode not to hold his client’s refusal to acknowledge his guilt against him in his decision.

“Robert’s not going to express remorse because he still says that he did not do this. Think for a moment, please your honor, how a truly innocent person who was wrongly convicted of these charges would react. We know for a fact that some people are wrongly convicted. We know that the jury system is not perfect — it’s just the best system we’ve been able to come up with so far. If the jury system was perfect, there wouldn’t be a such thing as the Innocence Project. Please, think about how that would feel to be one of those unfortunate people, and think how a person would react in that situation. Because that is how Robert is and how he has reacted throughout this entire matter. Please do not hold his lack of remorse against Robert.”

At the onset of his remarks, Rhode called sentencing individuals that do not acknowledge guilt “especially difficult.”

“The defense and the defendant made valid arguments that sometimes juries do get it wrong,” Rhode said. “It is proven that that has happened both ways. They have found innocent people guilty. They have found guilty people not guilty. They are 12 human beings that I have a lot of faith in, that I believe do the best they can with what information they’re given. They do not always get it right, and that makes it hard.”

Rhode went on to say he was bound to follow the jury’s verdict, and that the seriousness of the charges with which they had convicted Miller required a harsh sentence, especially for the safety of the community.

“These acts that he’s been convicted of are, aside from killing someone, probably the most harmful, damaging, severe things anyone could do to a human being,” he said, “and if there’s any chance that that can happen again, I’m supposed to protect the community and minimize the risk of that.”