On August 24, 1989, a Black man brandishing a screwdriver forced his way into the apartment of a 19-year-old woman in Boston, Massachusetts. The man robbed her, then raped her and forced her to perform oral sex. He then fled.
She called the police and was taken to a hospital, where a rape kit was taken.
The victim went to the police station the next day and viewed about 700 photographs of Black men. She was unable to identify anyone as her attacker.
On September 18, 1989, the victim worked with a police artist to create a composite sketch of her attacker. Not long after, officers suggested that the sketch resembled 22-year-old Neil Miller.
On September 22, 1989, the victim was shown a photograph lineup of 15 photographs that included Miller’s photograph. She eventually narrowed her choices down to two photographs, one of which was Miller when he was 16 years old. Eventually she chose the photo of Miller.
Police arrested Miller on November 15, 1989. They took a photograph of him and created another photographic lineup. The victim viewed this lineup and again selected Miller as her attacker, though he looked quite different than he did when he was 16 years old..
Miller was charged with aggravated rape while armed and breaking and entering.
A probable cause hearing was set for February 27, 1990, in Suffolk County Superior Court. The victim was there for that hearing. At the first call of the case, Miller’s lawyer informed the prosecutor on the case, Charles Daly, that because the identity of the perpetrator was a critical issue in the case, he wanted Miller to be kept out of the courtroom during the probable cause hearing so that a non-suggestive identification procedure could be arranged for a later date.
The prosecutor said that the victim was being kept upstairs in the district attorney’s office until the hearing took place. Before the second call of the case, Daly and Boston police officer Joseph Pishkin learned that Miller was waiting in the hallway outside the courtroom where the probable cause hearing was to take place.
Daly told the victim that he and Pishkin would accompany her downstairs and, if she saw the man who had raped her, that she should identify him. The victim and Pishkin walked downstairs next to one another.
When they reached the courtroom, they saw two men standing outside. The victim told Pishkin that she thought that one of those two men, who was, in fact, Miller, was the man who raped her.
At that point, Miller walked into the courtroom and sat down. The victim followed him into the courtroom and identified him to Pishkin as her rapist.
Later, during the hearing, when Miller sought to suppress these identifications, the prosecution conceded that the identifications were improper and those identifications were suppressed.
In December 1990, Miller went to trial in Suffolk County Superior Court.
The victim identified him as her attacker. The evidence of the prior identifications on the day of the probable cause hearing was not allowed.
A forensic analyst from the Boston Police Crime Laboratory testified that testing on semen collected at the crime scene revealed two different blood group markers. Although one was the same blood type as Miller, it also was the same blood type as the victim, so the analyst said Miller could not be excluded. Other testing of bedding excluded both Miller and the victim, but the prosecution speculated it could have been left there previously in an unrelated incident.
Miller did not testify at the trial.
On December 19, 1990, the jury convicted him of aggravated rape while armed and breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony. He was sentenced to 26 to 45 years in prison
Miller’s appeals were unsuccessful. He reached out for help from the Innocence Project and in 1998, the organization agreed to reinvestigate his case.
The vaginal swabs and slides from the evidence were located and sent to Forensic Science Associates (FSA), a California DNA testing laboratory.
In April 2000, FSA’s test results excluded Miller as the source of the spermatozoa. On May 20, 2000, Miller’s convictions were vacated, the charges were dismissed, and he was released nearly a decade after his conviction.
In 2003, Miller filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Boston. He was subsequently awarded $500,000 in compensation from the state of Massachusetts.
In 2004, based on DNA testing, 49-year-old Lawrence Taylor was charged with three rapes committed in 1989 in Boston, including the rape that Miller had been wrongly convicted of committing.
In 2008, Miller settled his federal lawsuit with the city of Boston for $3.2 million.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 02-26-2026
