Both sides refer to DVD in Niles man’s rape trial

By Ed Runyan

Both prosecution and defense refer to DVD during Niles man’s rape trial in Warren

A woman raped by Miller in 1980 testified.

WARREN — If a woman gives a man she just met in a bar a “high five,” does that suggest she wants to have sex with him?

If she tells the cabdriver who comes to take the man home to leave because she plans to give him a ride, does that suggest she’s interested in him?

And if a woman consumes nine drinks in six hours and offers to drive a man home from a bar, is she giving him the green light for sex?

Those were some of the questions that were posed to jurors Wednesday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court in the trial of William R. Miller, 49, of Cherry Avenue in Niles. He is accused of rape and kidnapping.

The reason so many such questions were raised during closing arguments is that jurors were given a DVD showing everything that happened in Blue Magoo’s Tap and Grill on East Market Street in Warren Feb. 8, a short time before a woman Miller met in the tavern says she was raped.

The DVD, which came from surveillance video, shows every one of the 65 minutes the victim, her girlfriend and Miller were together in the tavern before the crimes are alleged to have occurred.

Both attorneys said to study the body language of the three people, the touching or lack of it, and who was talking to whom.

And both attorneys said the DVD will demonstrate whether Miller was being seduced by the woman.

Atty. Dennis DiMartino, Miller’s attorney, asked jurors to look at the part of the DVD where the woman tells the cabdriver to leave, then walks back into the tavern and falls down, possibly because she was “bombed,” he said.

“Ask yourself why a 47-, 48-year-old woman went out of the way to do what she did,” DiMartino said, adding that the “high five” was done affectionately.

Mike Burnett, an assistant Trumbull County prosecutor, conversely, said the DVD shows that the woman spent only about 45 seconds sitting beside Miller during the 65 minutes they were in the bar.

The “high five,” Burnett said, was “creepy,” the woman was not “bombed,” probably didn’t fall down because of intoxication and had no reason to lie. Shortly after the closing statements were given, the jury of four women and eight men went home for the day and will begin deliberations this morning.

If convicted, Miller faces up to 30 years in prison.

The last witness of the day was one of two women who was raped in 1980 by Miller in a case that sent the Niles man to prison for 25 years. Testimony about that crime was allowed on the grounds that it demonstrated similar tactics used by Miller in 1980 and in February 2009, Burnett said.

The 1980 victim testified that she was 18 and her girlfriend was 17 when they picked up Miller, then age 20, while he was hitchhiking on state Route 46 in Niles.

Miller pulled a knife, forced the driver to travel to a railroad access road off Old Salt Springs Road in Weathersfield Township, made both girls strip, raped them several times and had them drop him off at Stevens Park in Niles.

Miller’s accuser in this case testified that he raped her at knife point on the same access road, first ordering her to remove her clothing. The car got stuck in some mud afterwards, so Miller and a passerby pushed it out of the mud, and the woman drove off to get help, she said.

runyan@vindy.com