Anchor Bay shooter sentenced to 11 years, 10 months in prison

The ongoing prosecution in the Mendocino Court Superior Court of a violent south coast gunman finally came to a long-anticipated conclusion Friday afternoon.



Expressly finding there was no provocation or other cause to justify the shootings and that the defendant's effort to kill his neighbor were nothing less than aggravated, the Court denied the defendant's application for probation as not being in the interests of justice. Thereafter, defendant Harry William Miller, age 70, more recently of Santa Rosa, was sentenced to 11 years, 10 months in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The defendant stands convicted by plea of personally using a firearm in the shooting attempt to kill Paul Palestrini, a crime now formally characterized for all purposes as an attempted voluntary manslaughter. The defendant also stands convicted of personally using a firearm in a felonious multi-shot attack on Desiree Palestrini.

At the conclusion of today's extended proceedings -- the lengthy sentencing hearing carried over from the morning session into the afternoon session -- the defendant was taken into custody and handcuffed, and then escorted by deputies to the jail for later transportation to CDCR. 

Instead of heading directly for San Quentin, it is anticipated that the defendant will initially be transported to an inmate reception center at a state prison medical facility in Vacaville or Stockton. 

Both substantive convictions are felonies and, in concert with the two admitted personal use sentencing enhancements, are legally characterized by the Penal Code as violent crimes. As a consequence of that characterization, any good or work time credits the defendant may attempt to earn in state prison will be limited to no more than 15% of the defendant's total sentence. In other words, the defendant will not be eligible for parole under current law until he has served just over 10 years. 

The prosecutor who has been handling this matter from having reviewed the original law enforcement investigation reports to approving the formal accusations through today's sentencing proceedings is Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster.

The law enforcement agencies that gathered the necessary evidence supporting the convictions were the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, the California Department of Justice crime laboratories, and the District Attorney's own Bureau of Investigations. Special thanks are again extended to the Stutchman Forensic Laboratory in Napa for their exceptional forensic analysis and work on this case.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge John Behnke presided over today's proceedings and pronounced today's sentence.

EPILOGUE: The defendant's wife, previously convicted by jury of being a felony accessory to the violent crimes of her husband, was allowed to observe today's proceedings from the gallery. When everything was said and done, co-defendant Susan Mary Miller, age 68, of Santa Rosa, was ordered to go immediately to Low Gap Jail Facility and surrender herself to begin serving her own 10 month jail sentence.