OKTIBBEHA COUNTY – Mississippi Supreme Court justices upheld the aggravated assault conviction of a Starkville man sentenced for his role in a 2022 four-wheeler crash that killed a 9-year-old girl and injured two other children.

In an opinion released Thursday, justices rejected Willis Miller’s claim that his indictment was defective and that his defense was unfairly prejudiced when prosecutors amended the indictment during his trial.

Miller was convicted in Oktibbeha County Circuit Court of aggravated DUI that resulted in the death of Frazier Paisley and of aggravated assault for injuring a 13-year-old when the pickup he was driving collided with a four-wheeler carrying the two victims as well as a 1-year-old child.

Miller was sentenced to serve 25 years for the aggravated DUI charge and serve a consecutive term of 20 years for the aggravated assault.

The three children were riding the four-wheeler down Williams Road when the pickup hit them from behind, throwing each of the children from the all-terrain vehicle.

During the trial, an accident reconstructionist said Miller had been driving on the wrong side of the road when the front of the pickup collided with the back of the four-wheeler. Blackbox data revealed the pickup had accelerated before the collision, topping off at 97 mph one second before the crash. The witness testified the pickup’s brakes were never engaged.

A police officer who responded to the scene testified smelling an “odor of intoxicating beverage” coming from both the vehicle and from Miller himself. Furthermore, a blood sample taken from Miller nearly four hours after the collision registered his blood alcohol content at 0.131%, almost twice the 0.08% legal limit for driving in Mississippi.

Each of the children were taken to OCH Regional Medical Center, where Paisley was pronounced dead.

In his appeal, Miller argued that the aggravated assault count of his indictment was “fatally defective” due to the omission of the word “recklessly,” which is an essential element of the charge. He claimed the prosecution’s move to amend the indictment mid-trial to include “recklessly” was “ineffective and prejudicial,” the opinion said.

The Supreme Court disagreed, noting the language in the indictment was “substantially similar” to the state statute and that state law does not require the language of the indictment to match statutory language word-for-word.

“Equivalent words of substantially the same meaning as those of the statute may be substituted,” the opinion said. “Where the language used in the indictment is sufficiently specific to give notice of the act made unlawful and exclusive enough to prevent its application to other acts, it is sufficient.”

Miller argued the amended indictment was legally insufficient because the state did not remove the term “willfully” with the amendment as “one cannot act both willfully and recklessly.

The court ruled the amendment “did not cause any unfair surprise” to Miller or his defense, which was not focused on whether he acted willfully or recklessly but rather that his actions weren’t the sole cause of the collision.

Miller’s defense argued neither the speed of his driving nor his impairment was the sole cause of the collision, instead suggesting it was a “combination of many factors,” including rocky road conditions and the fact that there was an ATV in the roadway, the opinion said.

That defense strategy was available to Miller regardless of whether the amendment was made to his indictment, the court ruled. Additionally, the jury was properly instructed that it had to find Miller had “recklessly and unlawfully caused serious bodily injury” to the 13-year-old in order to reach a guilty verdict.

Finding no defect in the indictment and no prejudice caused by the amendment, the court affirmed Miller’s convictions and sentencing.

McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.

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