Lawyer Sent to Prison in Fatal Insurance Scam

In a case that has drawn national attention, an Encino personal-injury lawyer who took part in an insurance scam involving staged freeway collisions has been sentenced to six years in prison.

Gary P. Miller received the sentence Friday, six months after his conviction on fraud and conspiracy charges. The nine felony counts carried a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

With credit for good behavior, Miller could be paroled in three years--far less than the minimum 15 years behind bars that prosecutors originally sought when they charged Miller with second-degree murder, holding him criminally responsible for the death of a man in one of the collisions he helped orchestrate.

Miller, 54, is believed to be the first attorney ever charged with murder for his role in an auto insurance fraud ring involving deliberate crashes. The jury, however, deadlocked on the murder count last August while declaring Miller guilty of the other allegations.

His attorney, Harland W. Braun, accused prosecutors of blowing the case out of proportion and going after his client for murder although Miller was not present at the fatal crash.

Braun alleged the district attorney’s office pursued the case out of obligation to insurance companies, some of which donated to Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s reelection campaign.

“I don’t like insurance fraud any more than anyone else. I don’t like criminals any more than anyone else. [But] I don’t like attorneys bought and paid for by the insurance industry,” Braun said Wednesday.

But prosecutors dismissed Braun’s accusations, saying that the jurors largely held Miller morally culpable for the death of Jose Luis Lopez Perez but felt uncomfortable with the mandatory 15-years-to-life sentence that the murder conviction would have brought.

Perez, 29, died when the car he was riding in intentionally swerved in front of a tractor-trailer truck, forcing the truck to crash into it on the Golden State Freeway in Sun Valley in 1992.

“It wasn’t a case that they didn’t feel Miller was responsible. They just felt that perhaps for this event, it was too great a sentence,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Leonard Shaffer, the lead prosecutor. His office does not currently plan to retry Miller on the murder charge, Shaffer said.

Both sides confirmed that Miller was willing to plead guilty to manslaughter before the case went to trial. The driver of the car carrying Perez pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud. But Miller rejected the five-year, eight-month prison sentence that was to be part of the plea bargain.

Braun acknowledged that Miller’s six-year sentence is slightly more than what prosecutors had offered during plea negotiations. Going to trial, however, preserved Miller’s right to appeal, which Braun plans to do on the grounds that the jury was not properly instructed.

“We beat the murder case, and now we have a substantial chance of getting [the fraud and conspiracy sentence] reversed on appeal,” Braun said.

Miller, who has been out on bail, must report to prison by March 14.

Two co-defendants were acquitted of second-degree murder in August, but two others, including Miller’s office manager, are still awaiting trial on murder charges in connection with the accident that killed Perez.