Photo: Joshua Michael Miller
A man sentenced to 18 years in prison after being found guilty by a Baxter County Circuit Court jury last month on charges filed in three separate criminal cases was back before the bench Tuesday.
Forty-year-old Joshua Michael Miller had cases opened against him in April 2018, twice this April, and once in October. Charges in the October case are the ones to which Miller pled guilty Tuesday.
In the last of his cases in Baxter County, Miller was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, possession of drug paraphernalia, theft of property and criminal trespass.
He was sentenced to six years in prison Tuesday. The sentence will run concurrently with the one he received last month.
Miller and a female, identified as Victoria Maurseth, were arrested in early October at an apartment on State Highway 201 North. A person who claimed he was a resident of the apartment told a Baxter County deputy Miller and Maurseth had come to the residence about 3 a.m., Oct. 6, and asked if they could stay.
He said he gave permission for them to spend the night. About 4 p.m., the man said he told Miller and the woman he had to leave and asked them to do the same.
In court records, it is not spelled out if the couple left and came back, or did not leave at all.
The deputy contacted the resident as he walked along Highway 201, they returned to the apartment and found Miller in the shower and Maurseth sitting in a recliner in the living room.
Additional deputies arrived on the scene when information was received that Miller could be armed.
Deputies were told $500 in cash was missing from the apartment along with a backpack. The backpack was found in a car registered to Maurseth. Drug paraphernalia was also reported to have been found in the vehicle.
When checking the vehicle, deputies noticed the ignition was missing. Maurseth said she did not have keys for the car and used a pair of pliers sitting on the console to start the vehicle.
Maurseth was charged with misdemeanors.
Miller has been an inmate in the Baxter County Detention Center since being arrested in early October.
In the two cases filed in April, Miller was accused of stealing documents from Arkansas State University-Mountain Home (ASUMH) containing personal information supplied to the school by four people. The second case was a situation where one-crime-led-to-another.
The arrest in the second case stemmed from a search of the residence where Miller was living as officers looked for the purloined ASUMH papers. They found the papers and also reported locating drugs and drug paraphernalia.
When Miller was taken to the Baxter County Detention Center, he is alleged to have made things even worse for himself by trying to sneak drugs into the jail hidden in his rectum.
Documents have been filed in the three cases decided in November indicating Miller intends to appeal the jurys verdict.
According to court records, he has a number of felony convictions in several Arkansas counties, and Department of Correction records show he has spent time in prison on convictions from Craighead, Greene and Marion counties. He has listed addresses in Jonesboro, North Little Rock, Cherokee Village, Gassville, Midway and Clarkridge.
Miller has admitted he has been fighting drug addiction for 26 years. He told the court during an earlier session he had been in prison 10 times and those stays had not helped with his problem.
The last of the three Baxter County cases tried last month involved drug charges brought against him as the result of a traffic stop April 7 last year. The vehicle in which Miller was a passenger was initially pulled over for having expired registration.
It was found during the stop that Miller was a parolee with an active warrant for absconding.
As Miller was being arrested, he was found to have a crystalline substance which he was alleged to have admitted was methamphetamine and a plastic bag containing Suboxone strips on his person.
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