C-Falls man can't seem to stay out of prison
A 41-year-old Columbia Falls man who has spent much of his adult life in and out of prison was back in court after the state petitioned four times to revoke his 2002 sentence for writing bad checks.
Chad Miller’s criminal history is a long list of personal failures and personal tragedies. His first trip to the Montana State Prison came after he was sentenced in 1993 to 20 years with seven suspended for sexual assault.
He was discharged from prison in 2000, but when he failed to complete required drug and sexual offender counseling, Flathead County District Court Judge Stewart Stadler sentenced him to seven years with four suspended.
Back in Deer Lodge, Miller showed no effort to participate in sexual offender counseling, according to a prison official.
Released in 2002, Miller soon found himself facing a felony charge of issuing 47 bad checks totaling $1,252 on a Glacier Bank account. Judge Stadler sentenced Miller to five years, all suspended and consecutive to the sexual assault case.
Miller found himself in trouble again in 2007 when he was arrested for assaulting a peace officer in Cascade County. He was sentenced there in 2008 to eight years with five suspended. His sentence in the bad check case was also revoked, and he was resentenced to five years with three suspended.
A probation officer reported at the time that Miller had “caught the break of a lifetime when he was released from prison without being directed to community supervision. The only thing he needed to do was remain law abiding for five years so this oversight would not be detected. He would not have to pay on any fiscal matters, and his victims would never be made whole. He was not able to do this.”
On Sept. 13, 2010, Miller was released from Deer Lodge on a 10-day furlough. He was arrested 10 days later for failing to find employment and served the remainder of his sentence in prison. On March 11, 2011, he was released from Deer Lodge to begin the suspended portion of his sentence.
Personal tragedy occurred when an automobile accident on Sept. 12, 2012, left Miller with a traumatic brain injury, but his legal problems continued.
In May 2013, Miller was arrested and charged with several misdemeanors, including drug possession, obstructing a police officer and assaulting his girlfriend.
Over the next eight months, four petitions were filed to revoke Miller’s bad check sentence as he racked up probation violations — a DUI and no insurance charge in Kalispell, failing to provide a urinalysis sample, running from officers, failing to report to a probation officer and felony bailjumping.
Flathead County District Court Judge Robert Allison revoked Miller’s 2002 sentence on July 10 and resentenced him to five years with three suspended — but this time to the Department of Corrections with recommendation for appropriate placement instead of prison. Allison also dismissed Miller’s bailjumping charge.