Exonerated After 20 Years In Jail For Murder: Jersey City Man To Be Freed

JERSEY CITY – A Jersey City man who has spent 20 years in prison after being charged with the murder and robbery of a senior citizen will be freed, the state Attorney General's office announced on Friday.

Meanwhile, the state must now reinvestigate the cold case to determine who murdered Romeo Cavero, 74, outside of his senior citizen building in 2003.

Dion Miller, now 54, of Jersey City, was convicted at a second trial in 2007 of felony murder, robbery, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and unlawful possession of a weapon stemming from the assault and robbery of Cavero, the Attorney General's Office said.

On Feb. 23, 2007, Miller was sentenced to an aggregate term of 30 years in prison, all 30 of which were to be served without eligibility for parole.

But an investigation determined that Miller gave "false confessions," the office said on Friday.

The Case

On Jan. 5, 2003, Romeo Cavero was outside a Van Nostrand Avenue senior citizens’ building when he was struck on the head multiple times and robbed of cash by his attacker(s), the state said on Friday.

Cavero was taken to Jersey City Medical Center, where his condition deteriorated and he died four days later on Jan. 9, 2003.

The victim knew Miller, who lived with a relative in a neighboring apartment in the same building, but the victim never identified Miller as his assailant, a recent review determined.

"Cavero was lucid immediately after the attack when he told family and a responding officer that he had been struck from the rear and robbed of cash by a male, who then returned and fled in a nearby vehicle," the state said.

Miller filed an application for reinvestigation of the case with the Conviction Review Unit (CRU).

"The CRU conducts an extensive vetting process to identify credible claims of innocence among the hundreds of eligible applications to the CRU, and the screening attorneys determined Mr. Miller’s case warranted re-examination," the state said.

Recently, the Conviction Review Unit (CRU) secured a court ruling that resulted in Miller's release, they said.

It represents only the second time that such an action has been taken by the CRU, which was formed in 2019 as one of the nation’s first statewide conviction review units.

The New Jersey Innocence Project at Rutgers University helped secure the exoneration.

An 'Innocent Man'

“Every day throughout our country, our criminal justice system is tested. Many times justice prevails. When it fails, it damages the system’s effectiveness and credibility. It is the responsibility of each of us to acknowledge our mistakes and attempt to right the wrongs that have been done,” said Attorney General Matthew Platkin.

"Through the actions taken by my office’s Conviction Review Unit, an innocent man was able to reclaim his freedom and our Cold Case Network will now pursue justice for the family of a victim whose murder remains unsolved."

He added, "This is the work that the Conviction Review and the Cold Case Units were designed to pursue. While these cases are challenging, there is no limit on the pursuit of justice. Today marks a new beginning for Mr. Miller and a new phase in the investigation to identify the killer of Mr. Cavero.”

Attorneys for the CRU and Miller appeared on July 27, 2023, in court in Hudson County before Superior Court Judge Mitzy Galis-Menendez on a joint motion for a new trial.

Miller was represented by Laura Cohen and Nyssa Taylor of the New Jersey Innocence Project at Rutgers University.

The New Jersey Innocence Project at Rutgers University is overseen by Professor Laura Cohen and attorney Nyssa Taylor and is an inter-disciplinary, law school-based, innocence organization committed to freeing wrongfully convicted people in New Jersey.

Judge Galis-Menendez granted the motion for a new trial. The Attorney General’s Office then successfully moved for a dismissal of the indictment with prejudice. Miller was present in the courtroom.

Family members of the victim were notified prior to the court action.

A new investigation into the robbery, assault and murder of Cavero is underway by the Attorney General’s Cold Case Network, a statewide network of regional task forces formed at the same time as the CRU to investigate cold cases, particularly cases generated by the CRU. It operates with support from the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA), the New Jersey State Police (NJSP), and several county Prosecutor’s Offices.

'False Confessions'

A review found that the only evidence linking Miller to the crime were three false confessions which lacked reliability for a variety of reasons, the state said.

"The three false confessions elicited by police from Mr. Miller each contained various inconsistencies in the details and descriptions of the events. Additionally, none of the confessions matched the description of the crime provided by the victim."

The investigation uncovered evidence that during the 17-hour long interrogations of Miller, officers fed him information which he then repeated back to them in his false confessions.

"Mr. Miller told the detective who came forward with this information during the CRU’s re-investigation that he did not commit this offense and he only confessed to it because he was afraid of being hurt," the state said.

The CRU accepts claims of wrongful conviction from a wide variety of sources, including prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, law enforcement, innocence organizations, defendants, defendants’ families, the media, and others. Since its formation, the CRU has received approximately 600 applications for review.

The form to request that a case be reviewed by CRU is availableon the Attorney General's website.