Vern Miller


Vern Miller is an American attorney and former police officer.
Miller was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1928 and attended primary schools there. He attended North High School and Friends University. He served as Deputy Sheriff of Sedgwick County, Kansas from 1949 to 1954, and in 1958 was elected as Sedgwick County Marshal. After two terms as marshal, Miller served two terms as Sheriff of Sedgwick County. As a Wichita, Kansas police laboratory investigator, he was called out to the crime scene of the Earl and Ruth Bowlin murders in Sedgwick County on April 13, 1963. He was elected Sedgwick County Sheriff in 1964 and re-elected twice. Having graduated from Oklahoma City University Law School, Miller was elected as Attorney General of Kansas in 1970 under a platform of "aggressive and visible enforcement of the state's drug and liquor laws". As attorney general, Miller participated in arrests and drug raids himself; a 1971 article detailed a Wichita drug raid in which Miller hid in the trunk of a car of an undercover agent in order to make arrests. When he was re-elected in 1972, he had gained widespread popularity across the state, winning in all of the counties. He served in the capacity of attorney general until 1975.
In 1974, he was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Kansas, losing by 0.49% to Republican Robert Frederick Bennett. Miller then served as Sedgwick County Prosecuting Attorney from 1976 to 1980 and opened up a law practice in his hometown of Wichita.
In 2009, the book Vern Miller: Legendary Kansas Lawman by Mike Danford, detailing Miller's life, was published. One of his sons, Clifford Miller, is also a police officer in Sedgwick County. Miller is a member of the Presbyterian Church, Kansas Bar Association, American Judicature Society and Wichita Bar Association. He is a former president of the Kansas Peace Officers Association.