--- title: Why I Cannot Support Judge Kevin M. Miller’s Re-election url: https://justice-denied.org/why-i-cannot-support-judge-kevin-m-miller-re-election/ date: 2026-10-02T19:33:49+00:00 modified: 2026-10-02T19:33:49+00:00 lang: en_US --- # Why I Cannot Support Judge Kevin M. Miller’s Re-election **Editorial | By Craig Stevenson, Editor-in-Chief, Justice-Denied** ![Editorial illustration of a couple’s joined hands, a case file, and a ballot before an empty judge’s bench.](https://justice-denied.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/judge-miller-reelection-editorial-featured-v1.png) *What Marie and I experienced in Judge Miller’s courtroom is why I cannot support him for another term.* Judge Kevin M. Miller is seeking another term as a Seventh Judicial District judge. The [official candidate list](https://candidates.sos.mn.gov/CandidateFilingResults.aspx?county=3&municipality=&schooldistrict=&hospitaldistrict=&level=1&party=0&federal=False&judicial=True&executive=False&senate=False&representative=False&title=&office=38774&candidateid=0) shows no filed opponent for Seat 12. An uncontested election, however, should not prevent meaningful public examination of an incumbent judge’s record. A judge is supposed to be fair and impartial. The [Minnesota Code of Judicial Conduct](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/court_rules/pr/subtype/judi/id/2/) requires it, and the public expects it. That is what my wife, Marie, and I expected when we brought our lawsuit in Otter Tail County. What we experienced before Judge Miller has left me unable to support him for another term. ## At a glance I oppose Judge Kevin M. Miller’s re-election because of the unfairness Marie and I experienced in his courtroom. His written reasoning diminished Marie’s distress and reduced our discovery evidence to our own assertions. We had to seek appellate intervention to stop his order compelling a private marital recording, and our confidentiality concerns remain unresolved years later. His handling of privilege, my defamation claims, and Defendants’ deleted evidence, perjury, and contradictory sworn testimony also troubled me. The differences documented in other cases, the civil jury record Justice-Denied reviewed, and additional errors identified on appeal reinforce my conclusion that he has not earned another term. ## Marie’s emotional distress claim The most painful part concerns [Marie’s claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress](https://justice-denied.org/distorting-the-law-iied/). I watched what happened to my wife after one defendant contacted the estranged father she feared. The contact took place with another defendant’s approval, but without my wife’s knowledge or consent. We told the defendants about her panic attack after this contact. Marie told them directly that she was afraid of her father and was concerned about the safety of her daughters. I pleaded with them to stop. After receiving those warnings, one defendant printed our communications and sent them directly to Marie’s father. Further contact and four more panic attacks followed. We presented contemporaneous home-security videos to Judge Miller showing Marie’s distress, medical records documenting her longstanding fear, and three mental-health examination reports, including one from the defense’s own expert. Those specific videos, historical records, and examination reports went unmentioned in the order dismissing her emotional-distress claim. Instead, Judge Miller’s order said an average person would respond to the conduct with little more than a “groan,” an “eyeroll,” or an “Uff-Da.” I read those words as the husband who had watched the panic attacks. I knew what our pleas meant. I knew why we sent them. We were trying to prevent more panic attacks and more physical, emotional, and psychological harm. Seeing that experience reduced to a groan or an eye roll was, and still is, deeply disturbing. The order also left unmentioned a Minnesota decision our attorneys had cited concerning a defendant’s knowledge of a person’s particular susceptibility to emotional distress—a decision Judge Miller himself had cited in our case six months earlier. Instead, Judge Miller claimed that we had cited no case sustaining an emotional-distress claim based on contact with Marie’s estranged father, and that the court could find none either. I expected him to explain how that authority applied to the warnings the defendants received and the knowledge they possessed. He didn’t. ## Discovery and missing evidence Our discovery experience compounded that sense of unfairness. Marie and I worked through thousands of pages of telephone-carrier records to compare the communications that occurred with the communications the defendants produced. We identified hundreds of text messages missing from their production, including exchanges clustered around contacts with Marie’s father and our requests that the conduct stop. Those call detail records established that communications occurred. They supplied a concrete basis for asking where the missing messages were. Yet Judge Miller characterized our evidence of incomplete discovery as our own “[beliefs and assertions](https://justice-denied.org/a-judicial-blind-eye/).” The same order warned that further inappropriate requests for information that was “privileged or fictional” could bring sanctions and attorney fees against us. Imagine doing that work, presenting actual records from independent telephone companies, and then reading an order that describes your evidence as consisting of nothing more than your own assertions. Later forensic work recovered responsive messages that had been deleted. One defendant testified under oath that he had not deleted responsive text messages, then admitted deliberately deleting messages after receiving our complaint. In his [December 6, 2022 order](https://justice-denied.org/pdfviewer/stevenson-56-cv-20-2928-doc-366/), Judge Miller found that the defendant “lied under oath about deleting text messages” and expressly described his conduct as perjury. Those developments reinforced why our questions deserved serious scrutiny. I have also read another civil case in which Judge Miller emphasized the [liberal exchange of information](https://justice-denied.org/motion-to-compel-discovery/) and found good cause to allow discovery despite objections about the number of questions. In our case, he imposed a numerical limit on requests for admission and denied our motions to compel. I expected an explanation that dealt accurately with the evidence supporting our requests. That explanation never arrived. ## The common-interest doctrine The treatment of privilege was equally troubling. In denying discovery, Judge Miller attributed this statement to a Minnesota appellate decision: “[Conversations amongst joint defendants are privileged](https://justice-denied.org/distorting-the-law-the-common-interest-doctrine-2021/).” That sentence does not appear in the decision he cited. It came from Defendants’ Answers to Plaintiffs’ Interrogatories. The actual case concerned attorney-client privilege where an attorney jointly represented clients. It did not establish a blanket privilege protecting conversations merely because the participants were defendants in the same lawsuit. That distinction mattered to us. We were trying to obtain communications among the people whose conduct we were asking the court to examine. An order should explain why particular communications are legally protected. It should accurately represent the authority it uses to deny access to evidence. Ours didn’t. ## Spousal privilege Meanwhile, Judge Miller ordered us to produce a recording of a private marital conversation without a proper basis for finding that privilege had been waived. His order stated: “Defendants are entitled to obtain that recording, even if Marie made confidential statements to Craig.” He was directing us to hand our private conversation to the people we were suing. We had to seek [extraordinary relief from the Court of Appeals](https://justice-denied.org/piercing-spousal-privilege/) to stop enforcement of that part of his order. The appellate court held that he had exceeded his authority. ## Confidentiality and unequal treatment Confidentiality produced another contrast I cannot reconcile. On July 22, 2021, Judge Miller signed a protective order governing sensitive information in our case. At a March 2023 hearing, our attorney identified specific pages in public filings containing material designated confidential. He explained that a request to correct the filings had gone unanswered. Judge Miller said he would return to the issue. He didn’t. A subsequent letter brought the problem to his attention again. Judge Miller did not respond. When he dismissed our lawsuit, all other pending requests were dismissed as moot. As a result, a recent review of the public record showed that six filings containing information we had identified as confidential remained publicly downloadable. Some had been available for years. Then I watched what happened in another case before the same judge. On September 21, 2026, a document was filed publicly. A motion to restrict access followed that afternoon. The next day, Judge Miller granted the request without a hearing and [designated the document confidential](https://justice-denied.org/protective-orders-starkebaum-stevenson/). One day in that case. Years of unresolved concerns in ours. The protection promised by a protective order needs to work for all litigants, not just some. These are our lives and our private information. The consequences continue even after a lawsuit ends. ## Defamation and my reputation My defamation claims raised another deeply personal concern. The accusations at issue reached our daughters. They concerned my conduct, my character, and my reputation within my own family. In discussing an accusation of theft, Judge Miller acknowledged that I denied an intent to deprive my former wife permanently of her property. He then relied on a contrary inference to characterize the accusation as a reasonable interpretation of events. Our attorneys argued that disputed facts and competing inferences belonged before a jury. Judge Miller resolved the claims himself, so the case never reached a jury. I have since read proceedings in [another defamation case](https://justice-denied.org/the-defamation-divide/) in which he recognized that circumstantial evidence, competing testimony, and credibility could present questions for the finder of fact. He also questioned how plaintiffs were supposed to investigate a truth defense without the necessary discovery. That attention to factual development is what I expected when my own reputation was at stake. I never got it. ## Conflicting sworn testimony I also read a case in which Judge Miller refused to let a litigant gain an unfair advantage by asserting ownership of property after taking [an inconsistent sworn position](https://justice-denied.org/when-truth-is-moot/) about it in bankruptcy proceedings. In our case, our attorneys presented a prior trial transcript showing contradictions with a defendant’s deposition testimony. The summary-judgment order did not address those identified contradictions. I expected an explanation of how that conflicting testimony affected the record he was deciding. I didn’t get it. ## Other litigants and jury access My concerns also extend to other litigants. In another civil case, a written order analyzed “reconsideration” when the litigant had [requested a stay](https://justice-denied.org/svendsen-v-fergus-falls-hra-order/). Its operative language also called requests for admission “interrogatories.” People deserve decisions that address the requests they actually made and accurately identify the evidence and procedures involved. We depended on that accuracy. Other litigants do too. Judge Miller ultimately dismissed our case at summary judgment. [Justice-Denied’s review of Otter Tail County civil jury settings](https://justice-denied.org/otter-tail-county-civil-jury-trials/) found no contested-liability verdict before him from his May 2018 appointment through August 2026—more than eight years. I find that record deeply troubling, particularly given our own experience trying to put disputed facts before a jury. ## Errors identified on appeal The Court of Appeals has identified additional errors in Judge Miller’s rulings this year. In June, it [reversed Judge Miller’s restitution order](https://mn.gov/law-library-stat/archive/ctapun/2026/OPa251342-062226.pdf) because he had not expressly stated that he considered the defendant’s financial circumstances, as required. In July, it held that he [abused his discretion](https://mn.gov/law-library-stat/archive/ctapun/2026/OPa251141-072726.pdf) by refusing to redact medical-record language that improperly told the jury that child sexual abuse was confirmed, despite repeated protestations by defense counsel. ## Why I oppose another term I have lived with the consequences of Judge Miller’s decisions. I have read his explanations and compared them with the record and with his treatment of other litigants. What stays with me is the unfairness: Marie’s distress diminished in the written reasoning; independent discovery evidence reduced to our assertions; defendants’ communications shielded by a quotation absent from the cited opinion; our marital privacy subjected to an order the Court of Appeals had to stop; and confidentiality concerns left unresolved while another litigant received protection the next day. Fairness requires a judge to examine the evidence carefully, explain his decisions accurately, and apply legal protections consistently. That is what Marie and I expected when we entered his courtroom. It is what every person appearing before him deserves. Based on what we experienced and what Justice-Denied has documented, Judge Kevin M. Miller has not earned another term. That is why I oppose his re-election—and why I urge other voters to do the same.