Ethan J. Miller, a 20-year-old White/Caucasian male from Lewisburg, Tennessee, was fatally shot on the night of December 4, 2022. Police were dispatched at approximately 9:46 p.m. to a shooting call in the area of 1000 Cheryl Drive. When officers arrived, they found Miller lying on the ground suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Emergency assistance was provided and he was transported to Marshall Medical Center, but he died from his injuries.
His death immediately became the focus of a homicide investigation by the Lewisburg Police Department, with assistance from the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office.
Investigators quickly identified Brandon Michael Schklar as a suspect in the shooting. At the time, authorities described Schklar as 18 years old. Detectives and deputies located him at a residence at 1075 Belfast Farmington Road, not long after the shooting investigation began. Schklar was taken into custody and booked into the Marshall County Jail on a criminal-homicide charge. Police continued investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting and publicly requested information from anyone who might have known what led to Miller being shot.
As the case moved through the criminal justice system, the allegation against Schklar became more serious and more specific. On July 26, 2023, a Marshall County grand jury indicted Brandon Michael Schklar for first-degree murder in connection with Miller’s death. The grand jury also indicted him on a separate charge of coercion of a witness. The publicly available appellate record does not provide a detailed account of the confrontation that preceded the gunfire or describe a publicly established motive for the killing, and the later appellate court specifically noted that the underlying facts of the offense were not included in the post-conviction record before it.
Schklar ultimately did not go to trial on the first-degree murder indictment. On March 11, 2024, he entered into a negotiated plea agreement with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to the lesser-included offense of second-degree murder. As part of that agreement, the coercion-of-a-witness charge was dismissed. The Marshall County Circuit Court sentenced Schklar to 32 years in prison, with the sentence ordered to be served at 100 percent. The judgment was entered the same day, bringing the original murder prosecution to a conclusion through a guilty plea rather than a jury verdict.
The legal proceedings continued after the conviction. In March 2025, Schklar, through retained counsel, filed a petition seeking post-conviction relief. He alleged that he had received ineffective assistance from his trial attorney and challenged whether his guilty plea had been entered voluntarily. The filing, however, became entangled in procedural problems. Tennessee law requires a post-conviction petition to be verified under oath by the person seeking relief. Schklar’s original petition was signed by his attorney but was not personally verified by Schklar. An affidavit from his father accompanied the petition, but the courts determined that the filing did not establish that his father had legal authority to act on his behalf as a qualifying “next friend.”
The State argued that the petition did not satisfy Tennessee’s statutory requirements and that the deadline for filing a valid post-conviction petition had passed before the defect was properly corrected. Schklar later submitted his own signed and notarized affidavit outlining his complaints about his representation, but that document was filed after the applicable limitations period had expired. The Marshall County Circuit Court therefore dismissed his bid for post-conviction relief, finding that the timely filing had been legally deficient because it lacked Schklar’s required verification and could not subsequently be cured under the circumstances.
Schklar appealed that dismissal to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. On February 19, 2026, the appellate court affirmed the lower court’s ruling. The court concluded that Tennessee’s verification requirement was mandatory and that, because Schklar had been represented by counsel when the deficient petition was filed, the statutory procedure allowing certain unrepresented petitioners to correct defective filings did not apply to him. The appellate court therefore left his conviction and 32-year sentence undisturbed.
Schklar then sought permission to take the post-conviction dispute to the Tennessee Supreme Court. He filed an application for permission to appeal in April 2026. On July 21, 2026, the Tennessee Supreme Court denied that application, and the appellate matter was closed the following day. As a result, the available court record shows that Brandon Michael Schklar remains convicted of second-degree murder for the killing of Ethan Miller and subject to the 32-year sentence imposed under his 2024 plea agreement. No other suspect is identified in the reliable public reporting or court records reviewed in connection with Miller’s killing.
