Martin Miller is led away after being convicted of his wife's murder in Judge Paula Martin's courtroom.

The Kansas Supreme Court has declined once-convicted murderer Martin Miller’s request to have the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office disqualified as the prosecuting agency in his retrial after it was revealed that Miller’s son Matthew Miller, 22, a witness in the case, had been living with senior assistant district attorney Eve Kemple’s son in her home.

A Douglas County jury convicted Martin Miller in 2005 of first-degree murder in the July 28, 2004, death of his wife, Mary E. Miller, 46, at the family’s central Lawrence home. Prosecutors accused Miller, a former Lawrence carpenter and Christian school leader, of strangling his wife in her sleep because he had been having an affair with another woman and he wanted to collect $300,000 in life insurance money.

Miller’s murder conviction was overturned in February, when the Kansas Supreme Court said that the written jury instruction that District Judge Paula Martin gave jurors had been in error.

Since the granting of the retrial, the defense has been aiming to have the case moved to another jurisdiction.

In September, Martin denied Miller’s request to disqualify the district attorney’s office after Kemple and Matthew Miller both testified that he and Kemple’s son are friends, and the two had planned to move into an apartment together when plans fell through at the last minute. Kemple agreed to let Miller stay at her home rent-free, where her son also lives, on a temporary basis.

The case had been put on hold in October so Miller’s attorney, Richard Ney, could ask the state Supreme Court to order Martin to reverse that decision and disqualify the district attorney’s office, but the Kansas Supreme Court denied Ney’s request Nov. 25.

The court’s reasoning on why it denied Ney’s request was not made clear in the order, which simply states that it was “considered by the court and denied.”

Following the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision, the case can move forward again in Douglas County District Court, Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson said.

No further hearings have been set, but the jury trial is schedule for March 20, 2015.

Martin Miller has been out of jail since posting a $250,000 bond in April. During a March court appearance, Miller’s attorney said Miller would arrange to live with his wife, Laura Cuthbertson, and her father at a home in Paola. Miller and Cuthbertson married while Miller was in prison in 2006.