C-Murder Gets Permission to Leave House

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Two weeks after he was allowed to promote an album and a novel in media interviews, rapper C-Murder got permission Tuesday to leave the confines of house arrest so he can continue his recording career.

However, Corey Miller did not get all he wanted; a Jefferson Parish judge denied his request for free travel throughout the New Orleans area four days per week, including trips to a recording studio in St. Tammany Parish and to Baton Rouge to seek a new home for his children.

"He'll be allowed to go to work, but we'll have to know the exact time and location," 24th Judicial District Judge Martha Sassone said in reining in Miller's request to modify the rules of home incarceration.


Miller, 36, is awaiting retrial on a second-degree murder charge in the Jan. 12, 2002, killing of Steve Thomas, 16, who was shot in the chest during a brawl in the now-closed Platinum Club in Harvey.

For the past year, Miller has been under house arrest as a condition of the $500,000 bail Sassone set after the state Supreme Court upheld her order granting him a new trial.

Miller already is allowed to attend religious services on Sunday mornings and Bible study on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, Sassone noted.

But she declined his latest request to leave his residence from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., four days per week. She told him and his attorney, Ron Rakosky, that she will consider each request to work "as it comes."

Though home incarceration is rare for people charged with murder in Jefferson Parish, it is not unheard of for judges to allow people under house arrest to leave their residences to work, court records show.

The house arrest "severely and adversely" affects Miller's ability to earn money to pay for his defense and support his family, Rakosky said. "He needs to be able to get back to work."

Miller also wanted permission to help his ex-wife and their three children, displaced to Houston by Hurricane Katrina, find a new home in Baton Rouge, Rakosky said. He also told Sassone that Miller might eventually want to move to St. Tammany Parish, where he wants to work in a recording studio, which was not named.