A life that was equal parts promise and bad choices kept Justin Miller’s future in doubt.

One last lapse in judgment killed a man, and, on Thursday, sent Miller to prison.

The former Queens University student pleaded guilty to second-degree murder stemming from a fatal alcohol-related crash last year. As a group that included his grandmother, friends, two professors and his college soccer coach looked on, Miller disappeared out a side door of a Mecklenburg courtroom to begin a sentence of at least eight years.