Dardian Celaj will appear at Superior Court in Milford Sept. 17, but exactly what will happen when his case is called remains to be seen.
Celaj — who took a 2012 Derby rape case to trial before pleading guilty about an hour into it, then missed his sentencing in the case last month — could be sentenced to serve up to 20 years behind bars.
Or a judge could grant a pending motion from Celaj’s lawyer that argues Celaj, 37, didn’t know his guilty plea could result in his deportation, and that the plea should be withdrawn.
Celaj, who allegedly removed a GPS anklet monitoring his whereabouts before blowing off his sentencing, appeared briefly Tuesday (Sept. 2) before Judge John Ronan at Superior Court in Milford.
He is being held on a $1 million cash-only bond in the rape case after he was captured last week by U.S. Marshals at a friend’s residence in Naugatuck.
In addition to having pleaded guilty to a count of first-degree sexual assault, he now faces a new charge of failing to appear in court because he was AWOL from his sentencing.
The sexual assault charge stemmed from a March 2, 2012 incident during which a woman who worked for Celaj at Club Europa, a private social club on Main Street, said Celaj raped her.
The federal Department of Homeland Security has also placed an “immigration detainer” on Celaj, an Albanian native, requiring any local authorities to turn him over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the event he were to be released in the Derby case.
In court Tuesday, State’s Attorney Kevin Lawlor asked Judge Ronan to continue the case to Sept. 17, when Judge Frank Iannotti, before whom Celaj pleaded guilty, may take up the matter.
“At this point I believe Judge Iannotti wishes to proceed with the sentencing arguments that were due to be held when this defendant allegedly failed to appear in August,” Lawlor said.
Celaj had faced between two and eight years behind bars at the Aug. 1 sentencing, but because he didn’t show up, Judge Iannotti could now hand down a sentence in the case of up to 20 years in prison, the maximum punishment for first-degree sexual assault.
Celaj’s lawyer, Stephan Seeger, told Judge Ronan Tuesday that he’d try to figure out why Celaj wasn’t in court Aug. 1.
“I’d like to look into the basis for why my client obviously did not appear because I think at some level … that will figure in the sentencing,” Seeger said.
Outside the courtroom, Seeger told reporters that he hopes to revive his motion to have Celaj’s guilty plea vacated because, he says, his client was not aware at the time of his guilty plea that he could be deported as a result of it.
The lawyer who handled Celaj’s plea, Donald Cretella, had been subpoenaed by prosecutors to appear at Celaj’s original sentencing date.
“There’s been a couple issues that have generated concern for Mr. Celaj that may have led him not to appear,” Seeger said. “I’d like to take the time to fully flesh them out, (and) that’s what I’ll be doing between now and the time of sentencing.”
Seeger said he spoke with Celaj Tuesday in the courthouse lockup, but only briefly, where Celaj indicated two reasons for not showing up to court Aug. 1 — his possible deportation, and news coverage of his rape conviction that noted his prior history as an alleged mob enforcer.
In 2011 Celaj pleaded guilty in a New York federal court to two counts of robbery and single counts of use or carrying a firearm with respect to a crime of violence, conspiracy to commit robbery, conspiracy to commit extortion, and conspiracy to distribute marijuana.
According to a publicly available plea agreement, Celaj received a sentence of time served in the case, in which he was accused of working hired muscle on behalf of New York’s Genovese crime family.
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Seeger disputed the accounts of his client’s past wrongdoing Tuesday, calling Celaj’s prior federal case and the rape case “wholly unrelated.”
“He had a federal case,” Seeger said. “If somebody’s out there and he’s had some factual allegations imputed to him about organized crime, it’s always attractive to the press, because the whole mafia, the whole organized crime folklore is something that people are interested in reading about.
“The fact of the matter still remains it’s dangerous to speculate, and I think there’s been some speculation here,” Seeger went on. “And if that’s what’s led Mr. Celaj not to appear, that fear we believe should be taken into account at sentencing, because he’s not similarly situated as another person who would not have otherwise have had such things written about him.”
