A booking photo of Davon Miller released by Derby police Sept. 2, 2015.
The man accused of several summer 2015 break-ins in the Ansonia and Derby Hilltop took a plea deal Tuesday on the eve of a trial.
The deal calls for 22-year-old Davon Miller to be sentenced to five years in prison.
He is scheduled to return to Superior Court at Milford Sept. 19 for sentencing.
Miller has been behind bars since his arrest in the early morning hours of Sept. 2, 2015 moments after police said he broke into a Hickory Road home and made off with a pack of Marlboros.
The arrest capped a fraught summer for residents shaken by the nighttime break-ins, many of whom formed a new neighborhood block watch.
All told, police eventually filed 25 criminal charges against Miller in connection to the break-ins in Ansonia and Derby.
Miller was scheduled to be tried on four of the Derby burglaries in May, but a civil rights lawsuit he has filed alleging Derby police “tortured” him into confessing after his arrest caused a delay because the defendants included his court-appointed lawyer.
The trial was scheduled to go forward again Wednesday with Miller being represented by a new lawyer, Michael Moscowitz.
On Tuesday, Moscowitz tried to convince a judge to prevent the prosecutor in the case, Amy Bepko, from telling the jury about an interview Miller gave police after his arrest during which he confessed to some of the break-ins.
But Judge Denise Markle ruled against Moscowitz’s motion to suppress Miller’s statement. She noted that no evidence had been presented at the hearing to support Miller’s claims of misconduct by Derby cops.
About an hour and a half later, Miller took the plea deal.
Specifically, he pleaded guilty under the Alford doctrine before Judge Jane Grossman to:
- first-degree burglary and sixth-degree larceny for the Hickory Road break-in and cigarette theft;
- first-degree burglary for breaking into a home on Highland Avenue in Ansonia Aug. 6, 2015;
- first-degree burglary for breaking into a home on Reservoir Drive while a woman in her 80s was asleep inside.
Under the Alford doctrine, a defendant doesn’t agree with all of the prosecution’s accusations but concedes that a conviction is likely if the case went to trial.
The plea deal calls for Miller to be sentenced to a 20-year prison sentence to be suspended after five years, to be followed by three years of probation.
A plea offer that Miller had rejected in January called for him to serve more than six years in prison and five years of probation.
Moscowitz said Wednesday that Judge Markle’s ruling that the jury would hear about Miller’s confession made up his client’s mind.
“He decided late on in the day that the better part of discretion would be to plead out,” Moscowitz said. “He had hopes that the statement would be suppressed.”
