Nicholas Taylor is bad at being a criminal — and he knows it.
Taylor, convicted in connection with a bungled 2006 murder-for-hire plot in Ansonia, was out of prison for just over a year before finding himself behind bars again for shooting himself with a gun that wasn’t his.
On Tuesday (May 20) he took a two-year plea deal in the case in Superior Court at Milford, after which he pledged to turn over a new leaf while behind bars.
Background
Taylor, a 27-year-old Ansonia native, was convicted in a 2006 Ansonia plot to kill his mother’s boyfriend.
According to police, he offered a would-be hit-man $50 and a used stereo to kill his mother’s boyfriend.
Taylor and his mother believed the man’s death would lead to a $100,000 insurance payout.
But the man Taylor hired to perpetrate the killing instead went to Shelton police, who contacted Ansonia cops.
They initiated an undercover operation to implicate Taylor and arrested him before the plot went anywhere, Ansonia Police Lt. Andrew Cota said Wednesday (May 21).
“He was trying to plan it but it never really got to where (the mother’s boyfriend) was physically attacked,” Cota said.
He pleaded guilty in June 2007 to a single count of attempted murder, and was sentenced that October to a 16-year prison term to be suspended after seven years.
Taylor’s mother, Kathryn Smith, 56, was sentenced to an 11-year prison term. She’s still behind bars at York Correctional Institution in Niantic, according to Correction Department records.
New Charges
After serving seven years in prison, Taylor was released last April.
He relocated to a Wolcott residence to serve out five years of probation.
But trouble found Taylor when he found a handgun in the home this February, according to State’s Attorney Kevin Lawlor.
As a convicted felon barred from possessing firearms, Taylor should have notified police.
Instead, Lawlor said, he decided to “examine” the weapon a bit.
While doing so, he fired the gun accidentally, shooting himself in the hand, though he wasn’t wounded seriously.
On Tuesday in Superior Court at Milford, Taylor admitted violating his probation in the murder for hire case.
A plea deal in the case called for Taylor to serve two more years in prison.
That sentence will run concurrently to a two-year sentence he received in Superior Court at Waterbury in March after pleading guilty to a single count of criminal possession of a firearm.
Taylor’s lawyer, Jack O’Donnell, said in court that his client needs to use his prison time to figure out his priorities.
“When he gets out he’s got to end this life of crime, because he’s a bad criminal,” O’Donnell told Judge Frank Iannotti Tuesday. “He needs to go straight. He’s not cut out for it.”
Taylor smiled wryly at his lawyer’s comments before telling the judge he’d take O’Donnell’s advice.
“I’ll get my life straightened out after this,” he said.