Murder in Woodstock

The Abuse Excuse

By early March 2007, after a little over a year to think about it, Scott Deojay decided to plead his case out. After all, the state's case against him was ironclad. Juries have little use for a two-time rapist. It would not have been a hard sell for State's Attorney Patricia Froehlich to prove that Scott Deojay had raped, beaten and murdered Judy Nilan.

During his sentencing on March 9, 2007, before a courtroom packed to capacity with friends and family of Judy Nilan, along with state troopers and police officers from throughout Windham County, Deojay stood before the court looking disheveled and dirty. He was wearing a state-issued banana yellow jump suit, three days' worth of stubble and a strange look of despair.

Deojay's defense attorney, Ramon Canning, addressed the court on Deojay's behalf, offering, for the first time, Deojay's "excuse"—as if there could ever be one—for the two rapes and murder he had committed. In short, Canning suggested that Deojay couldn't help himself. He had been wired when he was sixteen years old to become a rapist. It wasn't his fault.

Many in the room were taken aback. "What the heck is this guy getting at?" one person in the courtroom told me later. "It was appalling."

Canning said it was the state of Connecticut's fault, essentially, that Deojay had turned out the way he did.

"Huh?"

On probation as a teenager, Deojay had to visit Richard Straub, his probation officer. Deojay was now claiming the Straub had sexually assaulted him repeatedly for three years.

As Canning spoke, Judy Nilan's brother stood up and walked out of the room, clearly announcing, "This is all bull shit!" Judy's father also. He was crying.

In 1999, Richard Straub was convicted on more than thirty charges of sexual assault, kidnapping and unlawful restraint involving sexual abuse allegations from more than a dozen of his clients. Out of those of victims, however, Scott Deojay was never named and had never, before this day in court, came out and claimed to be abused by Straub.

Still, "The state had a great impact on him because of this probation officer's action," Canning explained to the court. "It went on for three years and it lasted in his mind and caused an outpouring of rage."

The abuse excuse. How dramatic. How outrageous. How humiliating to the memory of Judy Nilan. "Previously undisclosed abuse is a tired, worn out excuse," Patricia Froehlich told me later, "that many people who finally face the consequences of their actions try to assert. I wouldn't have expected anything [less] from someone who committed the crimes to which he entered guilty pleas."

Superior Court Judge Antonio Robaina, clearly upset by the notion that Canning had used such an underhanded tactic to try to lessen the impact of such a ghastly crime, explained to Deojay that sexual abuse was no "excuse for these offenses. ... These victims were so remote from the violence. [Judy Nilan] was a person who personified kindness and caring for others. She was clearly not in [your] circle of violence."

Picking up on that point, Jon Baker, during his impact statement, said, "Judy was clearly no victim. She was a strong woman who ... accomplished more in her forty-four years than most others do in their lifetime."

When Jon Baker was nearly finished giving his impact statement, he paused for a moment to collect himself before addressing Judy personally, saying, "Come on, kid. Let's go and leave what we can here. We have a future elsewhere—and maybe another song to sing together in the garden. I love you."

The judge piled on another twenty years for the sexual assault Deojay was involved with in Plainfield, banged his gavel and sent Deojay on his way to a lifetime behind bars.