A Bronx man who got a chance at freedom after successfully appealing his life sentence from a 2000 homicide was shot to death outside Woodlawn Cemetery on Saturday, the Daily News has learned.
Devon Millington, 45, was shot in the head just outside the cemetery near Jerome and Bainbridge Aves. in Norwood, the Bronx, about 5:45 a.m. on Saturday. Police have made no arrests in his killing.
Millington was just 23 when he and two buddies went drinking and got high at the former Bill and Bob’s Sports Bar in Wakefield, the Bronx, on July 20, 2000. About 2 a.m., the trio decided to rob bartender Everard “Erik” Gerrald and fatally shot him, according to court filings.
The shooting and robbery happened just at closing time. One of Millington’s accomplices, Michael Suarez, put a gun on the bar and when Gerrald said, “You got to be kidding me,” Millington grabbed the gun and shot Gerrald, court papers say. Millington then went toward the back of the bar and fired two more shots at the bartender.
The trio split the $2,000 they stole, according to court records.
Confronted with his own videotaped statements and Suarez’s testimony, Millington was convicted at trial of first-degree murder in January 2002 and sentenced to life without parole.
He appealed the verdict and the sentence, arguing his lawyer never explained the maximum sentence he could face, telling him instead that he could face 25 years to life.
When prosecutors offered him a plea deal of 18 years to life, he rejected the offer, after his lawyer John Nicholas Iannuzzi advised him, “18 to life, 25 to life, what’s the difference?” according to court documents.
Manhattan Federal Judge Lorna Schofield ordered prosecution to reextend that 18-year-to-life offer in 2015, and Millington was released to lifetime parole in July 2019.
Iannuzzi said he testified on Millington’s behalf in his federal appeal because he always considered the conviction to be a “tremendous miscarriage of justice.”
The veteran…
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