Two men charged with the 2021 Christmas morning murder of Steven Byrnes of Southampton have until Thursday morning, May 23, to either plead guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter in the first degree, with significant prison time attached, or go straight to a jury trial on June 5, which could bring each of them sentences of 25 years to life in prison if they’re found guilty.
So said Suffolk County Justice Karen Wilutis on Monday to one of the men, Dominick Parisi of Hampton Bays. “You should take your attorney’s advice,” she told Parisi. “This is a very generous offer.”
Assistant District Attorney Kerriann Kelly, the bureau chief who handles violent felony crimes, had earlier proffered the deal to Parisi’s attorney, Scott Gross, to reduce the top charge from murder in the second degree to manslaughter, with a determinate sentence of 20 years in state prison.
Parisi’s co-defendant, Dangelo Soto of Brentwood, who has been incarcerated since his arrest in February 2022, is currently facing the same three charges as Parisi: murder in the second degree and two counts of burglary in the first degree.
The two men are on Wilutis’s calendar May 23, when a final decision is expected from both.
According to District Attorney Ray Tierney, Parisi and Soto entered the home of Byrnes on Roses Grove Road in North Sea through an unlocked door in the attached garage. It was a little before 9 a.m., and Byrnes was asleep in his bedroom, Tierney told the press after the two men were indicted in February 2022.
The two men, Tierney said, masked and wearing all black, including gloves, were after cocaine and money. “Where’s the stuff?” they were quoted as demanding.
They began beating Byrnes with the butt of a shotgun. Byrnes tried to escape and was killed by a single shotgun blast in the back, according to the Suffolk County medical examiner’s office.
“You have been offered a very generous plea bargain,” Wilutis told Parisi on Monday. Parisi has been incarcerated without bail due to the serious nature of the charges since his arrest in January 2022.
Parisi, who wore a drab green prisoner’s jumpsuit in court, is a short, slightly stocky man with a neatly trimmed graying beard and hair.
His apparent reluctance to accept the plea bargain may be based on the difference between the offers to the two men: While Soto would be pleading guilty to the same crime as Parisi, he would be sentenced to 18 years, instead of the 20 years Parisi is facing.
However, prior criminal history comes into play: Parisi, 60, previously served 17 years in state prison for the same crime he would be pleading guilty to here, manslaughter in the first degree. That killing happened in Suffolk County in the late 1980s.
Such is not the case with Soto, who was just 21 at the time of Byrnes’s death.
“This is my oldest case,” Wilutis said, referring to her calendar, to which a court clerk nodded in agreement.
Wilutis told Parisi that if his decision on May 23 is to go to trial, and then he is found guilty, he should expect no favors from her when it comes to sentencing.
Gross said afterward, “We appreciate the people’s offer.”
At the same time, though, he is preparing to go to trial.
