- | alfonso.castillo@newsday.com
- 11:09 PM EDT, March 20, 2008
Related links
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The John White trial Video -
Vandals hit home of Cicciaro neighbor
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Victim’s family outraged over White’s sentence
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http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-liwhite0321,0,6032827.story
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The judge’s remarks: http://a1022.g.akamai.net/f/1022/8160/5m/images.newsday.com/media/acrobat/2008-03/36938400.PDF
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John White trial and sentencing Photos: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-johnwhite-trial-pg,0,6580428.photogallery -
EXPLICIT LANGUAGE: Cicciaro family reaction to sentencing. This version of the Cicciaro family reaction contains language that may not be suitable for all viewers. Video: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-liwhite0321,0,6032827.story -
Audio: 911 call made by Alex Delgado the night Daniel Cicciaro was shot Audio: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-white-audio1,0,2720449.mp3file
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Complete coverage: Miller Place shooting: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-johnwhite-trial-sg,0,6973647.storygallery
“Oh, there’s been a constant set of threats against my family,” White said.
White arrived home at 9:35 p.m., appearing happy to be greeted by family members.
In his day and a half in prison as a convicted killer, White inspired inmates with his story, while expressing concern for the safety of the family members who anxiously awaited his release, those who met with him Thursday said.
While White’s supporters scrambled to get him free, the father of the young victim remained disillusioned over a .judicial system that he thinks not only gave his son’s killer a relatively lenient sentence, but allowed him to go free a day later.
“We kind of expected another bombshell like that,” Cicciaro said, adding sarcastically: “What they should do is give him all his bail money back, don’t give him any jail time, let him go, give him his passport back, let him enjoy life.”
Cicciaro also defended himself from claims that he threatened the life of Aaron White in the angry moments at the Riverhead courthouse after White’s sentencing.
Thursday, he called the characterization of his comment as a death threat “ridiculous.”
“I was just reiterating that what if the tables were turned, how would this have unfolded?” Cicciaro said Thursday.
Minutes after visiting White in jail earlier in the day, attorney Paul .Gianelli said White never stopped worrying about his family’s safety.
“He’s worried about his son’s safety. He’s worried about his wife,” Gianelli said. “He feels kind of helpless and out of touch being in jail and he’s anxious to do what he’s got to do to make sure his family is safe.”
At the request of White’s defense team, prosecutors alerted Southampton Town Police, who have jurisdiction over the county court, about Cicciaro’s remarks. On Thursday, Southampton Police Det. Sgt. Randy Hintze said the case was his top priority.
“This is my only investigation. Everything else has been put into the side burner right now,” said Hintze, who declined to talk about possible charges.
White’s attorney, Frederick Brewington, of Hempstead, said he was satisfied that police had “started down the right path.”
“We are going to give them the opportunity to do what they are supposed to do,” he said.
Staff writers Laura Rivera, .Matthew Chayes, Susana Enriquez and Luis Perez contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.
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A TIMELINE IN THE CASE OF JOHN WHITE AND DANIEL CICCIARO
Vandals hit home of Cicciaro neighbor
Less than a day after John White was sentenced in the racially charged killing of Daniel Cicciaro Sr.’s son, Suffolk bias crime detectives Thursday began investigating vandalism done to the home owned by Cicciaro’s only black neighbor.
Victim’s family outraged over White’s sentence
The underlying tensions that filled a Riverhead courtroom during John White’s eight-week trial ignited Wednesday when a Suffolk County Court judge sentenced the Miller Place man to 2 to 4 years in prison for fatally shooting a Selden teen in the face a year and a half ago.
Threats after Cicciaro’s killer is sentenced?
Exploding with rage moments after John White received a lenient sentence for killing Daniel Cicciaro Jr., the Selden teen’s father shouted into a microphone before a crowd of onlookers and reporters, “Let’s see what happens when Aaron White gets shot.”
Joye Brown: In case of black and white, nobody wins
Race had nothing to do with the case of John White. Let’s pretend that’s true.
Judge not afraid to make unpopular decision
The judge who sent John White to prison yesterday has been known to provoke anger from the bench.
Two communities react to John White’s sentence
Outside the bagel shop and the ice-cream parlor, the market and the cul-de-sac, people in the communities surrounding the homes of the Whites and the Cicciaros warily expressed mixed emotions about John White’s 2- to 4-year sentence Wednesday.
Experts: Judge strove for balance in White sentence
Before she sentenced John White Wednesday, Suffolk County Court Judge Barbara Kahn reminded a packed courtroom of her burden as an impartial administrator of justice — and that the task is as difficult as it is delicate.
Sharpton leads protest in Miller Place case
Supporters of a black man convicted in the shooting death of a white teenager who went to the man’s Miller Place home to confront the man’s son have insisted all along that if the races were reversed, the legal outcome would have been different.
Jury in John White trial boiled with tension
Inside the John White jury room, the tension got so high at one point that a juror punched a wall, and another slammed a bathroom door so hard the courtroom walls shook. Jurors asked him to go to an adjoining room to cool off. After four days, Francois Larche thought he and his fellow jurors finally had agreed on only one thing: This jury was hung.
Lawyers: Hate crimes ignored in Miller Place death
For the defense in the John White case, it’s a question that remains unanswered: Why weren’t members of the angry group of white teens that gathered at the end of a black family’s driveway in August 2006 charged with a bias crime?
Sharpton plans Riverhead march to protest verdict
The Rev. Al Sharpton says the John White trial shows Suffolk County is not a place of equal justice for blacks and whites, and he plans to make that opinion the focus of a march next week in Riverhead.
Experts: Judge, not jury, focus of White appeal
Any appeal of John White’s manslaughter conviction will more likely be determined by any pressure the judge exerted on jurors eager to get home for Christmas rather than pressure they put on each other, legal experts say.
Juror’s admission could provide White case appeal
Revelations from a holdout juror could form the basis of an appeal in the case of John White, the black man convicted of killing a white youth during a racially charged confrontation in Miller Place, White’s lawyer said Tuesday.
Miller Place trial: Juror felt pressured to convict John White
Feeling pressure to return to his family as Christmas rapidly approached — and to let his fellow jurors return to theirs — Francois Larche finally agreed to convict John White of manslaughter, despite believing that prosecutors did not prove that White was not justified in his actions the night he shot dead Daniel Cicciaro Jr. in front of White’s home.
We will forgive him
A day after celebrating a guilty verdict, Daniel Cicciaro Jr.’s parents yesterday uttered a word with potentially tremendous impact in the lives of the Cicciaro and White families:
Shooter says he feels for family of his victim
Hands clasped in front of him and wearing the suit he had just worn to church, stood in the driveway where he gunned down 17-year-old Daniel Cicciaro Jr. over a year ago and offered a few fleeting words the morning after his conviction.
Joye Brown: There’s more to the story
“I crossed the color line a long time ago,” John White told me in one of the few informal conversations we had in the hallway during courtroom breaks during his trial in Riverhead.
Jurors: Evidence left us no choice
Evidence in the case of a Miller Place man convicted of killing an unarmed teenager left jurors no choice but to find the man guilty in the racially charged trial, one of the jurors said yesterday.
For many, it was a case about race
As black leaders criticized the trial and conviction of John White on manslaughter and weapons charges, all agreed yesterday that the case was bedeviled at every turn by the issue of race.
Father found guilty in shooting of white teen
A Suffolk County jury late Saturday night convicted John White of manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon in the 2006 killing of an unarmed teenager.
Jury continues deliberations after hearing readbacks
A Suffolk jury deliberating the fate of John White, the Miller Place man charged with killing Daniel Cicciaro Jr., was asked to continue deliberating until at least 9 p.m. Saturday by Suffolk County Court Judge Barbara Kahn.
Jury in shooting case has choice of two verdicts
A jury will have the option of convicting John White of a misdemeanor — rather than a felony — for the shooting death of Daniel Cicciaro Jr., a Suffolk County judge ruled Tuesday.
Defendant: ‘I didn’t mean to shoot this young man’
In riveting testimony in his manslaughter trial Friday, John White tearfully vowed that Daniel Cicciaro Jr.’s death was a tragic accident, colored by the fears and experiences of a black man whose family was once targeted by the Ku Klux Klan.
White: ‘I was afraid to go outside’
Aaron White, the Miller Place man who has arrived to his father’s manslaughter trial wearing a bulletproof vest and with a large security detail, testified Wednesday about the hateful, violent threats that he said have caused him and his family to live in constant fear.
Prosecutor grills shooting suspect’s son
A visibly rattled and tentative Aaron White frequently contradicted himself on key testimony as he was relentlessly cross-examined by a Suffolk prosecutor in the manslaughter trial of his father, John White.
Son testifies in dad’s killing trial
Wearing a bulletproof vest and swarmed by an entourage that included members of the Nation of Islam and 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, Aaron White stepped into the Suffolk County courthouse in Riverhead Monday and gave a considerably different version of events than jurors have previously heard about the night his father shot Daniel Cicciaro Jr. in the face.
Autopsy testimony: Victim shot at close range
Daniel Cicciaro didn’t stand much of a chance of surviving after John White shot him in the face from less than three inches away, a forensic pathologist testified Wednesday in the Miller Place man’s trial.
For more on the above links, click here: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-johnwhite-trial-sg,0,6973647.storygallery
