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We will forgive him

BY ALFONSO A. CASTILLO | alfonso.castillo@newsday.com

10:46 PM EST, December 23, 2007

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:

Forgiveness.

"There probably will come a time -- most people won't believe it -- but we're going to end up forgiving him for what he did," Daniel Cicciaro Sr. said yesterday, speaking outside the Port Jefferson Station family business, Dano's Auto Clinic, where a cardboard sign on the garage door read, "Thank you jurors. Thank you God. Dano Jr. Rest In Peace."

In contrast to the raucous courthouse celebration a day earlier that had all the spirit of a home-team victory, it was a subdued Cicciaro and ex-wife Joanne Cicciaro who gathered with friends and relatives around the three muscle cars that were Dano Jr.'s pride and joy. As classic rock blared, Cicciaro revved the thunderous engine of the "project car" -- the black '67 Camaro that his son was rebuilding before he was shot dead by John White in August 2006.

Despite venomous words of disdain for White's defense attorneys, the Cicciaros yesterday expressed mostly empathy for the defendant and his family, who they said had a lot more in common with their own than some might think, despite the deep divisions in the trial.

"I felt so much, I guess, compassion for [White's wife] Sonia White when she was up on the stand and said the words, 'My life changed,'" Joanne Cicciaro said. "I was saying the same thing. Mine did, too. All of our lives changed in that moment. Their lives were ruined forever in that moment, too."

Similarly, the fathers in the case shared a common link, Daniel Cicciaro Sr. said -- the desire to raise their sons to be men and make the right decisions. Cicciaro said he lost "my partner in everything I did" when his son died.

"I'm sure Mr. White had that with his son," said Cicciaro, who added that he especially held no "ill will toward family, even though they lied on the stand. They said what they said trying to protect Mr. White, as I guess any family would do." The Cicciaros have disputed the Whites' version of the shooting, and objected to their depiction of Cicciaro Jr. and his friends as being part of a "lynch mob."

And while still maintaining that race should not have become as great a factor as it did during the trial, Cicciaro acknowledged yesterday what he said was a different kind of racism in the case -- one that targeted his family and supporters, many of them rough-edged with shaved heads and tattoos.

"People call us skinheads, but we don't run to the police saying, 'Look at how they're judging us,'" Cicciaro Sr. said. "Don't judge a book by its cover."

After leaving the courthouse late Saturday, the Cicciaros and about 40 friends celebrated at a Red Lobster and later at a neighborhood bar, where a DJ took requests in memory of Cicciaro Jr. into the early morning.

With the trial behind them, the Cicciaros say they look forward to Christmas with their family, which includes 17-year-old son Nick, but "it will never be the same," Cicciaro Sr. said.

When she next sees White at his Feb. 21 sentencing, Joanne Cicciaro said she expects to have "pages" of words to tell him. There are also words she would like to hear.

"I'm totally willing to forgive," she said. "But he'd have to first ask for forgiveness for what he did."