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Judge not afraid to make unpopular decision

BY LUIS PEREZ | luis.perez@newsday.com

March 20, 2008

The judge who sent John White to prison yesterday has been known to provoke anger from the bench.

Last year, Suffolk County Court Judge Barbara R. Kahn sent an 18-year-old man to prison for 38 years after a jury found he played a relatively minor role in a Bay Shore robbery and sadistic sexual attack involving two other teenage suspects.

Terrance Terrell's sentence was more than that of his two co-defendants combined, despite even the victim's acknowledgment that he played the smallest role in the attack.

In sentencing Terrell, who was found guilty of first-degree sodomy and robbery but acquitted of rape, Kahn noted the others apologized, but he did not.

Terrell's attorney, James Saladino of Riverhead, said at the time that Kahn "trampled on the whole concept of due process," punishing his client because he exercised his right to trial.

It is a case lawyers cite to describe Kahn's tenor on the bench -- tough and not afraid to mete out an unpopular sentence. Those same lawyers also say Kahn, 60, is deliberate and fair.

"My impression is that Judge Kahn has quickly gained a reputation as being a no-nonsense judge," said J. Stewart Moore of Central Islip, executive director of the Amistad Long Island Black Bar Association.

Kahn also raised eyebrows in 2005 when she approved $250,000 bail for Zachary Gibian, the Hauppauge teen who was charged with nearly beheading his stepfather with a samurai sword. Prosecutors argued Gibian was using his dead stepfather's money to make bail. Kahn later revoked the bail, and a different judge took over the case.

A Democrat elected in 2003 and the only female Suffolk County Court judge, Kahn previously served seven years as a District Court judge in Huntington, where she lives.

"She will do what she thinks is just even though she knows others may be unhappy with that result," said Tad Scharfenberg, president of the Suffolk County Criminal Bar Association, "And that's what you want at the end of the day."