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There's more to the story

Joye Brown

11:41 PM EST, December 23, 2007

"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.

He did not elaborate beyond saying that he has black friends, Italian friends, friends of all colors stretching from the East End of Long Island to all five boroughs of New York City.

White showed me his hands, using one finger of one hand to point out calluses on the other. "I'm a working man," he said, pride swelling his voice. "These are working man's hands."

And then he grabbed my hand, and smiled when he saw calluses. "I like to know who I'm talking to," he said.

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In photographs, John White, the black man convicted late Saturday in the shooting death of an unarmed 17-year-old white youth, sits almost tortoise-like, as if he is trying to decide whether to dart back into a shell. Away from the cameras, he stands straight; his voice is clear and strong, especially when he's talking about things he loves.

He is thin. But at one time, White said, he weighed 250 pounds.

He is known for his meticulous gardening. He told me of a beautiful tree he saw once while working in New York. He hunted through the Internet and his collection of gardening books until he could identify it.

He is a churchgoing man, a God-fearing Baptist. And church is where he spent yesterday morning, hours after his conviction.

I ask, "Which church?" White smiles and says he won't tell me; he also won't talk about any aspect of his case.

He did talk, a lot, in our few conversations about family, about how his is scattered across more than one state and how he runs from one to another trying to help his elders. White said he grew up "in a place where time stood still."

And he spoke, with pride, of his grandfather, Napoleon, whose gun White carried down the driveway to confront a group of angry young men one summer night last year.

On Saturday, a jury convicted White of second-degree manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon, that weapon. The verdict was no surprise, really, because a close examination of the evidence shows that White had some 20 minutes to decide what to do after his son, Aaron, woke him up; and that White and his son had armed themselves, and walked down their driveway to the street to meet that angry group of young men.

More than once, the jury had asked what a dwelling was; more than once, they heard it was a building residents usually sleep in at night. That didn't cover the apron of White's driveway. Jurors also appeared to be trying to discern whether the angry crowd had been moving toward the Whites' glass front door. There was almost no evidence to indicate that it had.

The verdict, one juror told Newsday yesterday, was logical.

Indeed, it was.

But why did John White, a hardworking, churchgoing, sane man who until that night enjoyed a pristine reputation, keep guns and ammunition in his bedroom and garage in the first place? Why did he keep pickax handles in the garage and front hall closet?

What was White -- one of the few blacks in mostly white Miller Place, one of the few blacks living outside mostly black communities on segregated Long Island -- waiting for?

What was he preparing for?

What was he almost certain would come?

One day in August, two cars, engines roaring, brought a group of angry young men to the street outside John White's dream house.

What did White see? What could only a man with White's history see? Logic aside, it should matter.

To each and every one of us.