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Father found guilty in shooting of white teen

BY ALFONSO A. CASTILLO AND MATTHEW CHAYES | alfonso.castillo@newsday.com
matthew.chayes@newsday.com

11:15 PM EST, December 22, 2007

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.

John White, who faces a maximum of 12 to 22 years in prison for shooting Daniel Cicciaro Jr. in the face during a tense confrontation with White's son, Aaron, will remain free on bail until he is sentenced Feb. 21.

About an hour before the verdict, the judge told the jury that she would have them return to court for a Sunday session, encouraging them to reach a verdict "if at all possible," and admonishing them that if they could ultimately not reach a verdict, it would go before a jury "that would not be any different from you."

The verdict came shortly after the jury told the judge they were "having difficulty" reaching a unanimous verdict on their fourth day of deliberations, with one juror sobbing and trembling in open court. The jury's repeated notes to the judge indicated they were torn about what White believed when four friends intended to break into his Miller Place home.

As the verdict was read, Daniel Cicciaro Sr. glared through a heavy presence of nearly 20 court officers, trying to get a glimpse of White's reaction. White showed none.

"It was probably the same look he had when he shot my son in the face," Cicciaro said. "He may have a stone face. But I'm sure his heart is hurting right now."

Echoing the divergent views of what happened that night in August 2006, the two sides held separate news conferences, in which they reiterated the facts of the case as they saw them.

Gathered at a lectern with the White family, the defense team tried to speak while being drowned out by a truck horn as Cicciaros supporters celebrated outside.

"A lot of people are hurt from this verdict," said Frederick Brewington of Hempstead, who the guilty verdict was disappointing for the White family and "also disappointing for African-Americans in Suffolk County."

"What this just basically has said ... is that you have to survive as an African-American in Suffolk County, where people can roll up on your house at 11:30 at night, threaten you, threaten your family, curse at you, call you a , and you've got to take it."

But Assistant District Attorney James Chalifoux -- who spoke with lipstick smeared on his face from being kissed by the Cicciaro family -- said the jury's verdict was based on the letter of the law.

"Mr. White was faced in an unfortunate situation, in a difficult situation," he said. "But he reacted to it poorly, recklessly and now a jury has said that he acted criminally."

In the trial, this much has never been in doubt -- a gun held by White, 54, of Miller Place, fatally shot 17-year-old Daniel Cicciaro Jr. on Aug. 9, 2006. The four-week trial has focused on why and how White shot Cicciaro, and the events that the immediately preceded the shooting.

And in so doing, the case has been defined by racial tension in the Riverhead courtroom. Family and supporters of White, who is black, sat together on the right side of the courtroom while the Cicciaros, who are white, sat with their friends on the left.

Brewington told jurors that Cicciaro and four friends came to White's house that night to "terrorize" him because he is black. He argued that racism had "everything to do" with the case.

Suffolk prosecutors, on the other hand, told jurors to focus on what they called White's recklessness on the night of the shooting. Chalifoux said prosecutors never heard White mention the lynch mobs before the trial.

"It became about a lynch mob when we got to this courtroom," Chalifoux said in his closing argument. "That's when John White started talking about a lynch mob. Yes, they were wrong. Yes, they shouldn't have been at John White's house that night, but they were. And what you need to consider is how John White reacted to that."

White testified that about three minutes elapsed from the time he was awakened by his son and confronted the group. But Chalifoux showed that White may have had as much as 20 minutes.

Chalifoux told jurors there were "two John Whites." One was the peaceful and meticulous man described by his friends, and the other was the man who admitted keeping a shotgun in his bedroom, a handgun in his garage, and pickax handles in his car and front closet, all for safety.

But Brewington gave a contrasting portrait of John White as a hardworking family man who sought only to thwart an attack from an unruly mob driven by "racial privilege."

Last week, Judge Barbara Kahn gave jurors the option of convicting White of the misdemeanor charge of second-degree reckless endangerment if they cannot convict him of second-degree manslaughter, a felony. Prosecutors had also asked Kahn to allow jurors to consider a felony charge of criminally negligent homicide, a request she denied.

Staff writers Reid J. Epstein and Jennifer Sinco Kelleher contributed to this story.