Shooter says he feels for family of his victim

BY STEVE RITEA AND LAURA RIVERA | steve.ritea@newsday.com; laura.rivera@newsday.com

11:14 PM EST, December 23, 2007

Hands clasped in front of him and wearing the suit he had just worn to church, John White 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.

"I am not inhuman," he said yesterday outside his Miller Place home. "I have a very deep feeling for this young man and his family."

One of his lawyers, Paul Gianelli of Hauppauge, said White had been scheduled to sing in the choir at his Brookhaven church and "draw some strength from that" as he prepares for what may be his last Christmas outside prison for some time. Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 21 before Suffolk County Court Judge Barbara Kahn.

Five months after he rejected a plea offer from Kahn that would have landed him in prison for a maximum of 2 to 6 years, White now faces a maximum of 15 years on manslaughter and weapons possession charges.

Lawyers say White is almost certain to receive a sentence heftier than the offer he passed up.

"I would think she's going to sentence him to something more," said James Saladino, a criminal defense lawyer in Riverhead.

At the same time, "I think she would have a hard time giving the maximum, because of the sense of justification that really pervades this case."

According to testimony, Cicciaro and some of his friends had been drinking before they barraged White's son, who is black, with racial epithets after an argument at a party. John White came outside with a handgun his attorneys contend went off accidentally, killing Cicciaro.

Several experts also agree White's lawyers took a gamble last week when they withdrew a motion to allow jurors to consider the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide, which carries a maximum sentence of 11/3 to 4 years.

Although prosecutors fought to allow the lesser charge, Kahn ultimately declined to grant it.

"They probably thought they had it and they didn't want to give the jury some kind of compromise ground," said Tad Scharfenberg, president of the Suffolk Criminal Bar Association.

"This was a decision to go for broke," Saladino said.

At the news conference outside White's home yesterday, one of his attorneys, Marie Michel of Port Jefferson, suggested they may appeal the selection of a largely white jury, which had one black and one Hispanic member.

"There's been a lot of questions regarding the makeup of this jury and I think that in 2007, the makeup of a jury should be of no consequence," she said.

Defense attorney Michael Brown of Central Islip said that's a problem defense attorneys frequently face with minority defendants in Suffolk.

Although Suffolk is largely white, "if you're asking me from a practical standpoint, is that a jury of his peers, I have a problem with that," he said.

"There's always hope," Michel said from the driveway Sunday, "that justice is blind."

Staff writers Matthew Chayes and Alfonso A. Castillo contributed to this report.

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