Roca/NewsJohn White and his wife Sonia as they leave the courthouse after his guilty verdict was handed down.
Roca/NewsMembers of the Cicciaro family celebrate the verdict.
Posted on 12/22/2007 10:38:31 PM PST by Stoat
Saturday, December 22nd 2007, 10:25 PM
Roca/NewsJohn White and his wife Sonia as they leave the courthouse after his guilty verdict was handed down.
Roca/NewsMembers of the Cicciaro family celebrate the verdict.
The black Long Island father charged with shooting a white teen was convicted of manslaughter Saturday night by a jury that rejected his claim he was defending his family from a "lynch mob."
John White, 54, was found guilty of gunning down 17-year-old Daniel Cicciaro last year in the racially charged case.
"We're going to Disney. Wooo!" the victim's father, Daniel Cicciaro Sr., crowed, as he left the Arthur M. Cromarty Court complex in Riverhead, L.I., Saturday night.
"My son is finally vindicated," the teen's mother, Joanne Cicciaro, said. "The truth prevailed.
"It was never about race. It was about individuals and individuals' actions."
Cicciaro's relatives started honking their horns in the parking lot.
White, who also was convicted of criminal possession of a weapon, had maintained that the shooting was accidental. He was permitted to remain free on bail until sentencing, when he is to face a prison term of 5 to 15 years.
He had no comment last night.
The ruling came on the fourth day of tense jury deliberations that followed a trial in which defense attorneys referenced the Ku Klux Klan in arguing the shooting was justified. Jurors reported they were deadlocked on Friday.
Reaction in the courtroom was muted after Judge Barbara Kahn had warned the spectators against "public displays of approval or disapproval when the verdict is read."
White testified during the trial that he was trying to protect his family when he brandished a gun last year after a group of angry white teenagers showed up at his doorstep late at night to confront his then-19-year-old son, Aaron.
John White had been sleeping inside his home in Miller Place, a predominantly white community in eastern Long Island, on Aug. 9, 2006, when Aaron woke him to say that a group of angry teens was headed to their house bent on beating him up.
Minutes earlier, Aaron White had gotten into a fight with the boys after being asked to leave a house party.
The elder White first grabbed a shotgun, but then opted instead for a pistol he kept in his garage.
He and his son, who had picked up the shotgun, walked to the end of the driveway to confront the angry gang, who hurled racial epithets.
John White said his gun went off accidentally after Cicciaro lunged for it.
"He wanted to stop these people who said they were coming to kill his son," defense attorney Fred Brewington said in closing arguments.
Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney James Chalifoux said White should have simply locked the door and called police - and not gone outside to confront the teenagers with a gun.
He also sought to downplay the racial element, telling jurors the Brooklyn-raised White never said anything about a lynch mob until the case went to trial.
The defendant's wife, Sonia White, said only, "We are blessed by the Lord."
He shot strangers who had robbed a neighbor’s house, not his, and strangers who did not step foot on his property.
As much as Mr. White lost here the kid he shot lost more.
...trial testimony that indicated that Mr. White fanned the gun menacingly at each teenager and that Daniel did not lunge, but rather defiantly slapped the gun away...
The man trespassed on Mr White's (rightfully defended, gun unregistered or not) property and then assaulted him. But the whole race-card BS just pisses me off.
Yep. And the question is, is that legal in Texas or not? So far it seems that the answer is yes, what Mr. Horn did is legal in Texas.
Lock your home. Call the police.
Do not go outside and display a weapon.
If they break into your house, or do something to endanger you in the house, such as shoot into your house or try to set fire to it, or you are stopping them from committing (but not just from escaping from) a felony such as stealing your car (not just vandalizing it) from your property/driveway (not the street); shoot them.
The thieves actually were on Mr Horn’s property when they ignored his demand to halt.
I understand what he did was legal. I’m just surprised that given the amount of sympathy here for Mr. Horn, Mr. White doesn’t have more support.
As much as Mr. White lost here the kid he shot lost more.
Agreed. The kid was guilty of trespassing, disturbing the peace, being a low-class drunken idiot and probably of making threats, none of which are Capital crimes, last time I checked, and none of which placed Mr. White in an imminent threat to his life.
When Mr. White chose to go outside and escalate the situation rather than diffuse it, that's only when his life came into jeopardy.
I’m sorry, but you are legally 100% wrong.
Mr. White, as much as a feel for him and his intent to protect his son, was the instigator of the deadly interaction.
See # 17 above.
TX and NY law VERY different.
Yes, see #29
Mr. White had as much right to defend himself and his family from this lynch mob as anyone else would.
*If* this had happned in Texas he proabably wouldn’t be charged. If Sharpton et al., have a problem with it they should take it up with the lords of New York state.
It probably was not a good idea to go outside with a pistol and son with a shotgun to confront a group of drunk teens. It definately won’t deescalate the situation and probably enflamed it.
He shot the kid in the face. It was no accident.
From what I can glean:
The kids who showed up did think that a threat involving rape and assault had originated from the shooter’s son.
The threat had occurred 9 months prior to the shooting incident.
The threat was either made from:
A fake mspace account made by one of the shooter’s son’s friends.
Or from the son’s own mspace account which was “accessed” by his son’s friend to transmit the “threat”.
And variations on the above (posted chat logs on a mspace, ims from a mspace, posted in chat room yadda)
The person named as making the the “fake” threats or whatever (wtf) has been named as both “Ken” Longo and “Michael” Longo, who apparently is or was a US Marine. This person is supposedly the friend of Aaron White.
This same person “Ken” or Michael” or whomever was also at the party that night.
I have no idea. Someone else figure it out, lolz.
If the kids had weapons or if they started to break in the house I'm sure he would have tons of support.
Sounds to me like the race card backfired. If his attorney had presented him as a scared father rather than a poor black man scared of the KKK it may have turned out differently.
If anyone has any actual transcripts or court docs please post em. : )
There have been several threads about this case and while FReepers have been on both sides, Mr. White has had plenty of support here. I have questioned Mr. White's actions and there have been people who have defended him quite emphatically to me. I think the NYT article linked above said it right in noting that these were two decent lives that intersected in a bad way. Apparently neither Mr. White nor the kid he shot were criminals or thugs before the fateful night. It's a damn shame this happened.
Agreed, and until he chose to go outside and confront the mob and in so doing inflame and escalate the situation, the only thing that he needed 'defense' from was from drunken noise and trespassers.
He already had a shotgun in the house. He could have locked the door, called the police, and if the drunken kids tried to break his door down he could have blown them apart with his shotgun, and I would have been cheering for him.
Instead, he chose to go out to his garage to get a revolver, then to go outside and inflame the situation beyond what it was.
In a 'racial' situation like this, twenty police cars would probably have been there in moments of him making the call and diffused the situation because they are so very, very eager to avoid any hint of a 'racial' situation.
I have a massive gun collection and you'll be hard pressed to find a stronger supporter of the Second Amendment and the right of individuals to defend themselves with lethal force WHEN NECESSARY and within the context of established law than myself, but I have zero sympathy for people who act outside the law and needlessly inflame a situation.
One of the things about this story is that there are a lot of critical facts that don't get included in each article. Depending on what a writer includes and what gets left out one can come away with very different views of what happened. There have been long exchanges on previous threads regarding questions that were settled by plain facts on other threads. The MSM has been up to its usual tricks with this story.
“The MSM has been up to its usual tricks with this story.”
Agreed.
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