Governor Paterson's decision to commute the prison sentence for a man who killed a teenager in a racially-charged confrontation gets worked over once more as the Post reports that the governor's panel of legal advisers apparently told him not to commute John White. But Paterson responded to the Post's story today by saying, "There’s no official panel. There are people in the office who had different types of opinions, many of whom did not see the entire case, and we had varying opinions on what to do with this situation from giving a pardon to doing absolutely nothing about it." He added, "“First of all it’s not a pardon - do we have that straight? Do you think you can get that on paper that it was not a pardon?”
John White fatally shot Daniel Cicciaro Jr. outsider his home in Miller Place on Long Island, but the circumstances that led to the shooting were fraught. Cicciaro Jr., 17, and group of friends—all of them white—gathered outside of White's home, spurred on by an Internet message where White's teen son Aaron had allegedly threatened to rape a girl at a paper (the threat turned out to be written by another teen pretending to be Aaron White). The group of white teens allegedly used racial epithets, and White, who is black, claimed he was reminded of a lynch mob and took his gun to tell the teens to leave. But White's gun went off—he says by accident—and Cicciaro Jr. was dead. White was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 2-4 years, which Ciccaro's family blasted as short.
Paterson commuted White, who had served 167 days, but was criticized for not contacting Cicciaro Jr.'s family first; the outgoing governor admitted yesterday that he probably should have contacted the grieving relatives, but said they wouldn't have changed his mind. Daniel Cicciaro Sr., who was headed to see his son's grave today, told reporters, "The day [White was going to be commuted] was going to come anyway so whether it was now or a year from now it is what is." Newsday says that when he was asked what he would say to Paterson or White, Ciccicaro Sr. said, "Enjoy your holiday."
White spoke at a Christmas Eve service at Faith Baptist Church in Coram (he is a deacon there) and said he was called to the prison's chapel on Wednesday; the prison superintendent "said, 'First, I want you to breathe a little bit.' He told me, 'The governor has commuted you to time served with no probation. You can leave this facility tomorrow.' And I praised God."
