EMOTIONS SURGE AT LONG ISLAND SENTENCING
Both The New York Times and Newsday covered Suffolk County Court Judge Barbara Kahn’s controversial two-to-four year sentence of John H. White, the black Long Island man convicted of second-degree manslaughter for gunning down a white teenager who had come to White’s residence with friends to confront his son. (White had faced a maximum of 15 years.) The sentence left the family of the victim, Daniel Cicciaro, distraught. Outside court, the Times reports that Cicciaro's father shouted “Let’s see what happens when Aaron White gets shot,” referring to the defendant’s son. Newsday, meanwhile, takes a closer look at Judge Kahn, a tough law-and-order judge who has been known to mete out unpopular sentences. “She will do what she thinks is just even though she knows others may be unhappy with that result,” said Tad Scharfenberg, president of the Suffolk County Criminal Bar Association, “And that's what you want at the end of the day.” Newsday also excerpts parts of Kahn’s ruling, including her assertion that “While Mr. White may be the only individual who bears criminal responsibility for the death of Daniel Cicciaro, what particularly struck me during the trial was each witness’ minimization of their own actions on the night in question. There are many people who some might call moral accessories in the death of Daniel Cicciaro. These individuals did not hold the gun, but each had a part in this young man's death.”

REDUCING ALREADY REDUCED SENTENCES 
In other news, The New York Law Journal examines a recent first impression ruling by Southern District Judge Harold Baer that denied a sentencing reduction for a man convicted of possession and intent to sell crack cocaine. Two weeks ago, hundreds of inmates in New York State became eligible for such reductions, after the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to reduce the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. However, the case before Judge Baer featured a defendant who in 2005 was sentenced by Baer to five years in prison — well below the statutory minimum for the crack offense of 20-years-to-life. The defense had argued that since Michael Ortiz’s original sentence was lower that the original guideline range, he should receive a new sentence that was lower than the new range (between 105 and 135 months). Baer disagreed, ruling, “a defendant who was sentenced based on a statutory minimum, which has not been lowered, is ineligible for such a sentencing reduction.”

THE NOT-SO-FICTIONAL BALD INDIAN  
The Times also reports on Acting Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Shafer’s decision to permit a lawsuit by an attorney who says he was defamed on an episode of “Law & Order” to go forward. Ravi Batra sued the show’s creator, Dick Wolf, alleging that a character in a 2004 episode named Ravi Patel was based on an unsavory version of Batra himself. Notably, Batra played a side role in the theatrics involving former Assemblyman and Brooklyn Democratic Party Chairman Clarence Norman, who was convicted on bribery charges. The episode in question depicts a judge in Brooklyn socializing with a bald Indian-American lawyer (Batra fits that description), from whom she accepts cash bribes. While Wolf’s lawyers argued that the fictional character was based in Brooklyn (Batra is from Manhattan) and that Batra himself never appeared before a corrupt judge and was not implicated in any wrongdoing, Justice Shafer was unsympathetic, writing, “None of these facts would be known to a viewer, aware of Batra only through the media coverage,” so there there was “a reasonable likelihood that the ordinary viewer, unacquainted with Batra personally, could understand Patel’s corruption to be the truth about Batra.”

WHEN THE DAM BREAKS 
Finally, The Albany Times Union reports on a ruling by Warren County Supreme Court Justice David B. Krogmann that allows around 100 residents who lived upstream of a Fort Ann dam that collapsed in 2005 to sue for damages. The mile-long body of water became a gigantic mud pit, destroying multiple homes and washing out a road. While there was no dispute that those downstream had grounds to sue, Krogmann’s decision applies to those living around the lake, who also suffered damages. Kromann wrote that “it cannot be said as a matter of law that plaintiffs, as riparian owners, suffered absolutely no damage to their property when their docks and lakefront beaches and retaining walls became adjacent, for an extended period of time, to a mud pit.”