The murder victim, 17-year-old Daniel Cicciaro Jr., appears to have been shot in the head short of the defendant's driveway - from no more than three inches away. Of course, defendant claimed that the shooting was an accident, but what really mattered in the trial was race: the defendant was not white and Cicciaro, despite being a darker Italian, was white (enough).
In court, defendant was accompanied by representatives from the Nation of Islam. He told the stories he had heard as a child, particularly the one about the Ku Klux Klan burning down his grandfather's store in the 1920's. Defendant testified that he feared for his life when Cicciaro arrived with friends, and the defense likened the group of boys to a "lynch mob."
Cicciaro's friends and family must have been shocked by the turn of events. After all, they had said everything to downplay racial tensions: they stressed forgiveness, voiced their sympathies for the defendant's family and expressed no concern that the defense would use race to gain leverage. Small wonder, too, that the press wrote about the case from what seemed like a largely neutral perspective. The New York Times even composed a nice tribute piece about Cicciaro's Roman Catholic funeral.
Predictably, that all changed. All it took was the final judgement, in connection with the race card that had been out the entire time, and Cicciaro's decision to ignore it to win favor. Naturally, when Cicciaro's father realized what had happened, he was no longer in a mood to play along. In the post-trial press conference, Mr. Cicciaro blamed real things and real people like the defendant, not abstract concepts like the history of race relations between whites and blacks or the nation's "violent past". In Mr. Cicciaro's words:
"Nice message it sends to society that as long as you’re black and there’s a problem at the end of your driveway you can grab an illegal handgun and shoot someone in the face and get away with it," said Cicciaro.
So much for political correctness.
Of course, it did not matter what Mr. Cicciaro said; this time, not a single MSNBC, FOX or CNN microphone was stationed by the podium. Furthermore, those who opted to write about the speech did so with a new task at hand: put Mr. Cicciaro's comments in a context that would make him look incredulous. The reporters no longer wrote about the 'brave teen who showed up to defend the honor of the woman who feared she would be raped.' Now, the same teen was portrayed as 'the drunken cracker-ass white punk (despite the fact that he was a rather dark Italian) who rolled up at a black boy's home in "lynch mob" form with his buddies.' These remarks echoed the defense's argument that, because of the circumstances, the murder was not only accidental, but even justifiable! In effect, the victim had been demonized - and it was all because of race.
Yes, race.
It did not matter that defendant had murdered a boy who was technically not even on defendant's property, or that the boy had not been armed. Race made up for that. Race had also determined how Daniel Cicciaro Jr.'s father was expected to respond and, when he did not, the media fled. That made him the second victim in this story: the victim of an "anti-racist" racist system.
