3rd Defendant Given 5-15 Years in Racial Killing

Jason Ladone, the third defendant in the Howard Beach case, was sentenced today to five to 15 years in prison despite his open-court apology to the mother of the black man killed by a white gang.

State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Demakos sentenced Ladone to 2 1/2 years to 7 1/2 years for manslaughter and the same sentence for assault. The two sentences are to run consecutively.

The sentence was the shortest of those handed down against the three teen-agers convicted in the racial attack on three black men, which left one, 23-year-old Michael Griffith, dead.

Jon Lester, already in jail on a weapons charge, has been sentenced to the maximum of 10 to 30 years and is serving his sentence at Attica. Scott Kern, 19, was sentenced Friday to six to 19 years.

Only One to Speak

Ladone, the youngest of the three, was the only one to speak before sentencing. He noted that he had turned 16 just five weeks before the Dec. 20, 1986, incident.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Griffith, for your senseless loss. I’m sorry, Mom and Dad, that your lives have been so violently overturned,” he said.

Ladone said he had no intention of hurting anybody when he went to a party the night of the incident. He had learned, he said, that “perhaps it takes more courage to say no.”

Judge Demakos noted that Ladone did not have a history of violence. But on the night of the attack, he said, Ladone displayed “a mind that was criminal and bent on violence.”

“This cannot go unpunished,” he said. When he announced that the sentences will run consecutively, hisses could be heard in the Queens courtroom, which was three-quarters filled.