Milken Sentencing Slated for Today in Manhattan : Courts: The former junk bond king faces up to 28 years in prison. The judge has given no hints about how she will rule.

Before the day is out, fallen junk bond king Michael Milken is due to know his punishment on the six felony counts he pleaded guilty to last spring.

U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood today is scheduled to impose sentence, which could range up to 28 years in prison. His financial penalty was fixed when he reached a plea agreement last April: The former head of Drexel Burnham Lambert’s junk bond department in Beverly Hills is due to turn over $650 million in fines and other penalties.

Although he will be present at today’s sentencing, Milken isn’t expected to make any declaration or plea for leniency. Instead, he wrote an 11-page, single-spaced letter to the judge apologizing for his wrongdoing and telling of the impact it has had on himself and his family. Milken wrote that he wouldn’t speak on these issues in court because “I believe the emotions generated when standing in front of you, coupled with memories of what has transpired over the past 48 months, will make it impossible for me to adequately express my feelings in court.”

Wood’s decision is expected to be heavily influenced by her findings from the pre-sentencing mini-trial that took place in October. In those hearings, prosecutors presented witnesses and other evidence in an effort to persuade the judge that the six counts were part of a broader pattern of criminal activity by Milken.

The judge so far hasn’t hinted at whether she found the government’s evidence persuasive. Defense lawyers said one reason that Wood delayed setting a sentencing date until well after the hearings ended was that she had thoroughly reviewed the evidence and asked both sides to provide additional documentation on issues that she found ambiguous. Wood is expected to disclose her judgment of which side presented the most convincing case at the hearings today. The six counts Milken pleaded guilty to include conspiracy, securities fraud, causing the filing of false information with the Securities and Exchange Commission, mail fraud and aiding in the filing of a false tax return.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan has asked Wood to impose a “substantial” prison term.

Milken’s lawyers, in turn, have called his crimes an aberration and asked for probation and community service. Their requests were backed up by letters to the judge from prominent Los Angeles residents, including Police Chief Daryl F. Gates. Gates proposed that Milken be sentenced to running a Police Department-supervised program designed to benefit inner-city children.

Many lawyers who observed the October hearings have predicted that Milken will be sentenced to at least some prison time, with the heaviest betting seeming to be in the neighborhood of five years. Many of those caught up in the big financial scandals of the 1980s have received short sentences or probation. But the judge is considered likely to want to give Milken a sentence longer than that imposed on inside trader Ivan F. Boesky, who turned Milken in.

Boesky was sentenced to three years. But Boesky cooperated extensively with prosecutors before he was sentenced. Milken has not. Under his plea agreement, Milken is obliged to begin cooperating only after he is sentenced. Milken’s lawyers have confirmed that to date he has volunteered no information to investigators. The judge has said she won’t give him any credit in advance for his promise to testify.

Close friends and advisers of Milken have said in off-the-record conversations this week that Milken’s morale has been extremely low, although they declined to elaborate.