STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Carlos Rivera was facing the possibility of significant prison time for a street fight that ended in the stabbing death of an old friend. Instead, he was sentenced recently to one-and-a-half to three years incarceration, court records show.
Rivera, 38, of Stapleton, was arrested in June 2024 on charges that included first-degree manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon, after he fatally stabbed 41-year-old Joel Badillo on a commercial block in Stapleton.
After just over a day of deliberating, the jury acquitted Rivera of the top counts. They found him guilty of tampering with evidence, after he tossed his knife into a sewer at the crime scene. That count, given his prior record, carried a maximum sentence of two to four years in prison…