A tardy attorney for the city’s so-called Tiger Man lashed out at New York Supreme Court Justice Budd Goodman yesterday, comparing the state judge to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for sending his client to Rikers Island prison without an attorney present at his sentencing hearing.

“Is there any semblance of democracy? Is the Constitution still valid in New York state? Apparently not,” said Raymond Colon, attorney for Antoine Yates. Yates pled guilty to reckless endangerment this July for keeping a 400-pound Siberian-Bengal tiger named Ming, along with a caiman-like alligator named Al, in the apartment he shared with his mother at the Drew Hamilton Houses in Harlem.

Also known in the neighborhood as Doctor Doolittle, for keeping birds, chickens, a monkey, and large reptiles inside the Harlem public housing complex, the 37-year-old Yates arrived at New York Supreme Court yesterday to receive his sentence, but controversy soon erupted after his attorney, Mr. Colon, failed to appear.

Instead, the lawyer was defending another client in Duchess County court as Yates’s probation supervisor Ralph Abreu testified in Lower Manhattan that Yates had been “uncooperative,” was “delusional,” and posed a threat to society.

Without requesting the presence of another attorney, Judge Goodman ordered Yates, who had been free without bail, back into prison.

Mr. Colon said that he had faxed a notice to Judge Goodman on Wednesday, citing the scheduling complications from his other case and that Judge Goodman should have either rescheduled the hearing or requested a court appointed attorney to represent Yates.

Mr. Colon said he would file court papers to have Yates rescheduled.

“The cold truth is, Judge Goodman never had an open mind in this case,” Mr. Colon said, “and was determined to keep my client in prison.”

Before Yates agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, Judge Goodman reportedly told Yates and courtroom observers that he would have given him two years in prison – one for Ming, one for Al.

The plea deal Yates finally made guarantees a much lighter sentence: no more than six months in prison and five years of probation. Charges against Yates’s mother, Martha, were also dropped.

David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, said that Judge Goodman was legally free to order Yates to prison without an attorney present during his hearing and also added that the time Yates spends in Rikers awaiting his next scheduling date will likely count as time served.

“This is why we have judges, to make decisions,” Mr. Bookstaver said.

Mr. Colon questioned Judge Goodman’s record, citing a controversial case in 1998 in which a Harlem teenager committed suicide by jumping out of a window in Judge Goodman’s courtroom on the 16th floor of Manhattan Supreme Court after the judge reportedly offered him a stiff verbal warning and a three- to five-year prison sentence for allegedly dealing cocaine.

Judge Goodman rescheduled Yates’s sentencing for October 7 – one of nine dates in October that Mr. Colon had offered when initially requesting to reschedule the hearing in his fax to the judge on Wednesday.