Attorney: Free terminally ill offender

The attorney for the terminally ill Hempstead woman who was released from jail a year ago to get a heart transplant -- but who landed back in jail for shoplifting -- is lobbying for her release again Tuesday so she can die in a hospice.

Leonard Isaacs of Valley Stream will appear before Nassau County Court Judge Francis Ricigliano on behalf of Diane McCloud, 48, who Isaacs said has "weeks to live," to ask the judge to again show compassion and vacate her sentence so she may receive end-of-life care.

"When I was able to effectuate her release, it was with high hopes that she would become a heart transplant recipient and set her on a new path in life," Isaacs said.

"The best that we can achieve, if we achieve what we're seeking to do, is to have her sentence vacated as it was a year ago," he added. "But she certainly is not eligible for a heart transplant program at this time. Her condition has deteriorated too much."

McCloud is now in the intensive-care unit of Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, where she was admitted about a week ago after she collapsed in the Nassau jail.

She remains in jail custody at the hospital and, said Isaacs, is too weak to appear at Tuesday's hearing.

Isaacs said that cardiologists now believe McCloud is near death and that she needs to be released from the jail so Medicaid could defray the costs of hospice care.

Her story made headlines last year when Ricigliano vacated the 15-month sentence she received for stealing $3,800 worth of goods from a Target store in Westbury because she was diagnosed as in the late stages of congestive heart failure. She was released in January 2011, when NUMC cardiologist Sanjay Doddamani estimated she had six months to live if she didn't receive a heart transplant.

But Ricigliano rescinded the gesture in September after McCloud admitted to shoplifting again while she was free -- and he sentenced her to 2 1/4 years in jail.

She admitted to stealing teeth-whitening strips, diet pills and Oil of Olay beauty cream from an Oceanside CVS on July 16.

The resentencing came a few months after the judge gave McCloud a stern warning to comply with the terms of her release when he learned she had become ineligible for one heart transplant program because she had been smoking and because she was not attending mandated drug screenings.

Nassau Assistant District Attorney Dana Boylan is scheduled to appear with Isaacs, but a spokesman for District Attorney Kathleen Rice said, "We're reviewing the documents, but it is ultimately a decision for the judge."