Facing jail sentence, woman quits smoking

A Hempstead woman said she has entered a smoking cessation program, weeks after she was criticized by a judge for continuing to smoke even after he had released her from jail to seek a heart transplant.

"I'm very grateful," Diane McCloud, 47, said Friday, after a letter from the cessation group persuaded District Court Judge Francis Ricigliano to let McCloud remain free.

McCloud, who suffers from end-stage heart failure, wore a blue bag to court containing an IV drip with a solution that helps keep her heart pumping.

In January, Ricigliano agreed to suspend McCloud's 15-month jail sentence on a petit larceny conviction after learning that she would die if she did not get a heart transplant within six months. She had been in the jail wing at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow after pleading guilty to stealing about $3,800 in merchandise from a Westbury Target store.

But McCloud did not stop smoking after she was released, a fact the judge learned when her doctor, Sanjay Doddamani, NUMC's chief of cardiology, wrote to the district attorney.

Ricigliano said then he would give McCloud one more chance to quit or "I will resentence you to the maximum amount of jail, without any problem."

Her lawyer, Leonard Isaacs, said it was not easy for McCloud to quit after 34 years. But she said she has done it, with the help of the Mercy Hospital Smoking Cessation Program in Rockville Centre.

She also is keeping her medical appointments faithfully and has lost 10 pounds, another doctor's suggestion, he said.

"Ms. McCloud understood that this was her last chance, and she took hold of that last chance," Isaacs said.

She is due back in court Aug. 12 to report on her progress.