Outrageously Soft Sentence

It would be hard to imagine a case where a judge showed a greater absence of judgment than Bronx Supreme Court Justice Margaret Clancy displayed last week in sentencing a woman found guilty of seriously assaulting a cop.

The felon in question, Keke Cuffee, punched Sgt. Kristen McKee in the face and pulled a large portion of her hair from her scalp during an incident in August 2006. There were no extenuating circumstances in the arrest of Ms. Cuffee, who had been fighting with a pregnant woman.

The maximum sentence for second-degree assault is seven years. The Bronx District Attorney's Office, which has never been accused of being overzealously pro-cop, had asked that Ms. Cuffee get a four-year term to send a message about the seriousness of attacking a police officer.

Justice Clancy, for reasons only she knows, decided a 20-day jail sentence was sufficient. She seems to have regarded this as an ordinary scuffle; undoubtedly she has never had hair pulled from her scalp in any quantity, or she would have been more sensitive, in more ways than one, to the violence involved in such an act.

Her leniency justifiably infuriated Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins. "You have to take a harder stance" in such cases, he said, "because ultimately it's an assault on society." The union is considering bringing a civil suit against Ms. Cuffee on behalf of Sergeant McKee.

Any thought that Justice Clancy viewed the assailant as an otherwise law-abiding woman who briefly lost her cool would tend to be banished by the more-recent arrest of Ms. Cuffee for allegedly threatening to physically harm the one other witness against her in the case.

If she is convicted of witness-tampering, she will face up to a year behind bars. It's less than Ms. Cuffee deserves, but we would hope the judge trying that case has a better grasp on justice than Ms. Clancy and gives her the maximum if she is convicted.