FORMER OFFICER GETS A LIFE TERM IN 10 MURDERS FOR A DRUG GANG

A former housing police officer in the Bronx avoided the death penalty
Monday by pleading guilty to Federal charges that he had killed 10
people while he was a member of a violent drug gang.

The plea bargain averted what would have been the first Federal death
penalty trial in Manhattan in more than 40 years. The former officer,
John Cuff, agreed to serve a life prison term, and Mary Jo White, the
United States Attorney in Manhattan, said she would drop her request
for the death penalty. Cuff will be sentenced on June 21.

Jury selection in the widely watched case had been scheduled to begin
today in United States District Court in Manhattan.

"He decided to save his own life," said Carl J. Herman, one of Cuff's
lawyers, after MOnday's hearing. His other lawyer, Irving Cohen, said
Cuff had "appropriately assessed the risks and determined that this
was the proper thing to do for himself."

Cohen said that if the Government had not been seeking the death
penalty, "in all likelihood we would have proceeded to trial."

A 1996 Federal racketeering indictment accused Cuff of helping to run
the Preacher Crew, a gang described by the authorities as a violent
and profitable narcotics organization that had terrorized parts of the
Bronx and Manhattan for years.

Cuff had been a housing police officer from about 1982 until 1986, and
during that period he was recruited into the gang by its leader,
Clarence Heatley, law enforcement officials said at the time of the
indictment.

While Cuff was off duty as an officer, they said, he acted as
Heatley's bodyguard and driver, and one said there had been "some use
made of his official position" as an officer to get drug money paid on
time.

A Federal prosecutor, Sharon L. McCarthy, described Cuff in court
yesterday as a kind of enforcer for Heatley, who had also faced
capital charges. Heatley pleaded guilty last month, admitting
involvement in 13 killings and agreeing to a mandatory life prison
sentence. Cuff's plea bargain means that 16 of the 18 indicted gang
members have pleaded guilty; the trials for the 2 remaining indicted
members have been scheduled for this month.

Responding to questions yesterday by Judge Michael B. Mukasey, Cuff
admitted that he had participated in the murders of members of both
his own and rival gangs. Some of the killings occurred in the gang's
headquarters, in the basement of an apartment building at 2075 Grand
Concourse in the Bronx, the evidence showed.

Cuff gave clipped replies as Judge Mukasey pushed for a fuller account
of his role in the crimes. When Cuff said, for example, that he had
been present at the murder of two men in December 1993 and then helped
dispose of their bodies, the judge asked what his actual role had been.

"I saw that it got done," Cuff said. "I supervised
it."

In another killing, Cuff corrected the Government's version of
events.

Ms. McCarthy, the prosecutor, said Cuff had shot a man twice in the
head. Not true, Cuff said.

"I twisted his neck," he said. "I choked him."

Ms. McCarthy told the judge that his admission to involvement in the
crime was sufficient for the guilty plea to be legal.

After killing yet another man, Cuff admitted, he had supervised the
dismembering of the body. He said that he had shot the man in the head
once and four times in the chest and then supervised as the victim was
"chopped up."

Cuff had been charged under a 1988 law, sometimes called the drug
kingpin law, that permits Federal prosecutors to seek capital
punishment for killings committed in furthering a major drug
trafficking operation.

Ms. White had justified seeking the death penalty on a number of
grounds, including Cuff's former role as a police officer, his
premeditation in the killings, his low potential for rehabilitation
and his lack of remorse.

In one case, prosecutors wrote, Cuff and Heatley had shared a
champagne toast to celebrate one of their killings.