I have a hard time believing this was the officers first sexual assault. But hey, a violent crime against another person doesn’t count if the other person is a woman… .:(

Former 33rd Precinct officer Michael Pena, 30 — who grabbed Lydia Cuomo, then 24, as she walked to her first day teaching at a new school early on Aug. 19, 2011 and threatened to shoot her in the head if she resisted his 20-minute sex attack — is being punished for prior failures by prosecutors, his lawyer said.

“In this case, a young 28-year-old man, whose crime was grievous, yet aberrant to his character and prior personal history, was punished more harshly than al-Qaida terrorists, vicious killers, kingpin narcotics offenders, violent gangsters and racketeers and other recidivist predators,” Pena’s lawyer, Ephraim Savitt, said in court documents, adding that he wants the appellate court panel to slash the amount of time Pena must serve.

“This is … a case of justice run amok, fueled by public outrage drummed up by the media, fired up by two then-recently highly publicized failed sex-crime prosecutions and the perceived need by the prosecution and the sentencing judge to send the proverbial ‘message,’” Savitt said in court papers of Supreme Court Justice Richard Carruthers’ sentence of three 25-year-to-life sentences, which he ordered Pena to serve consecutively.

More: NYPD Officer Guilty of Raping Teacher Appeals 75-Year Sentence - Inwood - DNAinfo.com New York