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NY Times, April 18, 2019
Judith Clark, Getaway Driver in Deadly Brink’s Heist in 1981, Is Granted
Parole
by Michael Gold
Judith Clark, who as a young woman took part in a deadly robbery of a
Brink’s armored car that represented one of the last gasps of the
violent left-wing extremism of the 1960s and 1970s, was paroled on
Wednesday after being imprisoned in New York for 37 years, her lawyers said.
Ms. Clark, 69, was the getaway driver in the bungled 1981 heist in a
suburb of New York City in which two police officers and a guard were
killed.
After her arrest and during her trial, Ms. Clark remained defiant in her
revolutionary beliefs. She said she was “an anti-imperialist freedom
fighter” and maintained violence was “a liberating force.”
But during her decades in prison, she has said she abandoned those
beliefs and faced the pain she had caused the victims and their
families. “I had to grapple with what happened to my humanity,” she said
in 2017. She apologized, devoted herself to good works and became a
model of rehabilitation.
Many liberal elected officials viewed Ms. Clark as a symbol of the need
for clemency and forgiveness, maintaining that she had to be released
from prison if the state correctional system was to live up to its
ideals, even in politically charged cases involving the deaths of police
officers.
“We are grateful that the parole board affirmed what everyone who has
interacted with Judy already knows — that she is a rehabilitated,
remorseful woman who poses no threat to society,” said Michael Cardozo,
one of Ms. Clark’s lawyers.
She is scheduled to be released from prison by May 15.
But for law enforcement groups, many Republican elected officials and
some victims of the shooting and their families, she was the face of
terrorism and deserved no mercy.
“We’re outraged and sickened by this whole decision,” said Michael
Paige, whose father was killed in the shooting. “Judith Clark is a
murderer, plain and simple. She deserves nothing but to spend the rest
of her life behind bars.”
Arthur Keenan, a former detective who was wounded in the robbery, said
that he was “absolutely not” in favor of Ms. Clark’s parole. He said her
record of good behavior in prison hardly outweighed her crime.
“Doesn’t what happened to the people who lost loved ones and were
wounded matter?” he said.
Ed Day, the county executive of Rockland County, where the killings took
place, called the parole board’s ruling a slap in the face to the
victim’s families.
“This perversion of justice is a sad continuation of the deadly assault
on police officers happening across our nation,” Mr. Day, who was
formerly a New York police officer, said in a statement.
The decision to release Ms. Clark came after a lobbying campaign
involving 11 members of Congress, 11 state senators, the former
Manhattan district attorney, a former chief judge, four former parole
board commissioners and a former superintendent of the prison where she
was housed.
Her supporters, including 70 elected officials, sent a letter to the
parole board arguing that the state’s correctional system should not
exist solely for retribution, but also for rehabilitation, and that Ms.
Clark had served a long sentence, accepted responsibility for her crime
and shown genuine remorse.
Ms. Clark, then 31, drove a getaway car during the robbery of a Brink’s
truck on Oct. 20, 1981, outside a mall in Nanuet, about 30 miles north
of New York City in Rockland County.
The heist was part of a joint scheme by the Black Liberation Army and
the May 19th Communist Organization — an offshoot of the Weather
Underground, a radical left-wing group — to steal $1.6 million to
finance a guerrilla uprising. They hoped to establish the Republic of
New Afrika, a separate black nation in the southern United States
During the robbery, a Brink’s security guard, Peter Paige, was gunned
down, and later, two Nyack police officers, Sgt. Edward O’Grady and
Officer Waverly Brown, were shot and killed at a roadblock where they
had attempted to stop a U-Haul van involved in the robbery.
Ms. Clark represented herself at her trial. Still fueled by the beliefs
that made her a willing participant in the robbery, she was deeply
uncooperative and defiant in court. During jury selection she decried
the court proceedings as “fascist" and “racist.”
She was found guilty of all charges, and the sentencing judge said she
was beyond rehabilitation. She was imprisoned at Bedford Hills
Correctional Facility for women in Westchester County.
Ms. Clark has said that building a relationship with her daughter,
Harriet, who was an infant when Ms. Clark was incarcerated, led her to
jettison her political views and to reflect on the harm she had done.
She eventually issued several public apologies for her role in the
robbery. In 1994, she wrote that she felt “enormous regret, sorrow and
remorse” about her actions. Eight years later, she apologized publicly
to the victims and their families.
She also worked to build a new life behind bars. She earned bachelor’s
and master’s degrees, led educational programs for inmates and started
programs to counsel AIDS patients and improve prenatal care in prison.
She participated in a program that trained service dogs, some of whom
went to work with law enforcement.
In late 2016, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo recognized her “exceptional strides
in self-development,” commuted her sentence to 35 years and made her
eligible for parole.
Mr. Cuomo at the time attributed the decision in part to an hourlong
meeting he had with Ms. Clark at the prison earlier that year.
“When you meet her you get a sense of her soul,” Mr. Cuomo said then.
“She takes full responsibility. There are no excuses. There are no
justifications.”
But law enforcement groups, conservative judges and Republican elected
officials fought against her release, and in 2017, the parole board
unanimously voted to keep her in prison, saying she was “still a symbol
of violent and terroristic crime.”
Ms. Clark’s most recent parole board hearing occurred on April 3, in
front of a different three-person panel that ultimately split, two to
one, in favor of granting her parole.
Ellen Evans Alexander and Tana Agostini, both appointed to the parole
board by Mr. Cuomo, said in the board’s written decision that Ms. Clark
had provided clear evidence of rehabilitation. They also cited Ms.
Clark’s advanced age and her charitable work in prison as reasons they
voted for releasing her.
The panel’s dissenting member, Walter William Smith, who was first named
to the parole board by Gov. George E. Pataki in 1996, said that he
believed Ms. Clark’s release would undermine respect for the rule of law
and expressed concern how her parole would affect the victims’ families.
“The sounds of their weeping will remain,” he wrote.
Mr. Keenan echoed the sentiment, saying that the effects of the shooting
still lingered with him 37 years later. He has post-traumatic stress
disorder, he said.
While he said he believed the parole board had followed the law, Mr.
Keenan criticized Mr. Cuomo for putting the matter in front of the board
in the first place.
“The governor’s decision to grant clemency on this was so one-sided,”
Mr. Keenan said. “And he refuses to even speak with me about it. How can
he ignore a police detective from the state of New York who was shot
during this crime?”
Ms. Clark, who was not available for an interview, was overwhelmed and
emotional about the decision, Mr. Cardozo said.
Another one of her lawyers, Steve Zeidman, said Ms. Clark planned to
work with Hour Children, a nonprofit that helps women in prison and
their families.
Three others convicted in the Brink’s robbery remain in prison. Mutulu
Shakur, whom prosecutors described as the mastermind behind the heist,
is incarcerated at the federal penitentiary in Victorville, Calif.,
according to federal Bureau of Prisons records.
Mr. Shakur, who is the stepfather of the deceased rapper Tupac Shakur,
was denied parole in 2018. He is scheduled to be released in 2024,
federal prison records show.
David Gilbert, who was convicted on second-degree murder and robbery
charges, is still being held at the maximum-security Wende Correctional
Facility in Alden, N.Y. He, like Ms. Clark, was sentenced to 75 years to
life. He will not be eligible for parole until 2056.
Samuel Brown, who the authorities believe fired the shots that killed
Sergeant O’Grady and Officer Brown, is still serving a 75-year sentence.
Kathy Boudin, who pleaded guilty to murder and robbery charges, served
22 years in prison before being paroled in August 2003. She works as an
adjunct professor at Columbia University.
Two others convicted in connection with the robbery, Kuwasi Balagoon —
also known as Donald Weems — and Marilyn Jean Buck, died in prison.
Vivian Wang and James C. McKinley Jr. contributed reporting.
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