User:Mujinga/UpdateClark

UPDATE Judith Alice Clark

Robbery
On October 20, 1981, members of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) and May 19th Communist Organization assembled at a safe house in Mount Vernon, New York. The people included Kuwasi Balagoon, Samuel Brown, Cecil Ferguson, Edward Josephs, Mutulu Shakur and Mtajori Sandiata from the BLA and Boudin, Clark, Marilyn Jean Buck, David Gilbert and Susan Rosenberg from the M19CO.

The gang drove to the mall at Nanuet, New York in four vehicles; Clark was driving a Honda. When two guards took money from the Nanuet National Bank towards a Brink's armored car, the BLA members opened fire and killed one of them, Peter Paige. The gang stole around $1.6 million in cash and made their getaway. Local police set up a roadblock and stopped a vehicle, leading to a second gunfight in which two Nyack police officers died. Clark drove the Honda onto Mountainview Avenue with Brown and Gilbert as passengers. After her car was chased at speed by South Nyack Police Chief Alan Colsey, Clark crashed and the three people inside were arrested.

Trial
At trial, Clark was at first represented by Susan Tipograph. She then claimed she was a freedom fighter and thus a prisoner of war. Alongside her fellow defendants Balagoon and Gilbert, she refused to attend court excpet to make political statements and listened to proceedings from her detention cell. Hearings began in September 1982 at New City, New York then were moved to Goshen. On September 14, 1983, Balagoon, Clark and Gilbert were all found guilty of the three murders and armored robbery. They were each sentenced to three consecutive 25 to life terms for murder in the second degree. Clark had been observed at the Manhattan Criminal Court during a hearing related to the case of Assata Shakur and was therefore also suspected of being involved with Sakur's later escape from the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in 1979.

Incarceration
Clark served her sentence at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, as did Boudin. For the first month, Clark was placed in solitary confinement. Whilst incarcerated, she participated in a creative writing group run by the author Eve Ensler and featured in a 2003 documentary about the group called What I Want My Words to Do To You.

Alongside other female inmates, Clark carried out HIV/AIDS activism, protesting against the staff policy of isolating people with HIV and wearing gloves and masks when interacting with them. With Boudin she published "Community of Women Organize Themselves to Cope with the AIDS Crisis: A Case Study from Bedford Hill Correctional Facility" in the academic journal Social Justice. She also participated in a scheme to train service dogs for military veterans, assisted a chaplain and founded prenatal and infant support workshops. Clark's attorney Sara Bennett created a pamphlet entitled Spirit on the Inside: Reflections on Doing Time with Judith Clark in which she photographed 15 women who had been incarcerated alongside Clark and interviewed them about her. She said in 1994 that she had "enormous regret, sorrow and remorse" about her part in the robbery and in 2002, she published a public apology in The Journal News to all the victims of the Family's violence. David Mamet's 2012 play The Anarchist featured two female characters inspired by Boudin, Clark and Cathy Wilkerson.

Release
In 2016, governor of New York Andrew Cuomo recognised Clark's good behavior in prison and commuted her sentence, which meant that she would be eligible for parole the following year. At the seven hour long hearing, the three parole board members voted unanimously to deny her request for release, saying they had received thousands of letters from people who wanted her to serve a longer sentence for her crimes.

The parole board voted by two to one to release Clark from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in 2019. The decision was backed by the New York Civil Liberties Union and opposed by the Sergeants Benevolent Association.