Judith Alice Clark

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For other people named Judy Clark, see Judy Clark (disambiguation).

Judith Alice Clark (born November 9, 1949), known as Judy Clark, is a US

Brink's robbery in Nanuet, New York, in which a security guard and two Nyack, New York
police officers were shot and killed.

At trial, she was sentenced three consecutive 25 to life terms for

prenatal and infant support workshops for mothers. In 2016, Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo commuted her sentence to 35 years to life, making her eligible for parole
. She was denied parole in 2017 and granted it in 2019.

Early life

Judith Alice Clark was born in November 9, 1943, in New York City.

Bensonhurst and then Flatbush. By the late 1950, her parents had withdrawn from the Communist Party, disillusioned by events such as the Soviet repression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.[1]: 24–25 [2] Her mother pursued a career working for a polling firm and pioneered the exit poll; her father co-founded the American Left magazine Dissent.[1]: 26 [2]

Clark attended the Midwood High School in Brooklyn and as her parents moved towards anti-communism, she retained an interest in Left-wing politics. In 1967, she took up studies at the University of Chicago, where she joined Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).[1]: 26 [3] After she and other students occupied a university building in 1969 as protest in support of a sociology professor who had been refused tenure, Clark was expelled from the university. Her father asked Saul Bellow to appeal to the university president, Edward H. Levi who maintained she had to leave. She co-founded the Weather Underground, which emerged from SDS.[1]: 26–27 [3][4]: 304 

Weather Underground

Clark participated in the Days of Rage in Chicago in 1969. She was arrested alongside other Weather Underground activists including Kathy Boudin and went underground to evade the charges against her. The following year, the FBI apprehended her in a movie theater in Manhattan, New York City. After serving her sentence,[A] After her release, Clark worked at a bookshop and co-founded the May 19th Communist Organization (M19) with Boudin, Linda Evans and David Gilbert. She was kept under surveillance and in 1972 her apartment was illegally searched three times by the FBI.[3][5]: 124 [6]: 182 

Two months after her release, there was a prison uprising at Attica. In its wake, Clark was one of the founders of The Midnight Special, a newspaper affiliated with the National Lawyers Guild. Clark was also a member of the Women's Bail Fund and worked in support of political prisoners.[7][page needed] Clark decided she wanted to have a child as a lesbian and asked Alan Berkman to be the sperm donor. She gave birth to Harriet Josina Clark on November 13, 1980.[1]: 75 

Brink's robbery

Main article:
Brink's robbery (1981)

On October 20, 1981, members of the

Marilyn Jean Buck, Clark, Cecil Ferguson, David Gilbert, Edward Josephs, Susan Rosenberg, Mtajori Sandiata and Mutulu Shakur.[8][9]

The gang drove to the

mall at Nanuet, New York in four vehicles; Clark was driving a Honda.[9][5]: 154  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.[9] 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 (Waverly Brown and Edward O'Grady) were killed. 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.[8][10]

At trial, Clark was at first represented by

Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in 1979.[3]

Incarceration

Clark served her sentence at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, as did Boudin.[8] For the first month, Clark was placed in solitary confinement.[2] 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.[11]: 168 

Clark obtained bachelor's and master's degrees in prison.

prenatal and infant support workshops for mothers.[14] 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.[15] Clark 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.[16][17]

Cathy Wilkerson.[18][19]
Clark was also the inspiration for the role of Hannah, performed by Dame Harriet Walter in the 2016 Donmar Warehouse production of Shakespeare's The Tempest.[20]

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.[21] 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.[14]

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.[22]

Selected works

  • Clark, Judy; Boudin, Kathy (1990). "Community of Women Organize Themselves to Cope with the AIDS Crisis: A Case Study from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility". Social Justice. 17 (2 (40)): 90–109.
    JSTOR 29766543
    .
  • Fine, M.; Torre, M.E; Boudin, K.; Bowen, I.; Clark, J.; Hylton, D.; Martinez, M.; Missy; Rivera, M.; Roberts, R.A.; Smart, P.; Upegui, D. (2003). "Participatory action research: Within and beyond bars". In Camic, P.; Rhodes, J.E.; Yardley, L. (eds.). Qualitative research in psychology: Expanding perspectives in methodology and design. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. pp. 173–198.

Notes

  1. ^ The New York Times reported her sentence as 18 months in 1983[3] and 9 months in 2012.[2]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-1-5011-7012-6
    .
  2. ^ a b c d Robbins, Tom (January 12, 2012). "Judith Clark's radical transformation". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 16, 2023. Retrieved December 16, 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d e Montgomery, Paul L. (October 22, 1981). "Two women in Brink's case identified with Weathermen from start in '69". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 16, 2023. Retrieved December 16, 2023.
  4. ISBN 978-0-06-147275-6
    .
  5. ^
    ISBN 9780396087137
    .
  6. ISBN 1859841678
    .
  7. ^ Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air, Verso (2002)
  8. ^
    doi:10.1080/10576108708435625
    .
  9. ^ a b c Sawyer, Kathy; Wadler, Joyce (October 24, 1981). "One killed, one seized by police seeking Brink's suspects". Washington Post. Retrieved December 16, 2023.
  10. ISBN 0-520-23032-9
    .
  11. ISBN 978-1-137-34302-4
    .
  12. ^ Churchill, Chris (April 17, 2019). "An 'overwhelmed' Judith Clark is granted parole". Times Union. Archived from the original on September 24, 2019. Retrieved September 24, 2019.
  13. doi:10.1017/mah.2022.3
    .
  14. ^ a b Dwyer, Jim (May 3, 2017). ""I want to live it out" says Brink's heist driver after denied parole". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
  15. ^ Dugan, Jess T. "Q&A: Sara Bennett". Strange Fire. Archived from the original on February 5, 2024. Retrieved December 16, 2023.
  16. ^ Clark, Judith (March 31, 2002). "Brinks convict in 2002: 'I am deeply sorry'". The Journal News. Archived from the original on September 6, 2022. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
  17. ^ Gold, Michael (April 17, 2019). "Judith Clark, getaway driver in deadly Brink's heist in 1981, is granted parole". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 17, 2019. Retrieved January 31, 2024.
  18. ^ Lahr, John (December 2, 2012). "Rough Justice". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on October 1, 2015. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
  19. doi:10.1353/tyr.2014.0072
    .
  20. ^ "The Gender's the Thing: Harriet Walter Plays Shakespeare's Heroes as Heroines". The New York Times. September 10, 2017. Archived from the original on January 26, 2017. Retrieved February 19, 2017.
  21. ^ Rosenberg, Eli (December 30, 2016). "Cuomo commutes sentence of Judith Clark, driver in deadly Brink's robbery". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 13, 2017. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
  22. ^ Chavez, Nicole; Carroll, Jason; Moghe, Soni (April 17, 2019). "Former activist Judy Clark granted parole after nearly 40 years in prison over armored truck robbery". CNN. Archived from the original on December 16, 2023. Retrieved January 31, 2024.

Further reading

External links
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