Judith Alice Clark (born November 23, 1949) is an American far-left radical activist, formerly a member of the Weather Underground and the May 19th Communist Organization. Clark was arrested driving a getaway car from the October 1981 Brink's robbery in Nanuet, New York. A security guard was killed in the robbery, and two Nyack, New York police officers were shot and killed after stopping another of the getaway vehicles. Clark was tried and convicted on three counts of felony murder for her role. She was sentenced to the maximum allowable penalty: imprisonment for a total term of 75 years to life, which she served at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York.
In December 2016, following extensive public and legal support, Governor Andrew Cuomo commuted her sentence to 35 years to life, making her eligible for parole. She was denied parole in April 2017, but granted parole on April 17, 2019, after 37 years in prison. Clark was released on May 10, 2019.
Early life, family, education, and early activism
Clark grew up in a Jewish family with her older brother and parents, Ruth Clark and her husband Joe. Her parents had been members of the American Communist Party for many years. Clark lived in the Soviet Union as a very young child, from 1950 to 1953, where her father was a foreign editor of the Daily Worker newspaper. After the family returned to the U.S., her parents withdrew from the Communist Party, disillusioned with the Soviet Union.
Clark attended the University of Chicago, where she joined Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and helped to found the Women's Radical Action Project, one of the first organizations of the early women's liberation movement. Clark was expelled from Chicago before graduating.
Weather Underground and M19CO involvement
In 1969, Clark participated in the Days of Rage in Chicago, and she was arrested, along with several hundreds of others, for "mob action". Clark jumped bail and was considered a "fugitive from justice". When she was caught, she pleaded guilty and served nine months in Cook County Jail in Chicago.
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.
When the May 19th Communist Organization ("M19CO") was founded in 1976, Clark became a member, continuing her work as someone who visited political prisoners. She was a named petitioner in the lawsuit Clark v. U.S.A., which challenged the FBI's Cointelpro Program. That suit was eventually settled in the plaintiffs' favor.
Ultimately, M19CO became a violent remnant of the dwindling "anti-imperialist" movement, and Clark became isolated from society at large.
Brink's robbery
On October 20, 1981, a group comprising a half dozen members of the Black Liberation Army, supported by members of M19CO and Weather Underground fugitives, referring to themselves as "The Family," robbed a Brink's armored truck of $1.6 million at the Nanuet Mall in Nanuet, New York. Their later-stated objective was to raise funds to help establish a "New Afrikan" nation for black people in the U.S. South. The M19CO members, including Clark, served as getaway and switchcar drivers. During the robbery, Peter Paige, a Brink's guard, was killed and guard Joseph Trombino was seriously injured. As the robbers fled the scene, the U-Haul van in which most of the robbers had hidden was stopped by a police barricade. Two Nyack police officers, Waverly Brown and Edward O'Grady, were killed during the ensuing gun battle.
Clark was the driver of a backup getaway car, a Honda, into which Samuel Brown, AKA Solomon Bouines, one of the robbers and David Gilbert jumped after the gun battle at the U-Haul. After a car chase, which resulted in the crash of the Honda, Clark reached for a loaded weapon that Samuel Brown had dropped. Also arrested nearby was Kathy Boudin. Boudin later pleaded guilty, served 22 years in prison, and was released on parole.