Judith Clark’s supporters may have swayed Gov. Cuomo to commute her sentence late last year, leaving her eligible for parole — but she still doesn’t deserve to be a free woman.
State Sen. Patrick Gallivan (R-C-I, Elma) this week delivered a nearly 10,000-signature petition calling on the state Board of Parole to deny Clark, a one-time domestic terrorist, release when it takes up her case next week. It’s a slam-dunk case.
An alum of one terrorist group, the Weather Underground, Clark joined members of another, the Black Liberation Army, in the deadly 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored truck that left a Brinks guard and two cops dead. She helped plan the robbery, went along as getaway driver and was reaching for a gun when apprehended.
Clark represented herself at trial but refused to recognize the court’s authority to try or convict her. In her closing statements, she announced, “Revolutionary violence is necessary, and it is a liberating force.”
She was 31 at the time — not the young, rash and persuadable ingénue that Cuomo made her out to be when he defended the commutation of her sentence, saying she was a “20-year-old accessory.” Again, she was an integral part of planning and carrying out the deadly crime.
Clark may now show remorse for her actions, and may have become an exemplary prisoner, but the consequences of her actions can’t be undone as easily as her sentence was commuted.
Three lives were lost in a crime that Judith Clark helped premeditate. Her original sentence of 75 years was justified and should be carried out.