Biography
Consuewella Dotson Africa was a MOVE 9 member convicted in the August 8, 1978 Powelton Village confrontation that killed Philadelphia police officer James Ramp. Sentenced to 30-100 years and held in Pennsylvania DOC custody, including at SCI Muncy. Died in prison in 1998. Documented in PFOC Breakthrough magazine.
Member of the MOVE Organization. Listed as a political-prisoner petitioner in the 1990 Special International Tribunal on Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War in the United States documenting state repression of MOVE.
Correction, added on review: an earlier version of this entry said she died in prison in 1998. That is Merle Africa, who did. Consuewella Dotson Africa was paroled in 1994 after sixteen years and died on 16 June 2021 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, aged 67. Her conviction is reported as simple assault rather than the third-degree murder the nine received, so the 30 to 100 years recorded above is the MOVE 9 sentence and should be checked against her own.
MOVE’s account explicitly distinguishes Consuewella from the nine defendants who received thirty-to-one-hundred-year sentences: it says she was sentenced in a separate trial by Judge Levy Anderson to ten to twenty years, with an additional three and a half years for contempt. It reports actual release January 6, 1994, nearly sixteen years after arrest, corroborating her release field. It describes guards informing her that her children had been killed in the May 13, 1985 assault. The separate sentence contradicts the legacy thirty-to-one-hundred-year case text and is submitted for correction, while the release is corroboration. 25 Years on the MOVE (May 1996; March 1997 printing), PDF pages 16, 18, 28, 36. Source: https://azinelibrary.org/approved/25-years-move-1.pdf
