Jamal Joseph
Biography
Jamal Joseph, born Eddie Joseph in Brooklyn on January 10, 1953, joined Harlem’s Black Panther Party at age fifteen. Police arrested him in the April 2, 1969 Panther 21 raids, and he spent nearly a year at Rikers Island before supporters secured bail in March 1970. His youth case was separated from the principal trial. Federal agents arrested him again on March 26, 1982 as Edward Lawrence Joseph in the Brink’s/Nyack investigation. A jury acquitted him of the RICO and robbery counts on September 3, 1983 but convicted him as an accessory after the fact for harboring Mutulu Shakur. He received a 12½-year federal sentence on February 15, 1984 and was released from Leavenworth on December 24, 1987. In prison he earned college degrees and developed his work as a playwright. He later became a filmmaker, author, youth-theater founder and Columbia University professor.
Breakthrough’s Spring 1982 prisoner correspondence directory names Jamal (Eddie Josephs) with the historical mailing address Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York, NY. This is a contemporaneous mail-directory reference; it does not establish first physical admission, exact transfer, final release or uninterrupted housing there. The editorial’s March 22 arrest date is not adopted over the stronger appellate March 26, 1982 chronology.
The investigation account and chronology record actual arrest March 26, 1982 under Edward Josephs. The September 3, 1983 verdict convicted him as an accessory after the fact, rather than on every original conspiracy/robbery allegation. The chronology reports twelve and one-half years, but its February 16, 1984 sentencing date conflicts with the independent appellate February 15 date. No actual custody total or new release day is inferred.
Report of the New York State Policy Study Group on Terrorism, November 1985, PDF page 65.
