Biography
Judith Alice Clark was a former Weather Underground organizer and one of the four May 19th Communist Organization members who served as getaway drivers in the October 20, 1981 Brink s armored-car expropriation in Nyack, New York. She was arrested at the scene, convicted on September 14, 1983 in Rockland County, New York state court of two counts of first-degree armed robbery and three counts of second-degree murder, and sentenced to 75 years to life. She spent 38 years at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, where she became a leading inside organizer for the Bedford Hills Family Center and the partner program for incarcerated mothers. Governor Andrew Cuomo commuted her sentence in December 2016; she was paroled in April 2019.
Clark emerged from late-1960s student organizing, joining Students for a Democratic Society and later becoming part of the Weather Underground milieu as it shifted toward underground activity and confrontational protest. After earlier arrests connected to that period, she later helped form May 19th Communist Organization, which aligned itself with armed revolutionary politics and, in the early 1980s, worked in concert with the Black Liberation Army.
Her most consequential arrest came after the October 1981 Brink’s armored car robbery in Rockland County, where she was captured as the driver of a getaway vehicle following a police chase. She was convicted of three counts of second-degree murder and robbery-related charges and received three consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences, serving decades at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. While incarcerated she became known for sustained prison-based work, including HIV/AIDS-related organizing and educational/support programming; in 2016, Andrew Cuomo commuted her sentence to make her parole-eligible, and she was granted parole in 2019.
Revolutionary Worker’s October 8, 1982 report reproduces Clark’s political statement at the September Brink’s pretrial hearings, condemning slavery, territorial conquest and the court’s claimed legitimacy. The statement documents her political defense during existing confinement. No new custody endpoint or disposition is supplied. Source: https://bannedthought.net/USA/RCP/RW/1982/RW175-English.pdf#page=13
The Winter 1988 Insurgent reports that Judith Clark was moved from New York state custody to FCI Tucson during the holiday period, separating her from regular family visits. The item attributes the move to officials’ stated security concerns during Bedford Hills perimeter renovations. This provides a documented federal placement within her longer imprisonment; it does not establish a new conviction or exact transfer day.
Breakthrough’s Spring 1982 prisoner correspondence directory groups Solomon Brown, Kathy Boudin, Judy Clark and David Gilbert under the shared mailing address Pouch 1, Woodbourne, New York 12788. The original does not identify this as Woodbourne State Prison or individually establish where those four people were physically housed. This is retained solely as a historical correspondence reference; no institution, admission, transfer, release or duration is inferred from that shared postal address.
Death to the Klan! reported that Judith Clark received a two-year segregation sanction at Bedford Hills in November 1985 and that more than 120 women prisoners protested it.
The bulletin individually names this defendant among four captured after the October 20, 1981 Nyack Brinks action and prints the committee’s solidarity declaration. The editorial presents the arrests as repression of the revolutionary movement. This is contemporary capture and defense context, without a new prosecution row, imposed sentence or completed custody total. The source prints Kathy Coudin in one passage; the known Nyack four and other explicit Boudin spelling resolve that typo.
Tip of the Iceberg, December 1981 (surviving twelve-page scan), PDF page 2.
The state policy report individually confirms arrest on October 20, 1981 and actual pretrial confinement in the Brink’s prosecution. Its security discussion distinguishes Rockland, Orange and Westchester trial arrangements and later prison custody from release. The body gives June 23, 1983 for transfer to Orange County while its chronology gives June 19; no exact transfer day is selected from this internal conflict. Transfers and court appearances are not discharges to freedom. The report gives the September 14, 1983 verdict and three consecutive twenty-five-years-to-life terms, but dates sentencing October 7 in the narrative and October 6 in the chronology. This discrepancy is preserved; the nominal sentence is not actual time served.
Report of the New York State Policy Study Group on Terrorism, November 1985, PDF page 41.
