Biography
Richard Delaney was a grand jury resister jailed for civil contempt in 1982–83, one of seven people named in In re Sunni-Ali (565 F. Supp. 1035, S.D.N.Y. 1983) held at New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center for refusing to testify before the federal grand jury investigating the October 20, 1981 Brink's armored-truck robbery in Nyack, New York — an action of the Black Liberation Army and Republic of New Afrika. Per Black Liberation Army defendant Kuwasi Balagoon's trial statement, Delaney and his co-resisters were jailed "for 18 months or more," imprisoned not for any charged crime but for refusing to cooperate with the grand jury. He was associated with the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America (BAAANA), the Harlem clinic at the center of the investigation.
Individual endpoints not established by the furlough opinion
The complete July 7, 1983 opinion in In re Sunni-Ali, 565 F. Supp. 1035, individually names Richard Delaney among seven people confined at New York's MCC for refusing a grand-jury subpoena. It recounts the June 23 furlough denial and denies reconsideration, but supplies no initial admission or actual release date. No furlough release is recorded. The collective statement about eighteen months or more is not converted into an exact personal duration; the prior numeric counters are removed. A dated individual custodial record is still needed.
Contemporary grand-jury investigation account
The newsletter identifies Richard Delaney with the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America and reports that he and Mutulu Shakur traveled to China representing it in 1977. It lists Delaney among clinic staff served with grand-jury subpoenas during the March 26, 1982 raid and says those clinic subpoenas were eventually quashed. Service of a subpoena is not proof of arrest, physical admission or release. This early clinic account does not establish the endpoints of Delaney’s separately documented later civil-contempt imprisonment or turn the other staff members into jailed prisoners.
The May–June 1982 issue is a movement-support newsletter containing reporting, editorial commentary and a separately attributed first-person statement. Allegations of mistreatment or investigative misconduct are attributed to that source rather than presented as new court findings. Group trial lengths, subpoena dates, warrant dates and threatened arrests do not supply individual physical custody endpoints.
The Coming of the Troops, volume 1 issue 1, May–June 1982, original page 3.
The December 1983 New Afrikan identified Richard Delaney and Larry Mack as the two grand-jury resisters who remained imprisoned.
