Black News - Freedom Archives

THE CASE1OF
(JOANNE ASSATAISHAKUR
CHESIMARD)
Assata Shakur (JoAnne Chesimard) now faces
another life-defeating crisis in what appears to be
a never-ending Federal/State vendetta against
her . This time the perpetrator is the State of New
Jersey's Department of Corrections .
On April 6, 1978, Assata was transferred from
solitary confinement in the all-male Yardville
Correctional Institution in the State of New
Jersey (where she was to serve a life sentence plus
33 years, imposed after conviction of the murder
of a New Jersey State Trooper), to the Maximum
Security Unit at the Federal Correctional
Institution at Alderson, West Virginia .
The State of New Jersey transferred her 600
miles from her attorpeys appealing her murder
conviction and from her family because they felt
she was such a security risk, and constituted such
a high potential for escape with the aid of
"outside" friends, that she could not be
contained in any of their institutions . This
assertion prevails even though after almost six
years of incarceration, she has never been a
disciplinary problem, has made no effort to
escape from prison, and has never been the
object of any escape attempt .
From April 6th, 1978 to October 3rd, 1978,
Assata participated in no activities permitted
prisoners in the general population at Alderson .
She was housed in Davis Hall - a concentrationtype,
barbed wire fence-enclosed, separate
component of the Federal Correctional
Institution for Women - with Nazis, Charles
Manson followers, and psychotics .
On October 3rd, she was permitted to leave the
Maximum Security Unit for 2 hours a day to take
part in a medical training program . From
October until January 9, 1979, she worked with
the mechanic crew, attended art classes once a
week, and engaged in other open campus
activities without escort .
On January 5, 1979, her Unit Team
recommended that she be removed from
Maximum Security and placed in general
population .
When Assata appeared before the Regional
Meeting on January 9, she fully expected to be
told that she would enter general population .
Instead, she was told that, in spite of the
recommendation, the New Jersey State
epartment of Corrections would not allow her
by Evelyn Williams
to go into general population and that since the
Maximum Security Unit at Alderson was being
closed, she would be placed in Administrative
Segregation" until the State of New Jersey
effected her transfer to a Maximum Security
Unit in a state institution, as yet unidentified .
She was further advised that the State of New
Jersey would complete transfer arrangements no
later than February 1, 1979 by which time she
would be definitely moved from Alderson .
Lennox S . Hinds, National Conference of
Black Lawyers, Leora Mosston, and Evelyn A .
Williams immediately sought relief from the
Appellate Division of the Superior Court of the
State of New Jersey, asking that the New Jersey
Department of Corrections be enjoined from
further transferring Assata pending their
decision- , on the first appeal filed for her transfeer
from the State of New Jersey to Alderson . The
motion was denied on January 16, 1979 .
During oral argument before the Appellate
Division, the Deputy Attorney General of the
State of New Jersey stated that although the
State of New Jersey housed many prisoners who
had been convicted of the murder of police
officers, " . . .there has never been a JoAnne
Chesimard," and that her explosive potential
was best-illustrated by the actions of her codefendant,
Sundiata Acoli (Clark Squire), who
Maloney (the Deputy Attorney General) said,
had been involved in a savage prison escape
attempt at Trenton State Prison in New Jersey
during which an inmate was murdered and that
Sundiata had been indicted for Murder of the
First Degree .