Gov. Cuomo on Monday defended commuting the sentence of the getaway driver in the 1981 Brinks car robbery that left two cops and an armored car guard dead, saying she was in her 20s and not out to commit murder.
“There’s a difference between being a 20-year-old accessory and actually being a purposeful murderer. That’s not what we’re talking about here,” Cuomo said of Judith Clark.
“I met with her in prison and I spent time speaking with her and she is impressive and . . . I don’t know who she was before, I believe she was in her 20s when she committed the crime, but she seemed to me a very sober-minded, community-oriented person, very concerned about not being able to spend time with her child.”
Clark, now 67, was 31 when she and a crew of radicals from the Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army stuck up a Brinks truck in Nyack and made off with $1.6 million.
She was sentenced in 1983 to 75 years to life.
“I don’t think there’s anyone who will say 35 years is a slap on the wrist . . . 35 years is a very long period of time. At one point you have to say to yourself, what are you accomplishing? And was there actual fairness here? Ms. Clark did not pull a trigger,” said Cuomo.