Cuomo Commutes Sentences of 1981 Brink’s Robbery Participant and 4 Others

The New York Times, August 23, 2021: Cuomo Commutes Sentences of 1981 Brink’s Robbery Participant and 4 Others

“In the waning hours of his final day in office, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo commuted the prison sentence of one of the members of the gang behind the infamous robbery of a Brink’s armored car in 1981 that left two police officers and a guard dead, a politically motivated ambush that continues to reverberate 40 years later.

David Gilbert is serving a 75-years-to-life sentence for his role in the crime, in which $1.6 million in cash was stolen from the armored car outside the Nanuet Mall near Nyack, N.Y. The heist was orchestrated by the Black Liberation Army and the May 19th Communist Organization—an offshoot of the radical left-wing group the Weather Underground.”

Additional reading:

The Guardian, August 24, 2021: Black police groups call for ex-Black Panther jailed for 48 years to be released

“A coalition of current and retired Black police officers is calling for the release on parole of Sundiata Acoli, a former Black Panther member who has been incarcerated for 48 years for the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper.

Acoli is one of at least 11 former members of the Black Panther Party and its armed wing, the Black Liberation Army, who are still in prison for acts of violence committed largely in the late 1960s and 1970s. Many of the prisoners are approaching their half-century behind bars.”