Will a Judge Force Cancer-Stricken Black Elder Mutulu Shakur to Die Behind Bars?
The Intercept, June 22, 2022: Will a Judge Force Cancer-Stricken Black Elder Mutulu Shakur to Die Behind Bars?
“When Mutulu Shakur applied for compassionate release in 2020, the presiding judge told the Black liberation elder that he was not close enough to death. At the time, Shakur was 70 and had spent nearly half his life in federal prison, where a moribund parole system created interminable barriers for his release.
“In 2020, he was sick with hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, glaucoma, and the aftereffects of a 2013 stroke while in solitary confinement. He also faced high risks of severe Covid-19 complications. The cancer in his bone marrow, though, was not yet killing him fast enough. It was understood to be terminal, but chemotherapy treatment had been successful in keeping it at bay.
“As such, according to then-90-year-old Judge Charles Haight Jr. — the very same judge who had sentenced Shakur to prison over three decades before — the respected and beloved elder, who posed zero risk to society and held an impeccable institutional record, was not eligible for compassion.
“‘Should it develop that Shakur’s condition deteriorates further, to the point of approaching death, he may apply again to the Court, for a release that in those circumstances could be justified as “compassionate,”’ the judge wrote in his decision.
“Two years later, Haight is still alive and, astoundingly, on the bench. Shakur, meanwhile, is on the very edge of death, cancer disabling his every bodily capacity.”
Additional reading:
Workers World, December 8, 2021: Eligible for release in 2016, Mutulu Shakur remains behind bars with worsening cancer
The New York Times, May 10, 2022: Black Nationalist Convicted in ’73 Killing of N.J. Trooper Wins Parole
The Intercept, May 27, 2020: New York Appealed to Keep an Elderly Prisoner Behind Bars — Then He Got Coronavirus
