First African-American Woman to Serve on State's Highest Court Found Dead in Hudson River

Authored by ny1.com and submitted by TwinPeaks2017

A Court of Appeals judge was found dead in the Hudson River Wednesday afternoon.

The NYPD says Sheila Abdus-Salaam was found dead by police near West 132nd Street around 1:45 p.m.

She was reported missing on Tuesday.

Officials say she had no obvious signs of trauma. They are working to determine a cause of death.

Abdus-Salaam was the first African-American woman, and the first Muslim, to serve on the Court of Appeals. She was appointed by Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2013.

She was previously elected to the State Supreme Court in 1993.

She was also a staff attorney for Brooklyn Legal Services, a lawyer for the New York City Office of Labor Services, a civil court judge and criminal court judge.

Sheila Abdus-Salaam was 65 years old.

thinkpadius on April 13rd, 2017 at 04:48 UTC »

For those worried about this being a fake news article or annoyed by the fact that this was basically written by a bot, here's the NYTimes article on the subject:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/nyregion/judge-dead-hudson-river-sheila-abdus-salaam.html

On the court, Judge Abdus-Salaam was among the most reliable and steadfast liberal voices, regularly siding with vulnerable parties — the poor, impoverished immigrants and people with mental illnesses, for instance — against more powerful and established interests. She also tended to lean toward injured parties who brought claims of misconduct, fraud or breach of contract against wealthy corporations.

Among her colleagues, she was admired for her thoughtfulness, her candor and her finely crafted and restrained writing style. She was not one to use her decisions as a soapbox to make high-sounding political points or to wax poetic, even when her rulings were precedent-setting.

biggieemilio on April 13rd, 2017 at 02:20 UTC »

What the hell that article was two paragraphs!!! Who was this women? What did she accomplish? Why would someone kill her? Write a story for crying out loud this was a person.

frenchkeley on April 13rd, 2017 at 00:10 UTC »

She was also the first Muslim to serve on the court.