Clark, 69, was the getaway driver in the bungled 1981 heist in a suburb of New York City in which two police officers and a guard were killed. She had originally been sentenced to 75 years to life, but became a model of rehabilitation in prison, expressing deep remorse for her crime and doing good works.
The decision to release Clark came after a lobbying campaign involving 11 state senators, the former Manhattan district attorney, a former chief judge, four former parole board commissioners and a former superintendent of the prison where she was housed.
Clark, then 31, drove a getaway car during the attempted robbery in Rockland County in 1981. The heist was part of a scheme by a radical offshoot of militant leftist group Weather Underground, known as the May 19th Communist Organization, to steal $1.6 million for financing a guerrilla uprising.
Two Nyack police officers, Sgt. Edward O’Grady and Officer Waverly Brown, and a Brink’s security guard, Peter Paige, were shot and killed during the robbery, and though Clark was not at the scene of the shooting, she was charged with second-degree murder and robbery.
Clark represented herself at her trial. Still fueled by the beliefs that made her a willing participant in the robbery, she was deeply uncooperative and defiant in court.
But she evolved over the years while imprisoned at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Westchester County. Clark has said that in the process of building a relationship with her daughter, Harriet, who was an infant when Clark was incarcerated, she jettisoned her political views and began to reflect on the harm her actions had caused.
In late 2016, Gov. Andrew Cuomo recognized her “exceptional strides in self-development,” commuted her sentence to 35 years and made her eligible for parole.
Cuomo at the time attributed the decision in part to an hourlong meeting he had with Clark at the prison earlier that year.
“When you meet her you get a sense of her soul,” Cuomo said then.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.