(Reuters) - A groundbreaking black jurist who became the first Muslim woman to serve as a U.S. judge was found dead in New York's Hudson River on Wednesday, police said.
Sheila Abdus-Salaam, a 65-year-old associate judge of New York's highest court, was found floating off Manhattan's west side at about 1:45 p.m. EDT (1545 GMT), a police spokesman said.
Police pulled Abdus-Salaam's fully clothed body from the water and she was pronounced dead at the scene. Her family identified her and an autopsy would determine the cause of death, the spokesman said.
Abdus-Salaam, a native of Washington, D.C., became the first African-American woman appointed to the Court of Appeals when Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo named her to the state's high court in 2013.
"Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam was a trailblazing jurist whose life in public service was in pursuit of a more fair and more just New York for all," Cuomo said in a statement.
The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History said Abdus-Salaam was the first female Muslim to serve as a U.S. judge.
Citing unidentified sources, the New York Post reported that Abdus-Salaam had been reported missing from her New York home earlier on Wednesday. Attempts to reach her family were unsuccessful.
A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia Law School, Abdus-Salaam started her law career with East Brooklyn Legal Services and served as a New York state assistant attorney general, according to the Court of Appeals website.
She held a series of judicial posts after being elected to a New York City judgeship in 1991.
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LawyerLady
I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.
Sad news. Murder always is. I don't for a second believe it was anything other than a murder.
I do, actually. A Muslim woman in a position of power? I bet this turns out to be some kind of "honor" killing.
I mentioned that on another board and boy was I flamed and called anti-muslim. If she committed suicide she could have been driving to it by people telling her to.
Sad news. Murder always is. I don't for a second believe it was anything other than a murder.
I do, actually. A Muslim woman in a position of power? I bet this turns out to be some kind of "honor" killing.
I mentioned that on another board and boy was I flamed and called anti-muslim. If she committed suicide she could have been driving to it by people telling her to.
I will never understand it when people think it is ok to ignore facts. Women are killed in honor killings all the time. Muslim women are subjugated. Young girls are genitally mutilated. You cannot just IGNORE how Muslim women are treated in their faith.
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LawyerLady
I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.
I do, actually. A Muslim woman in a position of power? I bet this turns out to be some kind of "honor" killing.
- Lawyerlady
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I see that it turns out it wasn't a Muslim judge, but I still wanted to comment on what I quoted. An "honor killing" is still murder.
On to the revised facts of the story now:
Suicide is just as much sad news as murder is, albeit for obviously different reasons. It's terrible for someone to hurt that much.
for a whole lot of people, dying is much easier than living--as tolstoy observed " it's not really a mystery why so many people kill themselves. what's really a mystery is why so many people don't. "
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" the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. "--edmund burke
