Sheila Abdus-Salaam

Sheila Abdus-Salaam   (judge)
Born	Sheila Turner 1952-03-14 Washington DC, U.S.
Died	2017-04-12 (Age 65) New York City, U.S.
Alma mater	Barnard College, Columbia Law School
Victim of	premature death
A US judge found dead in the Hudson River in 2017  Associate Judge of the New York Court of Appeals  In office May 6, 2013 - April 12, 2017 Boss Janet DiFiore, Eugene F. Pigott Appointed by Andrew Cuomo

Sheila Abdus-Salaam was the first African-American woman appointed to the New York Court of Appeals whom the Daily Mail termed "groundbreaking". In 2017, she was found dead in the Hudson River after her husband of less than a year reported her missing.

Education

Sheila Turner was born on March 14, 1952, in Washington, D.C., where she grew up in a working-class family with six siblings.

Turner obtained a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1974 and graduated from Columbia Law School in 1977. Among her classmates at Columbia was Eric Holder, the future United States Attorney General.

Career

Turner took her first husband's surname, Abdus-Salaam, and retained it during her professional career.

Before joining the bench, Abdus-Salaam worked as a staff attorney for Brooklyn Legal Services and served in the New York State Department of Law as an assistant attorney general in the civil rights and real estate financing bureaus. She subsequently served on the New York City Civil Court, from 1992 to 1993. Abdus-Salaam was elected a justice of the New York Supreme Court in 1993, and served in that capacity from 1993 to 2009. In 2009, she was designated as a justice of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, First Judicial Department by Governor David Paterson. She served as an associate justice of the Appellate Division from 2009 until 2013.

On April 5, 2013, following the death of New York Court of Appeals Judge Theodore T. Jones, Abdus-Salaam was nominated by Governor Andrew Cuomo to fill the resulting vacancy on New York's highest court. She was confirmed by the New York State Senate without opposition in a voice vote held May 6, 2013. She became the first female African-American judge to serve on the New York Court of Appeals. Abdus-Salaam was seen as a "liberal" voice on the bench.

Death

CBSNews stated that "Questions persist".

The judge's family disputed corporate media accounts that she was suicidal, and that her brother and mother both had committed suicide. Family members have said Abdus-Salaam's mother died of old age and her brother of terminal lung cancer.

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