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Inadmissible Evidence: The Story of the African-American Trial Lawyer Who Defended the Black Liberation Army
Excerpts from Kirkus Review (11-1-1993)Any analysis of the American Black experience demands close attention to both the political and the personal, and this extraordinary memoir by Williams offers just that, as well as making a noteworthy contribution to recent American legal History.Becoming a Childrens Court probation officer she contended with the political pressures of placing the children of Ethel and Julus Rosenberg In the early 70s, the author took on her most important case, defending her niece, Assata Shakur, leader of the Black Liberation Army.
229 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
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August 29, 2018
Evelyn William's is Assata's aunt and this book is complimentary to Assata's autobiography. She gives you the full (3 dollars and 6 dimes). Amazing work I hope to read again really soon.
November 18, 2025
THE LAWYER FOR ASSATA SHAKUR TELLS HER STORY
Evelyn A. Williams was, most famously, the aunt of activist Assata Shakur; but she was also a teacher and Assistant Dean at New York University of Law School, a former probation officer, and criminal defense trial lawyer, who defended Assata Shakur in her court proceedings.
She wrote in the first chapter of this 1993 book, “Police sirens… Hunting down JoAnne Chesimard, my only sister’s first child. Whom they called cop killer, bank robber, and a member of a terrorist gang of criminals, the Black Liberation Army (the BLA). Who was known to militants by her African name, Assata Shakur, and whom I called Joey… for the last two years the nationwide dragnet for her capture had intensified each time a young African American identified as a member of the BLA was arrested or wounded or killed. The Joint Terrorist Task Force, made up of FBI and local police agencies across the country, issued daily bulletins predicting her imminent apprehension…” (Pg. 3)
She recalls, “Between 1971 and 1973, the possibility that she would be shot to death filled my every waking moment and broke my sleep at night… I lived in constant fear that an informant’s tip would tighten the net around her so that she, like so many other Black Panthers, would be cornered and killed in a shoot-out.” (Pg. 11)
She explains, “I was better able to withstand the barrage of publicity than my family because I was a criminal trial lawyer. After years of representing Black and poor defendants hopelessly mired in the ‘system’ I have long ago ceased referring to as the criminal justice system, I was suspect of the airtight public indictment against Joey.” (Pg. 14)
She recounts, “The Church Committee Report… revealed… that the FBI, in cooperation with state law enforcement authorities, had not only fabricated criminal charges against militants but had relentlessly prosecuted them… Once the Church Committee Report was made public, convicted Black Panthers requested the release of their FBI files through the Freedom of Information Act… they documented that the FBI and local police had manufactured evidence against them, had forced witnesses to give perjured testimony during their trials, and had withheld evidence that would have exonerated them. But… none of this was known until 1975. As of 1973, all I knew was that police authorities believed that BLA members were former Panthers who has split from the party because of their more militant stance and that Joey was among them.” (Pg. 17-18)
She was involved in a State Supreme Court case to determine the custody of the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and she comments, “it was the first time I was exposed to the way in which lives especially those that have been the focus of national attention and fall within judicial jurisdiction, can be permanently altered by prejudice and arbitrary decisions.” (Pg. 36)
She states, “I understood when a new generation of African Americans grew impatient with years of theoretical progress, heralded when change occurred and discredited when no change resulted. I was not surprised when the Black Panther Party rejected King’s dream that guilt-ridden white Americans would share the benefits they had realized from institutional racism and when the party urged California Blacks to arm themselves for self-defense against continued police assault… And I thought, whether accepted or rejected, whether approved or disapproved, as long as all of the conditions that prevent inclusion continue, the possibility exists that another and another and another Black Liberation Army will emerge, prepared to kill and to die.” (Pg. 73-74)
She recounts her first visit to Assata (who had been captured, and was being held in a hospital): “Her face was bruised and swollen. Her right arm was in a sling, and blood oozed from the bullet wound in her bandaged chest… she told me that her right arm was paralyzed and that the bullet in her chest had not been removed… But her primary concern was the removal of the state troopers from her room---she told me they were threatening to kill her.” (Pg. 81)
She muses, “This was the first time I had represented a political prisoner, which I now define as someone who has been illegally incarcerated because of his or her opinions or who, having been convicted of a crime, is brutalized while in prison… or who is convicted of committing a crime for political reasons. I believe that all African American prisoners are political prisoners… because of the circumstances that got them into jail as well as the harshness of the sentencing applied only to them. Joey was no different…” (Pg. 83)
She recalls, “a gnawing question continued to bother me. Did the troopers know that the Pontiac and its passengers would be on the turnpike that night? Were they watching for them? And did they shoot first? I had asked Assata whether she believed the Pontiac had been targeted, and she had dismissed even the possibility. But I was not convinced. If, as my gut told me, the troopers were waiting for them, in all likelihood the troopers fired the first shots, in which case self-defense could be considered.” (Pg. 92-93)
She explains, “What I did know, however, was that … [the] Hospital records had already established the trajectory of the bullet that had entered Assata’s middle right armpit… our neurological and thoracic experts had established that the track of the bullet … could have occurred only had she been shot while in a seated position with both arms raised. These facts totally refuted Harper’s grand jury testimony … in which he claimed he saw Assata reach into a pocketbook while she was seated in the car, pull a gun from it, and shoot him… But let me add this now: at the trial he testified that he had lied both to the grand jury and in his official reports; that he had never seen a gun in Assata’s hand while she was in the car; that he had never seen her remove a gun from a red pocketbook… he said he ‘assumed’ that Assata had fired at him from the car because just before he heard a shot and after he ordered her to put her hands in sight, she had made a gritting facial expression, bared her teeth, and emitted a growl…” (Pg. 98-99)
She acknowledges, “I was representing Assata on all of the cases for which she had been indicted… but the multiplicity of indictments disturbed me less than the growing number of alleged BLA members being arrested, and I was haunted by the prospect that one or all of them would plead guilty or falsely testify against her in exchange for a light sentence of other consideration. The September 1, 1972, Bronx bank robbery trial proved that my apprehensions were well founded.” (Pg. 109)
Of one of the trials, “[Judge] Gagliardi called up the first 150 prospective jurors. And the battle was on as Assata refused to permit the judge to question them. As soon as he began a question, she interrupted him by standing up and demanding an adjournment, stating clearly to the jurors that she had not had time to prepare for the trial; each time Gagliardi had her removed from the courtroom by the marshals… As Assata was forcibly evicted she accused Gagliardi of having made deals, of being bigoted, of having been bought and paid for, and of subjecting her to a lynching… Finally, to avoid the brutality of the marshals, she would rise as they approached, saying… ‘I will remove myself,’ and then stalk regally from the courtroom, trailed by… the marshals.” (Pg. 115)
Assata would give birth while she was in captivity, so she was transferred to a hospital, where her daughter (Kakuya) was released to her mother Doris’s custody. (Pg. 130)
Of Assata’s escape from prison, Williams recounts, “My first reaction of disbelief mingled with a sustained hot flash of exultation.” (Pg. 169) Ultimately, “on August 30, 1984, I received the phone call I had been anticipating for five years. Assata called me from Cuba to tell me she had been granted political asylum… But before I let myself really believe it was really Assata, I kept my voice cold and distant, asking her to tell me something only she and I knew, not permitting the flood of relief and happiness to envelop me until I was sure.” (Pg. 219)
Later, “When Kakuya went to Cuba to live with Assata, we were both bereft, and Doris grieved for months, barely able to remain in the apartment filled with Kakuya’s mementos. But we were both comforted by her reunion with Assata and the fact that Kakuya was not living in the drug-infested, death-driven racist country that might claim her life. In Cuba she was protected. And safe from physical harm.” (Pg. 226)
She concludes, “The U.S. government’s failure to give assistance to the health, employment, housing, and other basic needs of its citizenry has not created a just system, and I expect no real changes to occur until the masses decide that change must come and pressure for that change… How should we proceed? What if all African American children learned that their history did not start in America, after slavery?... What if they knew that our homeland had provided the genesis for all human culture?... What if… the teachers broke away from their boards of education and… began schools across the country to teach Black children their history? What if wave after wave of young college graduates earned their living in this fashion?” (Pg. 229)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying Assata Shakur, the Black Liberation Army, and similar revolutionary movements of African Americans.
Evelyn A. Williams was, most famously, the aunt of activist Assata Shakur; but she was also a teacher and Assistant Dean at New York University of Law School, a former probation officer, and criminal defense trial lawyer, who defended Assata Shakur in her court proceedings.
She wrote in the first chapter of this 1993 book, “Police sirens… Hunting down JoAnne Chesimard, my only sister’s first child. Whom they called cop killer, bank robber, and a member of a terrorist gang of criminals, the Black Liberation Army (the BLA). Who was known to militants by her African name, Assata Shakur, and whom I called Joey… for the last two years the nationwide dragnet for her capture had intensified each time a young African American identified as a member of the BLA was arrested or wounded or killed. The Joint Terrorist Task Force, made up of FBI and local police agencies across the country, issued daily bulletins predicting her imminent apprehension…” (Pg. 3)
She recalls, “Between 1971 and 1973, the possibility that she would be shot to death filled my every waking moment and broke my sleep at night… I lived in constant fear that an informant’s tip would tighten the net around her so that she, like so many other Black Panthers, would be cornered and killed in a shoot-out.” (Pg. 11)
She explains, “I was better able to withstand the barrage of publicity than my family because I was a criminal trial lawyer. After years of representing Black and poor defendants hopelessly mired in the ‘system’ I have long ago ceased referring to as the criminal justice system, I was suspect of the airtight public indictment against Joey.” (Pg. 14)
She recounts, “The Church Committee Report… revealed… that the FBI, in cooperation with state law enforcement authorities, had not only fabricated criminal charges against militants but had relentlessly prosecuted them… Once the Church Committee Report was made public, convicted Black Panthers requested the release of their FBI files through the Freedom of Information Act… they documented that the FBI and local police had manufactured evidence against them, had forced witnesses to give perjured testimony during their trials, and had withheld evidence that would have exonerated them. But… none of this was known until 1975. As of 1973, all I knew was that police authorities believed that BLA members were former Panthers who has split from the party because of their more militant stance and that Joey was among them.” (Pg. 17-18)
She was involved in a State Supreme Court case to determine the custody of the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and she comments, “it was the first time I was exposed to the way in which lives especially those that have been the focus of national attention and fall within judicial jurisdiction, can be permanently altered by prejudice and arbitrary decisions.” (Pg. 36)
She states, “I understood when a new generation of African Americans grew impatient with years of theoretical progress, heralded when change occurred and discredited when no change resulted. I was not surprised when the Black Panther Party rejected King’s dream that guilt-ridden white Americans would share the benefits they had realized from institutional racism and when the party urged California Blacks to arm themselves for self-defense against continued police assault… And I thought, whether accepted or rejected, whether approved or disapproved, as long as all of the conditions that prevent inclusion continue, the possibility exists that another and another and another Black Liberation Army will emerge, prepared to kill and to die.” (Pg. 73-74)
She recounts her first visit to Assata (who had been captured, and was being held in a hospital): “Her face was bruised and swollen. Her right arm was in a sling, and blood oozed from the bullet wound in her bandaged chest… she told me that her right arm was paralyzed and that the bullet in her chest had not been removed… But her primary concern was the removal of the state troopers from her room---she told me they were threatening to kill her.” (Pg. 81)
She muses, “This was the first time I had represented a political prisoner, which I now define as someone who has been illegally incarcerated because of his or her opinions or who, having been convicted of a crime, is brutalized while in prison… or who is convicted of committing a crime for political reasons. I believe that all African American prisoners are political prisoners… because of the circumstances that got them into jail as well as the harshness of the sentencing applied only to them. Joey was no different…” (Pg. 83)
She recalls, “a gnawing question continued to bother me. Did the troopers know that the Pontiac and its passengers would be on the turnpike that night? Were they watching for them? And did they shoot first? I had asked Assata whether she believed the Pontiac had been targeted, and she had dismissed even the possibility. But I was not convinced. If, as my gut told me, the troopers were waiting for them, in all likelihood the troopers fired the first shots, in which case self-defense could be considered.” (Pg. 92-93)
She explains, “What I did know, however, was that … [the] Hospital records had already established the trajectory of the bullet that had entered Assata’s middle right armpit… our neurological and thoracic experts had established that the track of the bullet … could have occurred only had she been shot while in a seated position with both arms raised. These facts totally refuted Harper’s grand jury testimony … in which he claimed he saw Assata reach into a pocketbook while she was seated in the car, pull a gun from it, and shoot him… But let me add this now: at the trial he testified that he had lied both to the grand jury and in his official reports; that he had never seen a gun in Assata’s hand while she was in the car; that he had never seen her remove a gun from a red pocketbook… he said he ‘assumed’ that Assata had fired at him from the car because just before he heard a shot and after he ordered her to put her hands in sight, she had made a gritting facial expression, bared her teeth, and emitted a growl…” (Pg. 98-99)
She acknowledges, “I was representing Assata on all of the cases for which she had been indicted… but the multiplicity of indictments disturbed me less than the growing number of alleged BLA members being arrested, and I was haunted by the prospect that one or all of them would plead guilty or falsely testify against her in exchange for a light sentence of other consideration. The September 1, 1972, Bronx bank robbery trial proved that my apprehensions were well founded.” (Pg. 109)
Of one of the trials, “[Judge] Gagliardi called up the first 150 prospective jurors. And the battle was on as Assata refused to permit the judge to question them. As soon as he began a question, she interrupted him by standing up and demanding an adjournment, stating clearly to the jurors that she had not had time to prepare for the trial; each time Gagliardi had her removed from the courtroom by the marshals… As Assata was forcibly evicted she accused Gagliardi of having made deals, of being bigoted, of having been bought and paid for, and of subjecting her to a lynching… Finally, to avoid the brutality of the marshals, she would rise as they approached, saying… ‘I will remove myself,’ and then stalk regally from the courtroom, trailed by… the marshals.” (Pg. 115)
Assata would give birth while she was in captivity, so she was transferred to a hospital, where her daughter (Kakuya) was released to her mother Doris’s custody. (Pg. 130)
Of Assata’s escape from prison, Williams recounts, “My first reaction of disbelief mingled with a sustained hot flash of exultation.” (Pg. 169) Ultimately, “on August 30, 1984, I received the phone call I had been anticipating for five years. Assata called me from Cuba to tell me she had been granted political asylum… But before I let myself really believe it was really Assata, I kept my voice cold and distant, asking her to tell me something only she and I knew, not permitting the flood of relief and happiness to envelop me until I was sure.” (Pg. 219)
Later, “When Kakuya went to Cuba to live with Assata, we were both bereft, and Doris grieved for months, barely able to remain in the apartment filled with Kakuya’s mementos. But we were both comforted by her reunion with Assata and the fact that Kakuya was not living in the drug-infested, death-driven racist country that might claim her life. In Cuba she was protected. And safe from physical harm.” (Pg. 226)
She concludes, “The U.S. government’s failure to give assistance to the health, employment, housing, and other basic needs of its citizenry has not created a just system, and I expect no real changes to occur until the masses decide that change must come and pressure for that change… How should we proceed? What if all African American children learned that their history did not start in America, after slavery?... What if they knew that our homeland had provided the genesis for all human culture?... What if… the teachers broke away from their boards of education and… began schools across the country to teach Black children their history? What if wave after wave of young college graduates earned their living in this fashion?” (Pg. 229)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying Assata Shakur, the Black Liberation Army, and similar revolutionary movements of African Americans.
January 9, 2016
Great companion read to Assata's autobiography. Evelyn Williams, Assata's aunt and lawyer, is a strong and fascinating woman on her own. The memoir is pretty evenly divided between Evelyn's own childhood and life story and her time with her niece. If you're primarily interested in the BLA trials, Inadmissible Evidence fills in a few key details about each of the cases, Assata's eventual escape, her life in Cuba, and her eventual reunion with her daughter. The dynamic of their relationship is especially interesting - Evelyn is methodical and professional, Assata bold and passionate; their differing personalities often lead to conflict, but the love between them is deep, and Evelyn herself becomes more and more persuaded by Assata's seemingly radical actions in response to a lifetime of increasingly violent injustice.
Indeed, Williams devoted herself to such causes throughout her life, however hopeless, sacrificing professional success for the people and cases in which she felt a moral investment. I was especially moved and appalled by the stories of her family being cheated out of their long-held North Carolina property, and her fight to keep poor African-American families from being systematically forced out of their homes. It's not pleasant reading; one is grateful for her efforts and her courage, but sobered by the conclusions she is sometimes forced to come to and by what she and her family have had to endure.
Indeed, Williams devoted herself to such causes throughout her life, however hopeless, sacrificing professional success for the people and cases in which she felt a moral investment. I was especially moved and appalled by the stories of her family being cheated out of their long-held North Carolina property, and her fight to keep poor African-American families from being systematically forced out of their homes. It's not pleasant reading; one is grateful for her efforts and her courage, but sobered by the conclusions she is sometimes forced to come to and by what she and her family have had to endure.
December 22, 2025
This was the perfect read to motivate me as I begin studying for the LSAT. ‘Inadmissible Evidence’ is the autobiography of Assata Shakur’s lawyer and aunt, Evelyn Williams. It follows Williams from her early life with her parents (whom greatly influenced both her and Assata’s view of self) through law school, countless jobs, and numerous trials and cases. She pays particular attention to the seven years she spent working as Assata’s lawyers to defend her niece from the multitude of trials based in New York and New Jersey.
This was truly an incredible read. It’s very technical, lengthy, and explanatory in typical legal fashion, but it provides an extremely unique perspective into Assata’s story. Outside of the focus on her niece, Williams’ story is important on its own. To be a Black female movement lawyer during her time??? She’s an icon for all aspiring Black lawyers; courageous, unbossed and unbought.
Very grateful that this book was put back in print and that I was able to snag a copy. S/o to the comrade who recommended this for me.
This was truly an incredible read. It’s very technical, lengthy, and explanatory in typical legal fashion, but it provides an extremely unique perspective into Assata’s story. Outside of the focus on her niece, Williams’ story is important on its own. To be a Black female movement lawyer during her time??? She’s an icon for all aspiring Black lawyers; courageous, unbossed and unbought.
Very grateful that this book was put back in print and that I was able to snag a copy. S/o to the comrade who recommended this for me.
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October 29, 2025“Inadmissible Evidence” author offers a bird’s eye view of the legal counselor who represented JoAnne Chesimard, notoriously known by her African name, Assata Shakur. The story illustrates how the government utilized tactics of the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in concert with other local police agencies to quash militant citizens who dare pushed back against this “criminal enterprise” aka the American judicial system.
July 31, 2020
A great find. Lots of good information about Assata Shakur, the Rosenbergs and Kathy Boudine.
October 13, 2020
Couldn't get through it. Too much about the author and Assata, not enough about the BLA. I may go back to it later but yeah, not great.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews