On March 25, 1977, after a six-week trial in Middlesex County, New Jersey, an all-white jury convicted Assata Shakur (legal name JoAnne Deborah Chesimard) of first-degree murder for the May 2, 1973 shooting death of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster on the New Jersey Turnpike, plus seven additional felony counts. She was the only one of the three Black Liberation Army members in the car (Zayd Malik Shakur, killed in the shootout; Sundiata Acoli) to be tried for Foerster's death. The verdict came despite forensic evidence — including neutron-activation tests showing no gunshot residue on her hands and medical testimony that her wounds (a bullet through one arm, another lodged in her chest) made it nearly impossible for her to have fired the weapon attributed to her. She was sentenced one month later to life plus 33 years.

She spent the next two years in maximum-security custody, much of it in solitary confinement and in a men's prison, before her November 2, 1979 liberation from the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women by Black Liberation Army comrades. After several years underground she received political asylum in Cuba in 1984, where she lived as a writer and movement elder until her death on September 25, 2025.

Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur was convicted by an all-white New Jersey jury of murder, assault, and related charges in the 1973 NJ Turnpike shootout that killed state trooper Werner Foerster and her comrade Zayd Malik Shakur. Sentenced to life plus 33 years. Escaped from prison in 1979; has lived in political asylum in Cuba since 1984.