Elizabeth Fink
Elizabeth Marsha Fink (June 7, 1945 – September 22, 2015) was an American civil rights and criminal defense lawyer known for her work on the Attica Prison riots. In 1974 she filed a class-action lawsuit against prison guards for torture and abuse during the riot; in 2000 the state settled for $12 million to inmates, though there was no apology or admission of fault.
She was born in Brooklyn to lawyer Bernard Fink and Sylvia Caplan Fink, an anti-nuclear and elder rights activist. She was named after Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and her brother is photographer Larry Fink. She graduated from Reed College in 1967 and Brooklyn Law School in 1973.
Fink started the Law Office of Elizabeth M. Fink in Brooklyn, focusing on civil rights, prisoner rights, and criminal defense. The Attica case dominated her career until 2000. She also represented other prisoners and political radicals. In 1989 she helped win acquittals for members of the Ohio 7 on federal seditious conspiracy charges.
With Sarah Kunstler and Jesse Berman, she represented Osama Awadallah, a Palestinian student arrested after 9/11; Awadallah was acquitted in 2006. In 2006 she represented Lynne Stewart at sentencing after her conviction for violating special communication measures; Stewart received an initial sentence of 28 months, later increased to 10 years. Fink also worked on cases involving Jeremy Hammond (the Stratfor email leak) and Ahmed Ferhani (Manhattan plot). Ferhani pleaded guilty in 2012.
She died of a heart attack in New York City on September 22, 2015, at age 70. She and paralegal Frank Smith, an inmate leader during Attica, were featured in the 2001 Court TV documentary Ghosts of Attica, which won the 2002 Dupont-Columbia University Award for Journalistic Excellence.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 20:29 (CET).