A key element of Shakur's defense was Medical evidence meant to demonstrate that she was shot with her hands up and that she would have been following orders unable to fire a weapon. A person who is skilled to take away diseases from the nerve system testified that the two nerve roots in Shakur's right arm was severed by the second bullet, making her unable to pull a trigger.Neurosurgeon Dr. Arthur Turner Davidson, Associate Professor of Surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, testified that the wounds in her upper arms, armpit and chest, and severed median nerve that instantly paralyzed her right arm, would only have been caused if both arms were raised, and that to support such injuries while bending over to be close and firing a weapon"would be respectfully impossible".

Davidson based his testimony on an August 4, 1976 examination of Shakur and on X-rays taken immediately after the shootout at Middlesex General Hospital. Prosecutor Barone questioned whether Davidson was qualified to make such a judgment 39 months after the injury; Barone proceeded to suggest (while a female Sheriff's attendant acted out his suggestion) that Shakur was struck in the right arm and collar bone and "then spun around by the impact of the bullet so an immediate second shot entered the fleshy part of her upper left arm.

Assata: In her own words
My name is Assata ("she who struggles") Shakur ("the thankful one"), and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of  government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government's policy towards people of color. I am an ex political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984. I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I  joined the Black Panther Party. 

Shakur managed to escape the FBI for five years. In 1984 she was granted political protection from danger in Cuba and slipped out of U.S. legal judgements and decisions . She was immediately impressed with the island and its people. There seemed to be no distinction made between black and white. In the final chapter of Assata, she noted: "Whenever I met someone who spoke English I asked their opinion about the race situation. 'Racism is illegal in Cuba,' I was told." Because the FBI kept her friends and family under close surveillance, Shakur could not risk contacting them until she was out of the country. But once in Cuba, she was visited by her mother and her Aunt Evelyn several times. And in 1987, her daughter, Kakuya, by then a pre-teen, went to live with her.

According to the New York Daily News, at that time Shakur was pursuing a master's degree and living in a government-paid apartment in Havana, Cuba's capital. Also in 1987, Assata Shakur published her autobiography. In the book she doesn't spend time explaining the workings of the BLA or the details of the crimes she was accused of committing. Instead, she reveals the influences in her life that shaped her. She exposes her soul through the poetry tucked between the chapters. And she makes no regret  for being a black revolutionary.

Assata Shakur fled to Cuba by 1984; in that year she was granted political asylum in that country.The Cuban government pays approximately $13 a day toward her living expenses. In 1985 she was reunited with her daughter, Kakuya, who had previously been raised by Shakur's mother in New York. She published Assata: An Autobiography, which was written in Cuba, in 1987. Her autobiography has been cited in relation to critical legal studies and critical race theory.The book does not give a detailed account of the events on the New Jersey Turnpike, except saying that the jury "Convicted a woman with her hands up!" The book was published by Lawrence Hill & Company in the United States and Canada but the copyright is held by Zed Books Ltd. of London due to so-called Son of Sam laws, which restrict who can receive profits from a book. In the six months prior to the publications of the book, Evelyn Williams, Shakur's aunt and attorney, made several trips to Cuba and served as a go-between with Hill.

On November 2, 1979 she escaped the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey, when three members of the Black Liberation Army visiting her drew concealed .45-caliber pistols, seized two guards as hostages and commandeered a prison van. The van escaped through an unfenced section of the prison into the parking lot of a state school for the handicapped, 1.5 miles (2 km) away, where a blue-and-white Lincoln and a blue Mercury Comet were waiting. No one, including the guards-turned-hostages left in the parking lot, was injured during the prison break. Her brother, Mutulu Shakur, Silvia Baraldini, former Panther Sekou Odinga, and Marilyn Buck were charged with assisting in her escape; Ronald Boyd Hill was also held on charges related to the escape.In part for his role in the event, Mutulu was named on July 23, 1982 as the 380th addition to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, where he remained for the next four years until his capture in 1986. State correction officials disclosed in November 1979 that they had not run identity checks on Shakur's visitors and that the three men and one woman who assisted in her escape had presented false identification to enter the prison's visitor room, before which they were not searched Mutulu Shakur and Marilyn Buck were later convicted in 1998 of several robberies as well as the prison escape.


Between 1973 and 1977, in New York and New Jersey, Shakur was indicted ten times, resulting in seven different criminal trials. Shakur was charged with two bank robberies, the kidnapping of a Brooklyn heroin dealer, attempted murder of two Queens police officers stemming from a January 23, 1973 failed ambush, and eight other felonies related to the Turnpike shootout.Of these trials, three resulted in acquittals, one in a hung jury, one in a change of venue, one in a mistrial, and one in a conviction; three indictments were dismissed without trial.

In her 1973 trial for a September 29, 1972 $3,700 robbery of the Manufacturer's Hanover Trust Company in the Bronx, Shakur and her co-defendant Kamau Sadiki (born Fred Hilton) represented themselves while their lawyers stayed mute, in protest of Judge Gagliardi allotting them what they perceived to be insufficient time for a proper defense. Seven other BLA members were indicted by District Attorney Eugene Gold in connection with the series of holdups and shootings on the same day,who—according to Gold—represented the "top echelon" of the BLA as determined by a year long investigation.

On May 2, 1973, at about 12:45 a.m., Assata Shakur, along with Zayd Malik Shakur (born James F. Costan) and Sundiata Acoli (born Clark Squire), was stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike in East Brunswick. A State Trooper James Harper, backed up by Trooper Werner Foerster in a second patrol vehicle for driving with a broken tail light. According to the troopers the car was past the speed limit. Zayd Shakur was driving the two-door vehicle, Assata Shakur was seated in the right front seat, and Acoli was in the right rear seat. Trooper Harper asked the driver for identification, noticed a discrepancy, asked him to get out of the car, and questioned him at the rear of the vehicle. At this point with all this questioning, Zayd took the trooper's gun and starting shooting. Trooper Foerster was shot twice in the head with his own gun and killed. Zayd Shakur was killed, and Assata Shakur and Trooper Harper were wounded.