Gary Craig, Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle 8:39 p.m. EDT September 23, 2015

Attorney Elizabeth Fink poses in the Greater Upstate Law Project offices in downtown Rochester in August of 2000, surrounded by the hundreds of claims by former Attica inmates made after the prison riots.(Photo: Staff Photographer Shawn Dowd, Yes-GRN)

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Elizabeth Fink, the firebrand lawyer who fought tirelessly for justice for inmates at the violent 1971 Attica prison riot, has died.

Fink, 70, died Tuesday in New York City, according to her close friend and former law partner Sarah Kunstler, the daughter of the late civil rights lawyer William Kunstler.

“She was a towering figure,” Kunstler said of Fink.

William Kunstler and Fink were both key figures in the Attica uprising — Kunstler as an inmate-chosen "observer" who tried to negotiate a peaceful resolution and Fink as the attorney who kept the inmates’ civil rights lawsuit alive for 25 years until the state of New York finally agreed to a settlement.

“I don’t know where her fight came from,” Sarah Kunstler said. “She had more courage than any lawyer. She loved to say, ‘Dare to struggle; dare to win.’ ”

Fink took on radical causes that many wouldn’t, partly because of her leftist political stances but also out of a belief that the judicial system should be fair to all. In a 2000 profile in the New York Daily News, she called herself a “red diaper baby,” saying her politics have been a mainstay in her life since she was young. She attributed her political beliefs to the leanings of her mother, an anti-nuclear activist in the 1950s.

Fink spent much of her career “defending the rights of society’s criminal outcasts,” the Daily News wrote.

Perhaps nowhere was that more evident than with her push for the Attica inmates, many of whom were villainized after the 1971 uprising that left 43 dead — 32 prisoners and 11 prison employees. The civil lawsuit filed by Fink and others helped bring to light the torture inflicted on some prisoners in the aftermath of the state’s violent retaking of Attica.

In 2000, the state of New York awarded the surviving inmates and the families of slain prisoners $12 million, a third of which was attorney fees.

Shedding light on the riot “was literally her mission in life,” said Dee Quinn Miller, whose father, Bill Quinn, was a corrections officer killed in the riot. “She did bring the injustices of Attica to light.”

Miller helped found the Forgotten Victims of Attica, a group of corrections officers who survived the riot, their families, and the families of guards killed at Attica. She said she spoke to Fink multiple times about the inmate families and realized the similarities with all who suffered losses at Attica. Fink would tell her about slain prisoners, and the parents or siblings or children they left behind, Miller said.

“It was like a direct reflection of our families, but just the other side,” she said.

Michael Smith, a corrections officer who was taken hostage by the prisoners and shot multiple times in the Sept. 13, 1971, retaking, befriended Fink in the years after the riot. In court, he testified on behalf of the inmates, highlighting the conditions that helped spark the uprising and telling how he, at the behest of the prisoners, had approached prison officials earlier in 1971 about the need to address those very conditions.

“I recognized her as an intelligent person that was really devoted and sincere about helping a segment of humanity that there’s not much help out there for,” Smith said.

“As time’s gone by I’ve been really impressed that she never lost the drive and she never gave up and she pursued justice for her entire life.”

Fink is survived by a brother and his family, according to Kunstler.

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