Sheila Abdus-Salaam (née Turner; March 14, 1952 – April 12, 2017)[1] was an American lawyer and judge.

[4] Turner obtained a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1974 and graduated from Columbia Law School in 1977.

[8][9] Before joining the bench, Abdus-Salaam worked as a staff attorney for Brooklyn Legal Services and served in the New York State Department of Law as an assistant attorney general in the civil rights and real estate financing bureaus.

[9] In 2009, she was designated as a justice of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, First Judicial Department by Governor David Paterson.

Following Abdus-Salaam's death, Court of Appeals spokesperson Gary Spencer stated that she had never converted to Islam, but had merely retained the last name of her first husband.

Her fully clothed body was found floating in the Hudson River hours after she was reported missing from her home in Harlem.

[20][21] On April 13, police stated that the death of Abdus-Salaam appeared to be a suicide, and added that she had been struggling with depression.

[23] An autopsy, while reaching no conclusion about the cause of Abdus-Salaam's death, found bruises on her neck and water in her lungs; this data indicated that she had likely been alive when she entered the river.