Wednesday, April 04, 2012

PA Supreme Court Denies Mumia Abu-Jamal Petition

On Monday, March 26, 2012 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected Mumia Abu-Jamal's appeal of his capital murder conviction.  With a one-page Order, the Supreme Court agreed with a lower court decision denying, without a hearing, Mr. Abu-Jamal's claim that a 2009  report by the National Academy of Science -- exposing serious flaws in forensic evidence routinely introduced in criminal trials -- demonstrated that the forensic evidence relied upon by the Philadelphia County District Attorney's Office in its 1982 prosecution of Mr. Abu-Jamal was unreliable.  Because the forensic evidence that was presented at Mumia's trial was untrustworthy and because reliable and potentially exculpatory forensic evidence was never secured or presented by the state, the accuracy of the jury's first degree murder conviction is seriously undermined.

Although this decision concludes all of Mr. Abu-Jamal's pending appeals, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. and Prof. Judy Ritter are actively researching and investigating all options for future legal challenges to Mr. Abu-Jamal's conviction.

NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.
Christina Swarns
Director, Criminal Justice Project

2 comments:

Unknown said...

We shall overcome!


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Unknown said...

Thanks for the update. Racism is as alive today in America as it was in the 1800's.

In seeking permanent solutions to all these, we strongly recommend that we begin with good books such as Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow" We strongly urge all those interested in this struggle to listen to this talk by Michelle Alexander and pay particular attention to the recommendations in the end. This is about the prisons, but the struggle is the same. And the recommendations she gives are as valid for this struggle as much as any other struggle involving African-Americans in the US.

For Life, the Environment, and Social Justice!

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Pan-Africanist International - a grammar of Pan-Africanism and its manners of articulation.

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