Dissecting May 13, 1985, Mumia Abu-Jamal’s May 17 oral arguments, the FOP, racism, police brutality, and mainstream media bias
"I think the level of fanaticism with Mumia’s case is a reaction to the level of support that he has received internationally. Further, I think the intense reactions revolve around race, specifically racism…plus Abu-Jamal’s identification with the Black Panther Party and MOVE. 'Law & Order' types hate the Black Panthers. And Philly police hate MOVE. Focusing anger on Abu-Jamal gives police a counter to criticism directed against them for persistent police brutality."
---Linn Washington, Jr.
The full text transcript and audio of the interview are available at Hans Bennett's blog, Insubordination
Interview by Hans Bennett
“Attention, MOVE: This Is America!” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sambor declared through a loudspeaker 22 years ago, minutes before the May 13, 1985 police assault on the revolutionary MOVE organization’s home. This assault killed 5 children and 6 adults, including MOVE founder John Africa. After police shot over 10,000 rounds of bullets into their West Philadelphia home, a State Police helicopter dropped a C-4 bomb, illegally supplied by the FBI, on MOVE’s roof. The bomb started a fire that eventually destroyed 60 homes: the entire block of a middle-class black neighborhood. Carrying the young Birdie Africa, the only other survivor, Ramona Africa dodged gunfire and escaped from the fire with permanent burn scars.
The 1985 police bombing was the culmination of many years of political repression by Philadelphia authorities. At the time of the 1985 confrontation, MOVE was working to publicize the imprisonment of the “MOVE 9”: Janine, Debbie, Janet, Merle, Delbert, Mike, Phil, Eddie, and Chuck Africa. These nine MOVE members were jointly sentenced in the 1978 killing of Officer James Ramp after a year-long police stakeout of MOVE’s Powelton Village home. Their parole hearings come up in August, 2008.
In this interview, veteran black journalist Linn Washington, Jr. talks about reporting on the city of Philadelphia’s confrontations with MOVE, mostly focusing on the August 8, 1978 standoff, and the subsequent evidence used to convict the MOVE 9 prisoners. Washington passionately critiques the mainstream Philadelphia media’s bias against MOVE: “when you look at the media coverage of MOVE, everything that was perceived as MOVE doing something wrong, was publicized. In contrast, the attacks on MOVE, the injustices, and the deprivations that they endured never found any coverage in the mainstream media.”
On May 17, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in the case of Linn Washington’s former colleague, black death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. Widely considered to be a political prisoner, Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in a 1982 trial that Amnesty International has declared a "violation of minimum international standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death penalty."
Abu-Jamal is a longtime supporter of the MOVE organization, dating back to his days as a Philadelphia journalist in the 1970s. Since his imprisonment, MOVE has spearheaded the international support network for Abu-Jamal that is now organizing for a new trial.
Concerning the injustice in Abu-Jamal’s case, Washington is just as passionate in calling for a new trial, and in this interview, he documents the bias of the Philadelphia media: “It’s not for the press to take a position one way or the other, but it is the responsibility of the press to scrutinize all sides with the same rigor. One side (the Danny Faulkner side) can say anything they want, even if it makes no sense at all, yet it gets credibility and traction in the media. On the other side, Abu-Jamal’s side can say anything they want, and irrespective of the substance and factual accuracy, and they get no coverage at all.”
Washington concludes: “Where’s the journalistic fairness, balance, and accuracy? These are the three things that are supposed to be fundamental to journalism. Are they happening in this case? No, they are not.”
Linn Washington, Jr. is currently a columnist for the Philadelphia Tribune newspaper and a freelance journalist for publications nationwide. He writes extensively on matters involving the criminal justice system and racism. An Assistant Professor in the Journalism Department at Temple University in Philadelphia, he holds a Master Degree from the Yale Law School and a B.S. in Communications from Temple University.
This interview was conducted on May 8, 2007.
Hans Bennett: You recently traveled to France with recently exonerated death-row prisoner Harold Wilson and others?
Linn Washington, Jr.: I was over there for the one year anniversary of the naming of a street for Mumia, Rue Mumia Abu-Jamal, in St. Denis, just outside of Paris.
HB: How did that go?
LW: First, it was fascinating to me to actually see the street, considering the fact that the Philadelphia City Council, Pennsylvania State Senate, and US Congress were so outraged. This is the same US Congress that does nothing about global warming, health care for people without insurance, the Iraq war, etc., but it could take the time to order a town 3500 miles away to take a name off a street.
The incredible thing is that this street is about 150 paces long and sits between two one-way streets in a secluded section of St. Denis. This is not a place that The Tour de France or any tour buses will be going through because the streets are so small that you could not get a tour bus to the area. For this to cause so much consternation I think takes absurd into the level of obscene. The significance of the street for people in St. Denis is not its size but the symbolism of it standing for the notions of equal justice and a fair trial as represented in Abu-Jamal's struggle. So that’s my personal reaction.
In terms of the overall visit, there was a brief ceremony with 20-30 people that included the current Mayor of St. Denis and the previous Mayor who is now the equivalent of a congressman of that whole area, also one of the deputy Mayors, in a little park about a block away from the street. They were reaffirming why they had dedicated the street, and explained that they feel Mumia has not received a fair trial and they are calling on the United States to live up to the constitutional mandate that everyone receive a fair trial.
The US contingent included Suzanne Ross from the NYC Free Mumia Coalition, and Sundiata Sadiq, who is the President of the Ossining, NY chapter of the NAACP. Sadiq was the one that spearheaded the efforts that led to the national NAACP adopting a resolution calling on all of its chapters around the country to support Mumia getting a new trial. Curiously, for a civil rights organization that prides itself on being progressive, the President of the NY state chapter, Hazel Dukes, filed some very specious reason to suspend the Ossining chapter, which again takes absurdity into obscene dimensions.
HB: How do you explain such an intense reaction here at home?
LW: It typifies US arrogance where we can tell everyone what to do but we don’t actually practice what we preach. We are all over the world “installing democracy” literally at the barrel of a gun, or at the tip of a cruise missile, depending on which goes in first, yet we do not practice democracy here at home.
A couple examples:
There are strong reactions to this street and very little concern about what the case represents. There are fundamental flaws in our criminal justice system. Not only from the perspective of the death penalty, but all the way down to minor crimes like “breaking and entering,” where justice is not fair. Justice in America is a matter of how much money you have, where there is not “equal justice under the law” (which is THE PHRASE chiseled in stone at the entrance to the Supreme Court in Washington).
We don’t have equal justice under the law. There are some people who commit crimes and get virtually no criminal penalties, if they face any at all. Meanwhile, others get severe penalties for the same crimes committed under similar circumstances.
Let me give you an example close to home.
May 13, 1985, what happened? Police conducted a raid in the 6200 block of Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia. Essentially to fulfill misdemeanor warrants, the Police Commissioner authorized the dropping of a bomb that caused a fire, and the Ppolice Commissioner gave the unconscionable order to let the fire burn. MOVE members attempted to exit the building with temperatures as high as 2000 degrees, according to subsequent investigations, but were shot at and forced back inside. In the end, 11 people in the house were incinerated, including 5 children. 61 homes were completely destroyed and 250 people were homeless.
Not a single police officer or city official even faced any kind of criminal prosecution. Note that this is totally separate from whether they should have been convicted of crimes committed that day. Given the fact that there were a series of crimes committed, they should have at least faced their day in court. That is equal justice where no one is above the law. The District Attorney, Ed Rendell (now Governor) initially refused to do a Grand Jury investigation. That was a dereliction of duty. The subsequent DA, Ron Castille, who now sits on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, did do an investigation and just white-washed it. He claimed nobody that day had criminal intent that day, which is a very specious argument.
However, there are crimes that could have been brought against the Police and Fire Commissioners which were not “intent based” crimes. Maybe murder and arson are intent based, but “risking catastrophe” and “reckless endangerment” are based on what happened as a result of the actions.
This grand jury, under the control of the DA’s office issued a report written by the DA’s office stating that charges won’t even be brought against police officers, who had been caught lying to the grand jury. Lying to a grand jury is a crime called perjury, and perjury is a crime all day and every day. The Grand Jury Report stated it would be unfair to bring perjury charges against low-ranking police officers, when, in fact, top city officials were at least morally responsible for what had happened on Osage Ave. on May 13th.
Well a crime is a crime, and equal justice would mean that you bring charges against all who committed crimes…particularly since most major investigations begin with charges against lowly folks who provide evidence on higher ups. So, on many levels, America doesn’t practice what it preaches. So that is under girding the reaction to Rue Mumia.
Let me give you another example.
In the early 90’s in New York City an Irish Republican Army operative, named Joe Doherty, was being held at a jail in NYC. He had been convicted in Northern Ireland of murdering a British Special Forces officer during one of the IRA’s clashes with the British. Set aside for the moment the propriety of what was going on there, and whether the IRA were actually terrorists or were fighting for their homeland. The fact of the matter is that Britain is a major US ally and Dogherty had been convicted of murdering a British military officer. He escapes from Northern Ireland and comes to the US as a fugitive, hides out a couple years and is eventually arrested, and is being held in a federal detention facility. Efforts by the US government to deport him and send him back, were countered by officials in NYC and about 100 members of Congress.
They’re standing up for this convicted murderer on the claim that he did not receive a fair trial in Northern Ireland. In 1990, as a part of this effort to Free Joe Doherty, his supporters authorized the renaming of the street in front of the federal prison in Manhattan, and renamed it to Joe Doherty Corner.
Here you have officials rename a street for a convicted murderer, but then people are outraged when France does the same thing for an alleged cop-killer on the same basis, that they don’t feel that Abu-Jamal received a fair trial. Hypocrisy, contradictions, double-standards of justice, you choose the name.
HB: What do you think it is about Mumia’s case in particular that causes such a fanatical reaction?
LW: I think the level of fanaticism with Mumia’s case is a reaction to the level of support that he has received internationally. Further, I think the intense reactions revolve around race, specifically racism…plus Abu-Jamal’s identification with the Black Panther Party and MOVE. “Law & Order” types hate the Black Panthers. And Philly police hate MOVE. Focusing anger on Abu-Jamal gives police a counter to criticism directed against them for persistent police brutality.
The police are taking it on the chin all the time for continuing brutality, and this is the case that they have decided to dig in on. You get all this police rage against Abu-Jamal despite the fact that he’s not the only person that allegedly shot and killed a police officer in US history. There were at least three police officers shot and killed in Philadelphia in 1981, do you know about that?
HB: Yes, you’ve been researching that, and the two others in Philadelphia were black police officers?
LW: Yes.
HB: Do you feel that the Fraternal Order of Police’s behavior is racially motivated?
LW: Yes, and it has always been racially motivated. This is one of the most outrageous aspects of it, because that organization is racist. I became a full time reporter in Philadelphia in October of 1975. One of the first big stories that I covered was a protest in front of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) headquarters, by members of the black police officer organization, The Guardian Civic League. Some of the people who participated in that demonstration are now State Rep Harold James, who was a police officer at the time, and also the current Sheriff of the City of Philadelphia, John Greene.
Why were these black police officers out in front of the FOP headquarters?
Because there is a bar in the basement of the FOP building, and black police officers (including ones there with their wives) would receive racist treatment when they went to the bar at their union headquarters and they were protesting against that. That type of racism didn’t end in the 1970s. Do a lot of officers find themselves treated badly on a bureaucratic level within the PPD? Yes, but who does the FOP stand up for?
Invariably, it’s white police officers.
One example, a couple years ago, the FOP made some public statements about the unfairness of the police departments in terms of their refusal to allow a police officer, I think his name is Flemming, to move up to become a detective. Flemming has cost the City of Philadelphia over one million dollars in legal settlements because of police brutality. Just a year or so before this controversy about his being promoted to detective, the City had to pay out $750,000 because Flemming beat up a man at the airport without provocation. So here’s the FOP standing up for a chronically brutal cop, instead of saying, “No, this isn’t the type of behavior that we as an organization want to endorse.”
But, it gets worse.
This officer Flemming also beat up a former police officer in 1995, an ex-cop named Gary Wakshul, days before that officer became a witness for the prosecution during the appeals hearing for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Flemming and one of his partners on the police force beat the stuffings out of Gary Wakshul in the hallway of Philadelphia’s Criminal Justice Center, beating him so bad that he sustained multiple injuries. Wakshul subsequently sued the City for the beating and got $60,000 for it.
As you know, Wakshul was a police officer involved in the Mumia Abu-Jamal case. He was the one who brought Abu-Jamal from the scene to the hospital on the morning of Dec. 9, 1981 and Wakshul stayed with him until he was brought in for surgery. Initially, Wakshul filed an official report stating that “the negro male made no comment.” Two months later, he came out and said that he had heard Abu-Jamal confess. Then, when the police asked him about the contradiction between his official report and the later confession claim, Wakshul came up with the absurd response that he “didn’t know the confession had any importance until today.”
Now, why was Wakshul working for the court system in 1995?
Because, in 1984 Wakshul almost beat a man to death in a hospital emergency room, and he was fired. When he was put on trial for this, the judge said, “Well, I think Wakshul’s a good guy and since this happened in the heat of battle,” he chose to acquit him of this unjustified beating. Now, the man he almost killed was in handcuffs, so there wasn’t any battle. And then, guess what? The FOP tried to get Wakshul’s job back.
I will raise the question: what type of law enforcement does the FOP represent? Good lawful law enforcement, or does it support unlawful acts of brutality, many of which are tinged, if not saturated, with racism?
HB: Going back to the Wakshul beating, what do you think was going on there just days before his testimony at Mumia’s PCRA hearing?
LW: The short answer is that I don’t know.
There’s been speculation that the beating was meant to send a message to Wakshul, not to deviate from his testimony that Abu-Jamal actually confessed.
Given all the solid and verifiable facts in Abu-Jamal’s case, I feel that it’s counter-productive and detrimental to engage in a lot of speculation. The factual record is this: Wakshul was beaten up and came to court and gave absurd testimony. The importance is this: Judge Sabo’s 153 page opinion rejected all of Abu-Jamal’s appeal items including claims that Wakshul lied. Incredibly Sabo’s opinion was issued just three days after the hearing, and incredibly Sabo’s opinion was a verbatim copy of the DA’s finding of facts that had been submitted (including grammatical and factual errors).
Sabo ruled that there was no such thing as police brutality in Philadelphia, and that in making that claim, Abu-Jamal was making one more absurd claim to deflect his guilt. Here we have a former police officer who testified for the prosecution during the hearing, who was a victim of police brutality within days of the hearing. That just is yet another
example of the manifest unfairness and factual distortion in Sabo’s ruling and his entire presence throughout the case.
HB: Sabo’s fairness in the PCRA hearings is one of the issues being considered on May 17 by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Any thoughts on next week’s oral arguments?
Clearly Mumia deserves a new trial and I think it is bogus for people to argue that he doesn’t deserve a fair trial because he disrupted his original trial. If you look, his disruptions occurred after it was clear that Sabo in collusion with Prosecutor McGill was intent on violating all of his rights, not just the right to self-representation.
They also hamstrung his attorney by not providing adequate resources, and they tried to sabotage his efforts at every turn. That is when Abu-Jamal started “acting out.” Did he take the right tact in doing that? It’s arguable, but the fact is that everyone is entitled to a fair trial.
In 1959, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a ruling in a murder case from Philadelphia where a guy pled guilty to the murder, and the judge and prosecutor tried to cut corners. The court said that even with evidence of guilt piled as high as Mount Everest, everybody is entitled to a fair trial.
Now, with the hearing coming up on May 17, I think it’s interesting to note that there are a couple of items that this court wanted to hear in oral arguments that the federal District Court Judge had not certified for appeal. One of the items is the bias of Sabo in the 1995 hearing.
Here’s something interesting.
Sabo’s bias has always been obvious and objectionable to anyone with their eyes open, but in 1995, Sabo was so bad that both the Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer harshly criticized his behavior. The New York Times criticized Sabo’s behavior and was joined by other national publications like the Christian Science Monitor and also an article came out in the American Lawyer, where a lawyer/journalist named Stuart Taylor observed the entire proceedings and concluded that Sabo was thoroughly biased and also concluded that he thought Abu-Jamal did it, but did not receive a fair trial.
There is this incredible record of Sabo’s biases, and the importance of the criticism from the Philly media about Sabo’s bias is that normally these people are rabidly anti-Abu-Jamal and they felt that because of Sabo’s continuing presence on this case and his obvious and detestable bias, that it would undermine any credibility of a fair trial. By undermining that, it would give further credence to criticism that Abu-Jamal did not receive a fair trial.
They were saying, “Take this clown off the case so you don’t give more ammunition to the Mumidiots.” So when it got to the State Supreme Court and when that Court issued their rejection of Abu-Jamal’s appeal in Oct. 1998, there was a paragraph in there talking about Sabo’s bias, and it said the opinions of a handful of journalists “do not convince us” that Sabo was biased. The court said yes, he was intemperate, and made remarks he shouldn’t have, etc., but the Court declared that Sabo wasn’t biased.”
The law and the logic that has been used consistently by the Pa Supreme Court in their rulings on this case would make a Philly pretzel look straight. The Court has bent and broken law and legal precedents in their rulings on the Abu-Jamal case.
HB: Given all of this that you lay out, how is it today that the media is still so biased and does not report the key facts that expose all this injustice?
LW: Because the media of today is like the mainstream white media has always been in this country. They accept a basic narrative and do not deviate from that.
You have to understand that in 1970, a group published a report on the Philly media and it said they reflexively take the side of the police and the prosecutors anytime there is an allegation of police brutality. This is 1970. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that Philadelphia’s media started covering police brutality. The local white media started reporting on brutality after the Inquirer started reporting on it. The Inquirer subsequently won a Pulitzer Prize for that coverage. But before that, they ignored it.
Now I’m not just telling you that from scholarly research and examination. I’m telling you what I know from experience.
From 1975 on, I worked as a reporter covering police brutality. From 1975-78 when I worked for the Philadelphia Tribune (a black newspaper), almost every other day people would come into our office beaten and bloody. The blood was dried on their faces and clothes.
The police refused to allow these brutality victims to file brutality complaints. They would go to the Inquirer in an attempt to talk to a reporter, but they couldn’t get through the door. The Daily News was the same way. Then, they’d go across town to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, and still couldn’t get through the door. Finally they’d come to the Philadelphia Tribune and they would get through the door. So, I know from personal experience that the mainstream Philadelphia media refused to cover police brutality and really many other issues involving race. They’ll only write about it superficially.
Listen. Why is it that the media in Philadelphia can occasionally cover issues involving police brutality, but never say that there is a pattern and practice of it? Why do they treat these incidents of police brutality as “isolated incidents” instead of examples of an endemic problem?
The Inquirer also won a Pulitzer Prize writing a story about a man who had been falsely convicted of murder, and their coverage got him out of jail and others. So all these examples they’ve written about people being falsely incarcerated, mistreated by police and prosecutors—which shows a pattern—why is it, then, that they stop and say “Yes, all these improprieties have happened, but it doesn’t have any effect at all on the Mumia Abu-Jamal case.”
HB: You and Mumia both covered the MOVE 9 trial. Looking back at it, what
things about the trial remain most vivid in your mind?
LW: To clarify, I covered the preliminary aspects of the MOVE 9 trial, but I did not cover the trial itself. I covered a few parts of the trial when MOVE was actually representing itself. That right of self-representation was revoked, and I think correctly because MOVE was not really trying to represent themselves, but rather to “put the system on trial.” That may be okay, but when your body is in danger of going to jail for a long time, I think you should direct your attention to the evidence (or lack thereof ) and try to get yourself off.
One of my most vivid memories was of MOVE’s house being destroyed around 1:30 that afternoon, just hours after MOVE’s arrest. The shoot out had stopped around 10:30, and the last MOVE person was out around 11:00.
The police had dumped 250,000 gallons of water into the basement. I know this because I was hiding behind the pumping truck that they used for the water cannon when the shooting started. I was talking to the guy as he was pumping the water in. So I know how much water went into that basement. It was a darkened basement filled with water and tear gas, and you can not adequately do an investigation of that within a few hours. Yet police claimed they conducted a thorough investigation and then they tore the compound down.
So, the destruction of evidence alone raises serious questions about the propriety of the evidence used for the charges against them.
HB: Why do you think they destroyed it?
LW: I think they tore down the house in part because they wanted to destroy evidence. Mayor Frank “the racist” Rizzo’s administration and Police Commissioner O’Neill claimed they tore it down because they didn’t want it to become a shrine for MOVE and they felt that they could not maintain security around the house to prevent MOVE people from occupying it again.
The patent absurdity of that is shown by this: From the beginning of March to around the middle of April, 1978, the police enacted a starvation blockade around the house where they sealed off a whole section of Powelton Village, and did not let anyone in or out. People that lived there had to have special passes like in South Africa to get in and out of their homes. So the notion that police couldn’t adequately secure the house is absolutely absurd.
One point of view is that the destruction of evidence destroyed any semblance of a fair trial.
You asked about “vivid memories,” and I remember covering one of the early preliminary hearings. It was held in prison, where they brought in a mini-courtroom and a presiding judge (who was later fired for corruption). I remember vividly when the medical examiner came in and gave his testimony based on the autopsy report related to James Ramp, the officer who was killed.
The medical examiner testified to one thing, in terms of how the bullet entered the body and such. Then, when the prosecutor was getting ready to introduce the medical examiner’s report as evidence, he looked at the first couple paragraphs, and said “Oh, your honor, the medical report here does not conform with the testimony you just heard, let me correct it right here.” This dude pulled out a pencil and changed the damn report right in the courtroom, and then introduced it as evidence. Unbelievably, the judge accepted it!
Once again, this was a very fundamental and egregious violation of procedures. I left the courtroom and called my boss at the Philadelphia Journal, where I was working at the time. I was told, “Yeah, okay, well, we’ll talk about it when you get back.” I was also covering it for the United Press International (UPI) news service, so I called them up, but they told me they weren’t interested.
I said, “Wait a minute. This whole confrontation between the city of Philadelphia and MOVE, starting from 1972, has been about double-standards of justice and violations of
rules and procedures. Here you have a clear example of one, and it’s not newsworthy?” UPI answered: “No. It’s not newsworthy, Linn. If you find something else out, give me a call back.”
HB: So, did anybody use your story?
LW: No!
Nobody used it because they didn’t think it was important. This is a separate argument from whether MOVE is right or wrong, but when you look at the media coverage of MOVE, everything that was perceived as MOVE doing something wrong, was publicized. In contrast, the attacks on MOVE, the injustices, and the deprivations that they endured never found any coverage in the mainstream media. I know it was covered in the Tribune because I was covering for them. It was also on black radio stations because there were black reporters that believed that you should be fair and balanced, and we were criticized for it, Mumia being one of them. This was just because we felt that there were two sides to the story. We weren’t taking MOVE’s side, but we felt they had a legitimate side that needed to be accurately presented.
If they’re getting beaten up, the women getting kicked in the vagina and having miscarried babies, that should be a news story.
February of 1978, there were MOVE members being held in the Philadelphia prisons. The guards jumped on these guys and beat them horribly and then turned around and charged them with assault on the prison guards.
Now, MOVE would normally say, “No, we don’t participate in any kind of cooperation with the system, because we know the system is corrupt.” But, in this particular instance, they said “We’ll cooperate just to show that even if we do cooperate, it won’t mean anything.” So they cooperated with the DA’s office (then headed by Ed Rendell), and after a lengthy investigation, the DA concluded that the victims had indeed been MOVE, who had been attacked by the guards.
So, that meant that the prison guards should have been charged with assault and other crimes. However, Rendell’s office concluded that the appropriate action was not to take any action against the guards, but rather to simply drop the false charges against the MOVE members.
Now, filing a false police report is a crime, as well as lying about something in the report. There are many crimes short of assault (that had been proven in the investigation) that could have been brought against them, but they didn’t do anything.
And, you know what? Little of this that I just told you about that confrontation at the prison ever got into the news media.
HB: In the recent documentary on MOVE, you cite your sources within the police
department who told you that the police know Ramp was killed by police gunfire. Can you say anything more about this?
LW: I will confirm that I was told that by my sources in the police department. However, I have never identified the sources to MOVE, and I will never identify them to anyone else.
But I will tell you this.
Officer Ramp was allegedly shot and killed by a bullet that came from a weapon that fired a .223 caliber round. .223 is the same caliber used in an M-16. Inside MOVE’s house, police claimed that they found four carbines called Mini-14’s, made by Ruger and they fired this .223 round.
The day immediately after the shootout, police were claiming that not a single officer out there that day carried that particular type of weapon. About three weeks later, during the pre-trial proceedings, the police department began to acknowledge the fact that there were police officers who had the Mini-14s firing the .223 rounds. They first said that they had just been out there, but not near the scene. Then, subsequent reports put the officers with those guns closer to the scene, however the official version was “Yes, they were part of the assault, but no, they never fired their weapon.”
So, if in fact, there were no improprieties, why the constantly changing stories and why the heavy-handed cover-up?
There’s another thing, and this is where the destruction of the property precluded a thorough examination, as well as how the trial was handled by MOVE and when the court-appointed attorneys came in, it really became a circus.
But let’s think about this for a minute. You don’t have to be a ballistician to figure this one out. It’s just common sense. You’ve got four male MOVE members in the basement allegedly armed, according to police testimony. A basement by its very nature means it’s below ground level. They’re allegedly firing out of windows, and let’s understand, this was not like The Alamo where people are close up at the window and shooting out. They’re away from the windows, hiding behind pillars in the basement. So, anything they’re shooting out of the windows has to be at an upward trajectory. They would have to shoot up to get out the window.
Ramp was directly across the street at ground level. So how could something hit him in what was said to be a downward type angle when MOVE members were firing upward from that basement?
Okay, maybe the bullet could have ricocheted a little bit. The apartment building across the street from the old MOVE compound is a brick building. However, their compound was made of wood, so the idea that the bullet ricocheted off the brick, back towards MOVE’s house, and then back again to hit Ramp somewhere near ground level, is highly problematic.
Furthermore, the .223 bullet is actually a very small, light weight bullet. Since it’s a very light bullet it will likely break up bouncing back and forth off a brick wall. It’s not going to maintain its integrity and be able to ricochet back and forth a couple times. Unless this was a bullet like the one that Arlen Specter, when he worked for the Warren Commission, said killed Kennedy. You know, one able to change directions in the air a couple times? It’s questionable to unlikely that the bullet that killed Ramp came from that basement.
But, it’s hard for anyone to ever know, because police destroyed evidence. Earlier that year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that it’s illegal for authorities to destroy a crime scene before the defense has a chance to examine it.
Furthermore, a couple days before the Aug. 8, raid, a Philadelphia judge signed an order barring the city from destroying the MOVE house. Yet, the city did it in violation of this order.
And guess what? They were never called to account for violating that court order. There are copies of the court order too, so they can’t say that it does not exist. That’s bullshit.
HB: Do you think the MOVE 9 should be granted parole in 2008?
LW: Parole is supposedly based on adjustment to prison. From what I understand, there have been few infractions, if any at all. So, the short answer is yes.
They’ve served 30 years in jail for a third-degree murder conviction. The average sentence for third-degree murder is 10-15 years, so they’ve already served twice that. So, yes, they should be released.
Will that happen? I don’t think so.
The Parole Board has a couple of arguably illegal standards in place. One of them says you have to accept responsibility for your crime. But, if you’ve maintained your innocence the whole time you’re in there, how can you say “Okay, I did it?”
This next standard is clearly illegal. It will demand that for MOVE members to be released without serving their full sentence, they will have to renounce membership in MOVE. This is something that would easily happen in China, North Korea, or Russia, saying “You have to denounce these un-communist feelings that you have.” But in America, we’re not supposed to do that. But we do that in Pennsylvania with MOVE members, and nobody says that it’s a problem.
Once again, this is another example of what I was saying at the beginning of our conversation, that there is a big gap between what America says it is and what it actually does.
HB: Anything else on your mind?
LW: Looking at Abu-Jamal’s appeal with the Third Circuit, I hope that the court follows its own legal precedent in a case involving Abu-Jamal. The legal precedent is this: there is a rule that courts are supposed to follow previous rulings because this keeps some stability in the law, so a Judge doesn’t wake up one morning with a bad hair day and change everything, and then the next day change it back. Had the Pa Supreme Court followed its own previous rulings, Abu-Jamal would have had a new trial and/or been released over a decade ago.
The Third Circuit has an opportunity to show whether the rule of law actually means something. The Third Circuit has granted hearings that have led to new trials to individuals on the issue of jury discrimination. So, if they follow their own precedent, then Abu-Jamal will receive a new hearing, if not a new trial.
Earlier on, you mentioned a guy named Harold Wilson. One of the legal victories that eventually led to his release was the a claim of jury discrimination and in this case it was a local Philadelphia judge who called for a new trial and the Philadelphia DA didn’t even oppose it.
HB: We have to hope, and of course keep raising awareness and applying pressure.
LW: But for the international movement supporting him, Abu-Jamal would have been executed by now. Let’s look at 1995. Pa prison authorities were illegally opening Abu-Jamal’s mail as a result of the FOP complaints about him writing articles and a book while in prison. So, the Pa prisons, who had previously allowed prisoners to work with authors to publish accounts of their crimes, and actually helped facilitate interviews for them, are now cracking down on Abu-Jamal.
It was bad enough that they were opening his mail, and not just mail from family and friends, but mail from his lawyer, which is fundamentally illegal. They were copying his stuff and sending copies to the Governor’s office. So, when Gov. Ridge signed the death warrant on Mumia in June of 1995, he was doing it with the full knowledge that Mumia’s attorney’s were preparing to formally file an appeal.
What Ridge did was fundamentally illegal. But he later became the first Homeland Security Czar. So what does that say about America’s adherence to law?
These are findings of fact from a lawsuit that was filed by Mumia, and these findings of fact are contained in a ruling favoring Abu-Jamal that was issued by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. So, these are rulings from federal judges in the late 1990s.
HB: It at least seems like the DA is afraid of the Third Circuit, with their recent request for the court to recuse itself from Abu-Jamal’s case, which the court denied.
LW: That was so patently absurd. They initially started that with a letter, saying “Listen, we think all you guys should step aside.” Abu-Jamal’s attorney, Robert R. Bryan wrote a letter in response, which cited numerous rulings and precedents. The Third Circuit then told the DA that if they wanted to challenge it, they’d have to file a formal legal brief. The DA filed the formal brief, but it still contained all of the factual inaccuracies and inappropriate law that they had alleged in the letter brief. The court threw it out.
Let me tell you something that is of relevance. If they really cared about a fair trial, why did the DA’s office not oppose Sabo sitting on the 1995 appeals, when one of the appeal items was his bias in 1982. If the judge was biased in 1982, would you not think that he’d be biased in 1995? The DA fought that and said that they wanted Sabo on the case.
When the PA Supreme Court was deciding on the appeal that came out of the 95 hearing, the defense said, “Listen, we seek the recusal of one member of the Pa Supreme Court: Justice Ron Castille, who had been a Philadelphia DA.” They wanted his recusal on grounds of the Judicial Code of Conduct, section 3D, it says that any judge who was a lawyer for a governmental agency, and through that position, has knowledge of the facts of the case in front of him, must recuse himself. So, here we have Castille, who was DA of Philadelphia, who signed papers to oppose Abu-Jamal’s appeals, and is now sitting on the deliberation. That is a violation of ethics and the DA office didn’t care about that at all.
So, when the Pa Supreme Court issued its second rejection of Abu-Jamal’s appeals, Castille wrote a second opinion explaining why he had refused to recuse himself. In there he says (paraphrased), “Abu-Jamal’s attorney’s are jumping all over me because I took campaign funds from the Fop because the FOP worked on my campaign to become a Supreme Court Justice, and a few years ago the FOP named me as their ‘Man of the Year,’ well that’s unfair to focus on me, because four other members of this court received campaign financing and campaign support from the FOP.”
So we have five members of a seven member court, and all were saying that it did not show any kind of impropriety. On issues of recusal of judges, its not just impropriety, but it is the appearance of impropriety. If you have five members of a seven member court receiving money and support from the prime organization seeking the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, does that not raise the issue of appearance of impropriety?
HB: What other examples are there of media bias?
LW: In this Mumia affair there have been many allegations of his misconduct, including allegations of him confessing. In 1995, there was an article in the Washington Post, which featured an interview with Maureen Faulkner, and it was talking about how she was outraged that Abu-Jamal had been able to publish a book. The article started with an anecdote from her where she claimed that in court, during the trial, when her husband’s bloody shirt was displayed, Mumia turned around, looked at her, pulled his dreadlocks back, and smiled at her.
However, the official court transcript documented that Mumia was not even in the courtroom on the day that Mrs. Faulkner claimed this smiling incident took place. So, I wrote a column questioning this account and others. Maureen Faulkner wrote me a three page, single-spaced letter calling me everything but a child of God.
I wrote her back and said, “Ms. Faulkner, listen, if there are any ambiguities in this matter, it’s because of you and what you said.” So she then claimed that the Washington Post reporter had gotten the wrong date. She then cited an Inquirer article that says she left the courtroom after the shirt was displayed. However, when I checked it, the article did not say anything about Mumia turning around and smiling at her.
When you look at the rest of the articles from the trial, nowhere does Ms. Faulkner say that she had to leave the courtroom because Mumia smiled at her.
Interestingly, that article Mrs. Faulkner cited did quote the trial prosecutor telling the jury that his Office had made no deals with key prosecution witness Cynthia White. Of course, after the trial, the DA drop a lot of criminal cases filed against White. If the deal didn’t exist on that date, it happened soon after. The jury never knew White was getting special deals from the DA – which is another element undermining a fair trial.
This smiling incident and other incidents are things where I fault reporters. The problem with much of the media is that due to turnover, there is not much institutional memory, and not enough people who have the expertise to write intelligently about such things. Apparently, that Washington Post writer must have never covered a trial, because otherwise she’d have known that at a high profile trial such as this, there are many people and 80 percent of those people are looking at every twitch, movement, smile, or frown from the defendant. A question should have been asked as to who else saw this and why it wasn’t reported. But that article didn’t contain that type of question.
No one saw this allegedly objectionable action.
That seems so consistent in a parallel to the alleged confession. No one heard this confession, except for Gary Bell (who was Faulkner’s partner) and he didn’t remember it until over two months later. Gary Wakshul initially reported that the “negro male made no comment,” but after a police brutality complaint by Abu-Jamal, he suddenly remembers the confession. Wakshul and Bell allege that there were over a dozen officers in the area who also heard the confession, and in 25 years not a single one came forward.
In 1995, the defense tried to get Judge Sabo to issue subpoenas to bring them in and ask them what they heard, and why they didn’t report it. Sabo refused. He said “These are officers. They’re honorable people, so I’m sure if you ask them, they’ll come in.” They were asked and didn’t come in. Then, in his opinion, Sabo wrote that there was no contrary evidence that the confession didn’t take place, because all the people who testified in court said there was a confession. By his rulings, Sabo made certain that officers would not come in and testify.
The first person to allegedly report the confession was hospital security guard Priscilla Durham. Interestingly, she claims to hear a confession to a murder, but does she talk to a detective, uniformed officers, or police internal affairs?
No.
She claims that she went to her supervisor and allegedly writes this down on a hand-written report. Did her supervisor give this report to the police? No. So what does that say about the validity of the confession?
HB: Did you follow how the week of December 9, two more accounts came out from William Colarulo (now a Chief Inspector for the Philadelphia police) and Kathleen Gerrow (now an executive producer at NBC 10)?
LW: Hans, let me tell you something. These two accounts sound suspicious like dog dirt…dropping on a sidewalk.
Let’s think logically here. William Colarulo was the head of the police department’s press office for over two years, and he never once said anything about this? That’s ridiculous!
But when you read his news media statements about this confession, what he said about what Abu-Jamal was wearing is totally different from what Wakshul said he was wearing, when Wakshul voluntarily went to police on Dec. 16, 1981 and volunteered more information where he was able to remember the type of clothing, the color, and the texture. The last question the police asked Wakshul on 12/16/81 was, “Is there anything else that you would like to add?” He said no. There was nothing about a confession. It is absurd.
Furthermore, what Colarulo said was not based on what he saw or heard himself, but was based on what someone told him. Has the police officer that Colarulo cites as having heard the confession ever come forward and said anything about it?
Absolutely not.
Now, reporter Kathleen Gerrow. This is what’s really strange. We have a reporter that claims to have heard a confession in the largest murder case that was going on in Philadelphia at the time, and she said nothing about it? Journalistic careers are made on bits of information like hearing a major piece of information in a major murder case. If she had this information, it could have made her career. Why did she not say anything about it for 25 years?
These sorts of things defy logic and common sense. But this is what passes as journalism in Philadelphia…and evidence of Abu-Jamal’s guilt. Why didn’t the so-called reporter interviewing Gerrow ask a follow-up question, like “Why didn’t you say something earlier? It could have made your career?” These questions should be asked.
It’s not for the press to take a position one way or the other, but it is the responsibility of the press to scrutinize all sides with the same rigor. One side (the Danny Faulkner side) can say anything they want, even if it makes no sense at all, yet it gets credibility and traction in the media. On the other side, Abu-Jamal’s side can say anything they want, and irrespective of the substance and factual accuracy, and they get no coverage at all.
Where is the journalistic fairness, balance, and accuracy? These are the three things that are supposed to be fundamental to journalism. Are they happening in this case?
No, they are not.
Hans Bennett (insubordination.blogspot.com) is a Philadelphia-based photojournalist and co-founder of “Journalists for Mumia,” whose new website is: Abu-Jamal-News.com
Friday, May 11, 2007
All Out for Mumia May 17th!
Check out this new video commercial for the May 17th Oral Arguments and Mass Demonstration to take place in Philadelphia. For more information please visit our homepage at www.freemumia.com
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Report Back from Delegation to France
A delegation of Mumia supporters recently traveled to France on the anniversary of the naming of "Rue Mumia Abu-Jamal" (Mumia Street) in Saint-Denis. On the delegation was Pam Africa, Linn Washington, Harold Wilson, members of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), the Harlem Campaign to Name a Street in Honor of Mumia, and many others.
Sundiata Sadiq of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) offers the following report-back:
The delegation that went to St. Denis was received enthusiastically by their reception committee at the airport. The next day we were whisked to a park just around the corner from Rue Mumia Abu Jamal. Our hosts were surprised by the controversy caused back in the States by this tree-lined street about 200 yards long with its spotless gardens and new apartments for workers. Lynn Washington, the well-known journalist, commented on this, as did Tigre Hill, who was documenting things for his upcoming movie on Mumia's case.
Dr. Suzanne Ross and I spoke for the Free Mumia Coalition and Lynn Washington summed up with a short and brilliant speech about justice for Mumia. I am one that believes in conspiracies against the movement, and when Pam and Ramona Africa and Harold Wilson, who was exonerated from Death Row at SCI Green, informed us that their clothes had not arrived with them, I said, "Huh." They felt it was because they had a layover and blamed themselves. The clothes did not arrive until it was time for them to leave France. It was reported that the clothes were at the airport all the time.
Tigre Hill was busy asking questions for his documentary and it ws a stroke of genius that we had our own people documenting events, including myself. I captured a woman's conversation who had just moved into a new apartment on Rue Mumia Abu Jamal. She noted that, as an educated woman, she did not know who the street was named after so she did the research and felt honored to be living on such a beautiful street.
I am sure many folk that live on that street (White, Arab, Afrikan) may not have investigated who the street was named after. Tigre Hill failed to capture the reception we received at a local political hall and in particular the ovation that Harold Wilson got. Folk were emotional that this man who was framed by the Philadelphia law enforcement officials survived 17 years on death row and was now in a place being showered with love and respect. That night was a very emotional scene that was captured by our folk on video. It was interesting to hear Lynn Washington mention the same appeals that helped Harold Wilson get off death row to freedom are included in Mumia's appeal hearing.
Suzanne Ross and I were chosen to go to Marseilles to represent the comrades who were scheduled to go but somehow lost tickets prevented three other folk from going. We left Paris for a three hour train ride to Marseilles, where we were greeted by the Mumia supporters. It was a beautiful sight to walk from the train station which is set on a very high hill overlooking Marseilles. As we walked through the streets to our host's house there were Mumia signes all over announcing a meeting to discuss the case at the local book store. We were told we were competing with the Sarkozy debate on TV and a Marseilles soccer game. While walking on the street we heard someone singing the soccer team's song. To the surprise of our hosts the book store was standing room only with about eighty people at its max. Suzanne gave the update and I gave the history of repression against the Black liberation movement in the States and how that tied in the case of Mumia.
The next day we went to the area of the American Consulate in Marseilles and symbolically named the street for Mumia. It is interesting for our own history that it was the Marseilles supporters of Mumia that started the street naming campaign in France. This caught on with the folk in St. Denis and they were successful in their campaign because the city government was not as conservative as the government in Marseilles.
The folk in Marseilles were thrilled to see us because they rarely go to Paris or St. Denis and the folk up north rarely come to Marseilles. They asked us if we would come back.
Of course we replied with a big Yes!! Who wouldn't? We lived in a house with folk who were fired up, possessed militant history and of course, last but not least, we lived with a real chef, who cooked every day for us and served the greatest wine in the world.
We also had a spirited May Day march and attended the Tulip Festival in St. Denis. We had a Mumia table, sold t-shirts and spoke to the crowd and folk danced in the pool with Mumia's banner.
-- Sundiata Sadiq of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC)
Sundiata Sadiq of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) offers the following report-back:
The delegation that went to St. Denis was received enthusiastically by their reception committee at the airport. The next day we were whisked to a park just around the corner from Rue Mumia Abu Jamal. Our hosts were surprised by the controversy caused back in the States by this tree-lined street about 200 yards long with its spotless gardens and new apartments for workers. Lynn Washington, the well-known journalist, commented on this, as did Tigre Hill, who was documenting things for his upcoming movie on Mumia's case.
Dr. Suzanne Ross and I spoke for the Free Mumia Coalition and Lynn Washington summed up with a short and brilliant speech about justice for Mumia. I am one that believes in conspiracies against the movement, and when Pam and Ramona Africa and Harold Wilson, who was exonerated from Death Row at SCI Green, informed us that their clothes had not arrived with them, I said, "Huh." They felt it was because they had a layover and blamed themselves. The clothes did not arrive until it was time for them to leave France. It was reported that the clothes were at the airport all the time.
Tigre Hill was busy asking questions for his documentary and it ws a stroke of genius that we had our own people documenting events, including myself. I captured a woman's conversation who had just moved into a new apartment on Rue Mumia Abu Jamal. She noted that, as an educated woman, she did not know who the street was named after so she did the research and felt honored to be living on such a beautiful street.
I am sure many folk that live on that street (White, Arab, Afrikan) may not have investigated who the street was named after. Tigre Hill failed to capture the reception we received at a local political hall and in particular the ovation that Harold Wilson got. Folk were emotional that this man who was framed by the Philadelphia law enforcement officials survived 17 years on death row and was now in a place being showered with love and respect. That night was a very emotional scene that was captured by our folk on video. It was interesting to hear Lynn Washington mention the same appeals that helped Harold Wilson get off death row to freedom are included in Mumia's appeal hearing.
Suzanne Ross and I were chosen to go to Marseilles to represent the comrades who were scheduled to go but somehow lost tickets prevented three other folk from going. We left Paris for a three hour train ride to Marseilles, where we were greeted by the Mumia supporters. It was a beautiful sight to walk from the train station which is set on a very high hill overlooking Marseilles. As we walked through the streets to our host's house there were Mumia signes all over announcing a meeting to discuss the case at the local book store. We were told we were competing with the Sarkozy debate on TV and a Marseilles soccer game. While walking on the street we heard someone singing the soccer team's song. To the surprise of our hosts the book store was standing room only with about eighty people at its max. Suzanne gave the update and I gave the history of repression against the Black liberation movement in the States and how that tied in the case of Mumia.
The next day we went to the area of the American Consulate in Marseilles and symbolically named the street for Mumia. It is interesting for our own history that it was the Marseilles supporters of Mumia that started the street naming campaign in France. This caught on with the folk in St. Denis and they were successful in their campaign because the city government was not as conservative as the government in Marseilles.
The folk in Marseilles were thrilled to see us because they rarely go to Paris or St. Denis and the folk up north rarely come to Marseilles. They asked us if we would come back.
Of course we replied with a big Yes!! Who wouldn't? We lived in a house with folk who were fired up, possessed militant history and of course, last but not least, we lived with a real chef, who cooked every day for us and served the greatest wine in the world.
We also had a spirited May Day march and attended the Tulip Festival in St. Denis. We had a Mumia table, sold t-shirts and spoke to the crowd and folk danced in the pool with Mumia's banner.
-- Sundiata Sadiq of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC)
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Death Row Inmate Finds Freedom in France: Harold Wilson
A delegation of Mumia supporters recently traveled to France on the anniversary of the naming of "Rue Mumia Abu-Jamal" (Mumia Street) in Saint-Denis. On the delegation was Pam Africa, Ramona Africa, members of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), the Harlem Campaign to Name a Street in Honor of Mumia and others. Please read the following article and stayed tuned for a detailed report-back as well as pictures brought back by the U.S. delegation.
Weekend Edition
May 5 / 6, 2007
Death Row Inmate Finds Freedom in France
The Long Ordeal of Harold Wilson
By Linn Washington, Jr.
St. Denis, France.
Harold Wilson drank wine for the first time in nearly twenty years during his recent trip to this working class city located in the suburbs of Paris known for its left-of-center politics.
Lack of access, not avoidance, had driven Wilson's abstinence from all alcoholic beverages.
Wilson spent nearly 18-years in Pennsylvania prisons -- sixteen on death row where he twice faced imminent execution for a triple-murder that DNA evidence eventually proved he didn't commit.
Wilson's drink of good French wine came during salutes to him at a large, communal dinner inside a church on one of the city's most famous squares.
These salutes erupted after Wilson briefly described the injustices he endured, including death row experiences like smelling the burning flesh of an inmate who ignited himself in an insane reaction to repeated callousness by guards.
"I didn't have to go to war to experience brutality and death," Wilson said, fighting to control parallel emotions from recalling death row incidents and reacting to the compassion towards him from those attending that dinner.
Wilson, who is 6'4" tall weighing nearly 250 lbs., is the sixth person freed from Pa's death row and the 122nd person released from death rows nationwide.
Wilson said flawed evidence authorities used to convict him included a bloody jacket that fit a person eight inches shorter and 60lbs lighter than him.
Wilson is now an advocate of providing assistance to persons released from death row.
When Pa authorities released Wilson in November 2005, after a jury acquittal at a retrial, he received sixty-five cents, a public transportation token and a warning: Don't come back.
Wilson traveled to St. Denis as a member of a small delegation from his hometown of Philadelphia to participate in the one year anniversary of the naming of a small street in St. Denis for Pa death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Wilson eagerly says Abu-Jamal, also from Philadelphia, helped him adjust to the deprivations of death row and helped him with the legal research producing his successful appeals.
"Mumia taught me how to read law books. He taught me to fight with a pen," Wilson told a St. Denis supporter of Abu-Jamal hours before the dinner.
"Working to free Mumia and others gives me identity and purpose. I struggle everyday to rebuild my life."
Days before traveling to St. Denis, Wilson spoke at an Abu-Jamal event in Philadelphia featuring Danny Glover, the famed actor/activist who called Abu-Jamal's conviction a "legal lynching."
The legal improprieties leading to a new trial for Wilson discriminatory jury selection practices by the prosecutor and incompetence by his court appointed trial lawyer are core issues in Abu-Jamal's controversial conviction.
Like Abu-Jamal's trial attorney, Wilson's court appointed attorney was trying his first death penalty case. The trial lawyers for Abu-Jamal and Wilson both failed to present critical evidence at trial.
Discriminatory jury selection is the central issue in the scheduled May 17th hearing for Abu-Jamal before the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
The prosecutor in Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial for killing a Philadelphia policeman used nearly all of his fifteen challenges to remove blacks from the jury.
The jury that convicted Abu-Jamal contained only two blacks in a city where forty percent of the population was black at the time of trial.
That jury contained a white man who said from the outset that he would not be fair to Abu-Jamal and other whites who "had close friends or relatives who were police officers," noted author/investigative reporter Dave Lindorff in his excellent book "Killing Time: An Investigation Into The Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal."
Rulings by Pa's Supreme Court have consistently rejected allegations of discriminatory jury selection at Abu-Jamal's trial but a federal District Court judge found evidence of this misconduct meriting appellate court review.
In contrast to Abu-Jamal's case, the Pa Supreme Court granted an appeal from Wilson after finding evidence of discriminatory jury selection by his trial prosecutor.
The prosecutor in Wilson's case was the instructor in a now infamous Philadelphia DA Office training video showing new prosecutors how to evade US Supreme Court prohibitions against excluding blacks from death penalty juries.
Lindorff and other experts say the instructions on that 1987 training video reflect long-standing discriminatory jury selection practices utilized by Philadelphia prosecutors.
Lindorff writes in his book, "the Philadelphia district attorney's office, over the period 1977-1986, including the trial of Abu-Jamal in 1982, struck black jurors 58 percent of the time, compared to only 22 percent of the time for white jurors."
The specific prosecutor in Abu-Jamal's trial, according to scholarly research, struck blacks 74 percent of the time during that 1977-1986 period compared to 25 percent for whites.
The fact that the Pa Supreme Court curtly rejected Abu-Jamal's jury discrimination claims while granting relief to Wilson and other defendants using similar evidence is often cited as an example of double-standards authorities employ in the Abu-Jamal case.
Amnesty International's 2000 report on the Abu-Jamal case criticizes Pa's entire state judicial system for rulings against Abu-Jamal based on political considerations instead of legal precedent.
The St. Denis street naming is another case study in double standards.
The April 2006 naming of a block-long street in a secluded section of St. Denis prompted the December 2006 passage of a resolution by the US Congress demanding the removal of Abu-Jamal's name from this small lane sandwiched between two one-way streets.
Months before passage of this congressional resolution, Philadelphia's City Council and Pa's State Senate passed similar resolutions assailing the naming of a street in honor of a convicted murderer.
In contrast to the criticism of St. Denis, in 1990, New York City officials changed the name of a street in front of a federal prison to honor a prisoner being held there, an escaped IRA fugitive convicted in Northern Ireland of murdering a British special forces officer.
Officials across America, including over 100 members of Congress, applauded Joe Doherty's long fight against extradition contending the IRA fighter did not receive a fair trial from British authorities.
St. Denis' Mayor and immediate past Mayor both criticized the unfairness of Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial during their remarks at the recent anniversary of the street naming.
That Amnesty report concluded that Abu-Jamal's trial failed to meet internationally acceptable standards for a fair trial.
A core aspect of a fair trial is an impartial judge and the alleged pro-prosecution bias of Abu-Jamal's trial judge during a 1995 appeals hearing is an item under review by the Third Circuit appeals court.
The outrageous bias exhibited by Judge Albert Sabo during that '95 appeal hearing triggered harsh editorial criticism from Philadelphia's normally anti-Abu-Jamal mainstream media.
However, Pa's Supreme Court brushed aside that editorial criticism.
Years later, the same Court curtly dismissed a disturbing charge that Sabo was overheard on the eve of the '82 trial saying he was going to help prosecutors "fry the nigger!" The Court claimed Sabo's racist remark was irrelevant.
Harold Wilson, while in St. Denis, participated in a short protest march demanding a fair trial for Abu-Jamal. He later participated in the May Day March in Paris, walking with a large 'Free Mumia' delegation.
After those dinner salutes to Wilson, he later laughed with diners sitting near him saying French wine is "much better than Thunderbird" and other faux wines he drank prior to incarceration.
Linn Washington Jr. is a Philadelphia based journalist who has covered the Abu-Jamal case for 25-years.
Weekend Edition
May 5 / 6, 2007
Death Row Inmate Finds Freedom in France
The Long Ordeal of Harold Wilson
By Linn Washington, Jr.
St. Denis, France.
Harold Wilson drank wine for the first time in nearly twenty years during his recent trip to this working class city located in the suburbs of Paris known for its left-of-center politics.
Lack of access, not avoidance, had driven Wilson's abstinence from all alcoholic beverages.
Wilson spent nearly 18-years in Pennsylvania prisons -- sixteen on death row where he twice faced imminent execution for a triple-murder that DNA evidence eventually proved he didn't commit.
Wilson's drink of good French wine came during salutes to him at a large, communal dinner inside a church on one of the city's most famous squares.
These salutes erupted after Wilson briefly described the injustices he endured, including death row experiences like smelling the burning flesh of an inmate who ignited himself in an insane reaction to repeated callousness by guards.
"I didn't have to go to war to experience brutality and death," Wilson said, fighting to control parallel emotions from recalling death row incidents and reacting to the compassion towards him from those attending that dinner.
Wilson, who is 6'4" tall weighing nearly 250 lbs., is the sixth person freed from Pa's death row and the 122nd person released from death rows nationwide.
Wilson said flawed evidence authorities used to convict him included a bloody jacket that fit a person eight inches shorter and 60lbs lighter than him.
Wilson is now an advocate of providing assistance to persons released from death row.
When Pa authorities released Wilson in November 2005, after a jury acquittal at a retrial, he received sixty-five cents, a public transportation token and a warning: Don't come back.
Wilson traveled to St. Denis as a member of a small delegation from his hometown of Philadelphia to participate in the one year anniversary of the naming of a small street in St. Denis for Pa death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Wilson eagerly says Abu-Jamal, also from Philadelphia, helped him adjust to the deprivations of death row and helped him with the legal research producing his successful appeals.
"Mumia taught me how to read law books. He taught me to fight with a pen," Wilson told a St. Denis supporter of Abu-Jamal hours before the dinner.
"Working to free Mumia and others gives me identity and purpose. I struggle everyday to rebuild my life."
Days before traveling to St. Denis, Wilson spoke at an Abu-Jamal event in Philadelphia featuring Danny Glover, the famed actor/activist who called Abu-Jamal's conviction a "legal lynching."
The legal improprieties leading to a new trial for Wilson discriminatory jury selection practices by the prosecutor and incompetence by his court appointed trial lawyer are core issues in Abu-Jamal's controversial conviction.
Like Abu-Jamal's trial attorney, Wilson's court appointed attorney was trying his first death penalty case. The trial lawyers for Abu-Jamal and Wilson both failed to present critical evidence at trial.
Discriminatory jury selection is the central issue in the scheduled May 17th hearing for Abu-Jamal before the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
The prosecutor in Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial for killing a Philadelphia policeman used nearly all of his fifteen challenges to remove blacks from the jury.
The jury that convicted Abu-Jamal contained only two blacks in a city where forty percent of the population was black at the time of trial.
That jury contained a white man who said from the outset that he would not be fair to Abu-Jamal and other whites who "had close friends or relatives who were police officers," noted author/investigative reporter Dave Lindorff in his excellent book "Killing Time: An Investigation Into The Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal."
Rulings by Pa's Supreme Court have consistently rejected allegations of discriminatory jury selection at Abu-Jamal's trial but a federal District Court judge found evidence of this misconduct meriting appellate court review.
In contrast to Abu-Jamal's case, the Pa Supreme Court granted an appeal from Wilson after finding evidence of discriminatory jury selection by his trial prosecutor.
The prosecutor in Wilson's case was the instructor in a now infamous Philadelphia DA Office training video showing new prosecutors how to evade US Supreme Court prohibitions against excluding blacks from death penalty juries.
Lindorff and other experts say the instructions on that 1987 training video reflect long-standing discriminatory jury selection practices utilized by Philadelphia prosecutors.
Lindorff writes in his book, "the Philadelphia district attorney's office, over the period 1977-1986, including the trial of Abu-Jamal in 1982, struck black jurors 58 percent of the time, compared to only 22 percent of the time for white jurors."
The specific prosecutor in Abu-Jamal's trial, according to scholarly research, struck blacks 74 percent of the time during that 1977-1986 period compared to 25 percent for whites.
The fact that the Pa Supreme Court curtly rejected Abu-Jamal's jury discrimination claims while granting relief to Wilson and other defendants using similar evidence is often cited as an example of double-standards authorities employ in the Abu-Jamal case.
Amnesty International's 2000 report on the Abu-Jamal case criticizes Pa's entire state judicial system for rulings against Abu-Jamal based on political considerations instead of legal precedent.
The St. Denis street naming is another case study in double standards.
The April 2006 naming of a block-long street in a secluded section of St. Denis prompted the December 2006 passage of a resolution by the US Congress demanding the removal of Abu-Jamal's name from this small lane sandwiched between two one-way streets.
Months before passage of this congressional resolution, Philadelphia's City Council and Pa's State Senate passed similar resolutions assailing the naming of a street in honor of a convicted murderer.
In contrast to the criticism of St. Denis, in 1990, New York City officials changed the name of a street in front of a federal prison to honor a prisoner being held there, an escaped IRA fugitive convicted in Northern Ireland of murdering a British special forces officer.
Officials across America, including over 100 members of Congress, applauded Joe Doherty's long fight against extradition contending the IRA fighter did not receive a fair trial from British authorities.
St. Denis' Mayor and immediate past Mayor both criticized the unfairness of Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial during their remarks at the recent anniversary of the street naming.
That Amnesty report concluded that Abu-Jamal's trial failed to meet internationally acceptable standards for a fair trial.
A core aspect of a fair trial is an impartial judge and the alleged pro-prosecution bias of Abu-Jamal's trial judge during a 1995 appeals hearing is an item under review by the Third Circuit appeals court.
The outrageous bias exhibited by Judge Albert Sabo during that '95 appeal hearing triggered harsh editorial criticism from Philadelphia's normally anti-Abu-Jamal mainstream media.
However, Pa's Supreme Court brushed aside that editorial criticism.
Years later, the same Court curtly dismissed a disturbing charge that Sabo was overheard on the eve of the '82 trial saying he was going to help prosecutors "fry the nigger!" The Court claimed Sabo's racist remark was irrelevant.
Harold Wilson, while in St. Denis, participated in a short protest march demanding a fair trial for Abu-Jamal. He later participated in the May Day March in Paris, walking with a large 'Free Mumia' delegation.
After those dinner salutes to Wilson, he later laughed with diners sitting near him saying French wine is "much better than Thunderbird" and other faux wines he drank prior to incarceration.
Linn Washington Jr. is a Philadelphia based journalist who has covered the Abu-Jamal case for 25-years.
New video on Mumia!
Check out the following video created by Mumia supporter, Orlando the Truth Scholar, in anticipation for Mumia's upcoming Oral Arguments on May 17th.
view the video on youtube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nm6KUIM0K4
view the video on youtube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nm6KUIM0K4
Concert for Mumia in Philly!
Concert for Mumia in Philly!
May 16th, 2007 (in preparation for May 17th's Oral Arguments)
08:00 PM
Movement for Mumia Demonstration Preparation Jam
The Rotunda
4104 Walnut St, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Movement for Mumia Preparing to be out in the streets May 17th for Mumia Abu-Jamal's hearing in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals! Wed. May 16th 8pm sharp! at the Rotunda 4014 Walnut St. Philadelphia featuring... Bojah & the Insurrection Broadcast Live (hip hop/rock from Albany, NY) with Taina Asili (Philly/Albany word warrior) and special guest performance to be announced! Donations at the door.
More info at:
215.476.8812 .
icffmaj@aol.com
myspace.com/bojahtheinsurrection
www.freemumia.com
May 16th, 2007 (in preparation for May 17th's Oral Arguments)
08:00 PM
Movement for Mumia Demonstration Preparation Jam
The Rotunda
4104 Walnut St, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Movement for Mumia Preparing to be out in the streets May 17th for Mumia Abu-Jamal's hearing in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals! Wed. May 16th 8pm sharp! at the Rotunda 4014 Walnut St. Philadelphia featuring... Bojah & the Insurrection Broadcast Live (hip hop/rock from Albany, NY) with Taina Asili (Philly/Albany word warrior) and special guest performance to be announced! Donations at the door.
More info at:
215.476.8812 .
icffmaj@aol.com
myspace.com/bojahtheinsurrection
www.freemumia.com
May 13, 207
May 13, 2007 marks 22 years since vicious governmental bombing and murder of innocent MOVE family members, including babies and animals. The root of that vicious attack is the government’s attempt to put an end to our unrelenting fight for the release of our innocent family members, The MOVE 9, who have been in prison for almost 30 years now, since 1978. Our fight has never ended. The parole date for The MOVE 9 is August 8, 2008 and they’re beginning the parole process now. For this and many other reasons we are commemorating the May 13, 1985 bombing of MOVE people with a working session on the issue of parole for the MOVE 9 & political prisoners in general and also a demonstration at the liberty bell in center city Philadelphia, to expose the contradictions and viciousness of this country to all the national and international tourist that come to see that cracked bell.
The MOVE family is urging you to join us for these two events because they are programs that are not just for MOVE but are examples that benefit everybody, and we mean everybody.
Join The MOVE Family on Saturday May 12, 2007 for the working session on parole, from 12:00pm-5:00pm at The American Friends Service Committee, located at 1501 Cherry St. in center city Philadelphia. Also join us on Sunday May 13, 2007 for a serious demonstration at the liberty bell, from 12:00pm-3:00pm at 5th and Market Sts. in center city Philadelphia.
For more information, contact us at 215 387-4107 or at onamovellja@aol.com. Also, view our website at www.onamove.com and check out www.cafepress.com/onamove
The MOVE family is urging you to join us for these two events because they are programs that are not just for MOVE but are examples that benefit everybody, and we mean everybody.
Join The MOVE Family on Saturday May 12, 2007 for the working session on parole, from 12:00pm-5:00pm at The American Friends Service Committee, located at 1501 Cherry St. in center city Philadelphia. Also join us on Sunday May 13, 2007 for a serious demonstration at the liberty bell, from 12:00pm-3:00pm at 5th and Market Sts. in center city Philadelphia.
For more information, contact us at 215 387-4107 or at onamovellja@aol.com. Also, view our website at www.onamove.com and check out www.cafepress.com/onamove
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Mumia's Son Needs Your Help!
Mumia's Son Needs Your Help!
Attention Comrades!
This is a special alert going out to you: At this time Jamal Hart, the son of Mumia Abu-Jamal, faces intense restrictions! Here's an update:
Jamal currently has an Attorney based out of Chicago to assist him in his case. He recently found out that he has an assault charge dated back to 1995 that does not exist! He was given Federal time as a result of this "error".
I received a call on April 20th from Jamal to say that he was charged with fighting via an Agent Provocateur. He was given 30 days inthe hole because of it. I received a letter from him on April 30th to state that not only will he serve 30 days in the hole, he has LOST his visits and personal phone calls for 6 months! This is an outrage and it MUST be addressed!
All of this is a result of Jamal coming so close to exposing his unjust incarceration through his own research. Now he has an Attorney to represent him in court!
Everyone needs to BOMBARD the prison with phone calls, E-mails and faxes to express your outrage in this matter!
Address all correspondence and phone calls to the Warden ONLY.
The information to the prison is as follows:
Phone: 570-544-7100
Fax: 570-544-7350
E-mail address: SCH/EXECASSISTANT@BOP.GOV
FREE JAMAL HART NOW!
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by Free Mumia 1:24:00 PM
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Attention Comrades!
This is a special alert going out to you: At this time Jamal Hart, the son of Mumia Abu-Jamal, faces intense restrictions! Here's an update:
Jamal currently has an Attorney based out of Chicago to assist him in his case. He recently found out that he has an assault charge dated back to 1995 that does not exist! He was given Federal time as a result of this "error".
I received a call on April 20th from Jamal to say that he was charged with fighting via an Agent Provocateur. He was given 30 days inthe hole because of it. I received a letter from him on April 30th to state that not only will he serve 30 days in the hole, he has LOST his visits and personal phone calls for 6 months! This is an outrage and it MUST be addressed!
All of this is a result of Jamal coming so close to exposing his unjust incarceration through his own research. Now he has an Attorney to represent him in court!
Everyone needs to BOMBARD the prison with phone calls, E-mails and faxes to express your outrage in this matter!
Address all correspondence and phone calls to the Warden ONLY.
The information to the prison is as follows:
Phone: 570-544-7100
Fax: 570-544-7350
E-mail address: SCH/EXECASSISTANT@BOP.GOV
FREE JAMAL HART NOW!
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by Free Mumia 1:24:00 PM
Delete
Writers for Mumia - May 12!
The New York City Writers Union will be holding a writers' celebration of Mumia's 53rd birthday, and a mobilizing event for May 17th's "ALL OUT IN PHILADELPHIA FOR MUMIA'S LIFE DECIDING ORAL ARGUMENTS, HIS LAST CHANCE FOR A NEW TRIAL".
SATURDAY, May 12th
TIME: 1 to 5 PM
PLACE: The Community Church, East 35th Street, between Park and Madison, NY
SATURDAY, May 12th
TIME: 1 to 5 PM
PLACE: The Community Church, East 35th Street, between Park and Madison, NY
Friday, April 27, 2007
Mumia supporters expose police terror
Published Apr 26, 2007, in Workers World
Following are excerpts from a N.Y. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition press release.
On April 23, a press conference was held on the steps of City Hall in New York denouncing the outrageous and illegal police tactics aimed at silencing support for internationally renowned journalist and writer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on Pennsylvania's death row for almost a quarter of a century.
From left to right, Gwen Dobrow,
Monica Moorehead, City Councilperson
Charles Barron, Orie Lumumba and
Suzanne Ross at City Hall press conference.
WW photo: Lal Roohk
A Hip Hop concert, organized by young supporters of Abu-Jamal, was scheduled to take place on April 15 at the Remote Lounge. For a week prior to the scheduled concert, the police pressured the club owner to cancel the event, but the owner stood firm. Then, two nights before the scheduled event, the police barged in on the club, issued 16 citations, involving thousands of dollars in fines, and escalated the threats against the owner. Fearing for his family and himself, the owner at this point cancelled the event. The event was promptly moved to Solidarity Center and was held with great enthusiasm, but with anger at the police action.
The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard on May 17 before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. Mumia has his first real chance of winning a new trial in that court after being convicted of the murder of a policeman almost 25 years ago. The Fraternal Order of Police, the prosecution and their allies are doing everything possible to undermine that possibility.
It is in that context that the attack on the Remote Lounge must be responded to seriously, as it mirrors a long history of similar actions in Philadelphia. In that city, a scheduled event highlighting famed actor Danny Glover for April 24, Mumia's birthday, at the Clef Club, was just moved because of similar police tactics.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
MUMIA CONCERT SHUT DOWN BY NYPD
by Leslie Ann Murray
Special to the AmNews
Originally posted 4/26/2007
Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal congregated on the steps of City Hall on Monday to condemn the NYPD for what they claim was intimidating and issuing illegal citations to the club owner of the Remote Lounge on Bowery.
On April 15th, the New York City Collation to Free Mumia (NYCCFM) organized a benefit hip-hop concert for Mumia's legal defense fund.
The police engaged in a conspiracy to close this event to prevent a worthy cause,†activist attorney Michael Tarif Warren said. Warren, who is the collation's legal representative, added, "We need a fair hearing to air the legal improprieties" of the NYPD.
After receiving 16 citations, thousands of dollars in fines and allegedly malicious threats, the night club owner canceled the concert, two days before the scheduled event.
In a mad rush for time, the NYCCFM was forced to relocate the concert to the International Action Center (IAC) in Midtown.
On the infamous NYPD Rant blog, a slew of comments were posted by police officers informing cops about their illegal actions to shut down the hip-hop event.
One post on the blog read, "This f--ker should be dead, we should ruin this event and make life miserable for every f-ing Hollywood liberal scum liker that shows up, fry Mumia."
Monica Morehead, coordinator for the Millions for Mumia Committee with the (IAC), suggested that the recent police repression of Mumia Abu-Jamal activists has been ignited because on May 17th, oral arguments for a new trial for Mumia will be heard in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Morehead said, "The movement to free Mumia will not be intimidated by any arms of this oppressive state, especially the police." She continued, "The police are trying to discourage the movement."
Following are excerpts from a N.Y. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition press release.
On April 23, a press conference was held on the steps of City Hall in New York denouncing the outrageous and illegal police tactics aimed at silencing support for internationally renowned journalist and writer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on Pennsylvania's death row for almost a quarter of a century.
From left to right, Gwen Dobrow,
Monica Moorehead, City Councilperson
Charles Barron, Orie Lumumba and
Suzanne Ross at City Hall press conference.
WW photo: Lal Roohk
A Hip Hop concert, organized by young supporters of Abu-Jamal, was scheduled to take place on April 15 at the Remote Lounge. For a week prior to the scheduled concert, the police pressured the club owner to cancel the event, but the owner stood firm. Then, two nights before the scheduled event, the police barged in on the club, issued 16 citations, involving thousands of dollars in fines, and escalated the threats against the owner. Fearing for his family and himself, the owner at this point cancelled the event. The event was promptly moved to Solidarity Center and was held with great enthusiasm, but with anger at the police action.
The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard on May 17 before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. Mumia has his first real chance of winning a new trial in that court after being convicted of the murder of a policeman almost 25 years ago. The Fraternal Order of Police, the prosecution and their allies are doing everything possible to undermine that possibility.
It is in that context that the attack on the Remote Lounge must be responded to seriously, as it mirrors a long history of similar actions in Philadelphia. In that city, a scheduled event highlighting famed actor Danny Glover for April 24, Mumia's birthday, at the Clef Club, was just moved because of similar police tactics.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
MUMIA CONCERT SHUT DOWN BY NYPD
by Leslie Ann Murray
Special to the AmNews
Originally posted 4/26/2007
Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal congregated on the steps of City Hall on Monday to condemn the NYPD for what they claim was intimidating and issuing illegal citations to the club owner of the Remote Lounge on Bowery.
On April 15th, the New York City Collation to Free Mumia (NYCCFM) organized a benefit hip-hop concert for Mumia's legal defense fund.
The police engaged in a conspiracy to close this event to prevent a worthy cause,†activist attorney Michael Tarif Warren said. Warren, who is the collation's legal representative, added, "We need a fair hearing to air the legal improprieties" of the NYPD.
After receiving 16 citations, thousands of dollars in fines and allegedly malicious threats, the night club owner canceled the concert, two days before the scheduled event.
In a mad rush for time, the NYCCFM was forced to relocate the concert to the International Action Center (IAC) in Midtown.
On the infamous NYPD Rant blog, a slew of comments were posted by police officers informing cops about their illegal actions to shut down the hip-hop event.
One post on the blog read, "This f--ker should be dead, we should ruin this event and make life miserable for every f-ing Hollywood liberal scum liker that shows up, fry Mumia."
Monica Morehead, coordinator for the Millions for Mumia Committee with the (IAC), suggested that the recent police repression of Mumia Abu-Jamal activists has been ignited because on May 17th, oral arguments for a new trial for Mumia will be heard in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Morehead said, "The movement to free Mumia will not be intimidated by any arms of this oppressive state, especially the police." She continued, "The police are trying to discourage the movement."
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Report on April 24 in Philly
On Tuesday, April 24th hundreds gathered at the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia on Mumia's birthday to mobilize for his highly anticipated oral arguments scheduled for May 17th. We would like to thank and congratulate all who came, including Danny Glover, Sgt. DeLacy Davis, Linn Washington Jr., Harold Wilson, Lynne Stewart and others, to show their uncompromising support as they did so in the face of a large FOP protest and building police terror which has resulted in death threats and extreme intimidation throughout the last few weeks. Your continued support is recognized and appreciated.
To hear a few sound clips from the event, click on the following links…
Linn Washington, Jr.
Ramona Africa
Sgt. DeLacy Davis
To hear a few sound clips from the event, click on the following links…
Linn Washington, Jr.
Ramona Africa
Sgt. DeLacy Davis
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Press Conference This Monday (4/23) with Charles Barron, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcemtnt and Others in Response to Recent Police Terrorism
PRESS RELEASE
April 20, 2007
Contact: Justin Lumumba 347-267-8259
Dr. Suzanne Ross 917-584-2135
COUNCILMAN CHARLES BARRON, 100 BLACKS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT, ATTORNEY MICHAEL WARREN, HIP HOP ARTISTS/COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS SPEAK OUT AGAINST POLICE INTIMIDATION OF CLUB WHICH WAS TO HOST A CONCERT IN SUPPORT OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
On Monday, April 23rd, a press conference will be held on the steps of City Hall at 12 Noon. Participants are: City Councilman Charles Barron; 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care; Attorney Michael Warren; as well Rap Artists/Community Activists A-Alikes, Pat-Riot, and DCQ; and Dr. Suzanne Ross and Justin Lumumba of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition.
This conference has been scheduled in response to the outrageous and illegal police tactics aimed at silencing support for internationally renowned journalist and writer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on Pennsylvania's Death Row for almost a quarter of a century. The hip hop concert, organized by young supporters of Abu-Jamal, was scheduled to take place on Sunday April 15th at the Remote Lounge, a club on the Bowery between 2nd and 3rd Streets. For a week prior to the scheduled concert, the police pressured the club owner to cancel the event, but the owner stood firm. Then, two nights before the scheduled event, the police barged in on the club, issued 16 citations, involving thousands of dollars in fines, and escalated the threats against the owner. Fearing for his family and himself, the owner at this point cancelled the event. The event was promptly moved to another site and was held with great enthusiasm, but with anger at the police action.
The police blog, NYPD Rant, documents what the police had planned, "The Remote Lounge should be hammered from now until that scum mumia's eyeball are bulging out of his f'ing head..(sic). . . the 9th pct covers it. it's up by 2nd and Bowery the 6th and 5th will get sucked in by boundries. I would hope leaders will put the whole friggin task force in play. Checkpoints on every single roadway (sic) fvck them all they don't comply or want to fight show them you are the boss, a medical treatment, a couple hours in Bellevue then back … " Because the event could not be held at the Remote Lounge, as originally planned, but was moved to a different site, some of the police plans were circumvented. But it is very dangerous when the police, who claim the title of "law enforcement", aim to break the law and attack young people of color simply for exercising their rights to free speech and free assembly as well as the right to dissent.
The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard on May 17th, 2007 before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. Mumia has his first real chance of winning a new trial in that court. The Fraternal Order of Police, the prosecution, and their allies are doing everything possible to undermine that possibility. It is in that context that the attack on the Remote Lounge must be responded to seriously, as it mirrors a long history of similar actions in Philadelphia. In that city, a scheduled event highlighting famed actor Danny Glover for April 24th at the Clef Club, was just moved because of similar police tactics.
April 20, 2007
Contact: Justin Lumumba 347-267-8259
Dr. Suzanne Ross 917-584-2135
COUNCILMAN CHARLES BARRON, 100 BLACKS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT, ATTORNEY MICHAEL WARREN, HIP HOP ARTISTS/COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS SPEAK OUT AGAINST POLICE INTIMIDATION OF CLUB WHICH WAS TO HOST A CONCERT IN SUPPORT OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
On Monday, April 23rd, a press conference will be held on the steps of City Hall at 12 Noon. Participants are: City Councilman Charles Barron; 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care; Attorney Michael Warren; as well Rap Artists/Community Activists A-Alikes, Pat-Riot, and DCQ; and Dr. Suzanne Ross and Justin Lumumba of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition.
This conference has been scheduled in response to the outrageous and illegal police tactics aimed at silencing support for internationally renowned journalist and writer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on Pennsylvania's Death Row for almost a quarter of a century. The hip hop concert, organized by young supporters of Abu-Jamal, was scheduled to take place on Sunday April 15th at the Remote Lounge, a club on the Bowery between 2nd and 3rd Streets. For a week prior to the scheduled concert, the police pressured the club owner to cancel the event, but the owner stood firm. Then, two nights before the scheduled event, the police barged in on the club, issued 16 citations, involving thousands of dollars in fines, and escalated the threats against the owner. Fearing for his family and himself, the owner at this point cancelled the event. The event was promptly moved to another site and was held with great enthusiasm, but with anger at the police action.
The police blog, NYPD Rant, documents what the police had planned, "The Remote Lounge should be hammered from now until that scum mumia's eyeball are bulging out of his f'ing head..(sic). . . the 9th pct covers it. it's up by 2nd and Bowery the 6th and 5th will get sucked in by boundries. I would hope leaders will put the whole friggin task force in play. Checkpoints on every single roadway (sic) fvck them all they don't comply or want to fight show them you are the boss, a medical treatment, a couple hours in Bellevue then back … " Because the event could not be held at the Remote Lounge, as originally planned, but was moved to a different site, some of the police plans were circumvented. But it is very dangerous when the police, who claim the title of "law enforcement", aim to break the law and attack young people of color simply for exercising their rights to free speech and free assembly as well as the right to dissent.
The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard on May 17th, 2007 before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. Mumia has his first real chance of winning a new trial in that court. The Fraternal Order of Police, the prosecution, and their allies are doing everything possible to undermine that possibility. It is in that context that the attack on the Remote Lounge must be responded to seriously, as it mirrors a long history of similar actions in Philadelphia. In that city, a scheduled event highlighting famed actor Danny Glover for April 24th at the Clef Club, was just moved because of similar police tactics.
The Third Circuit Refuses to Step Down - Oral Arguments Till Set for May 17 in Philly
Abu-Jamal News
Journalists for Mumia
PO Box 30770, Philadelphia, PA 19104
April 20, 2007
Dear Friends,
Just an hour ago, Abu-Jamal News (the new news format just hot off the press edited by the equally new outfit "Journalists for Mumia") was informed by Mumia's lead attorney Robert R. Bryan that the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia has
1) ruled against the prosecution's motion that the court recuse itself and
2) given the opposing sides each an extra half hour for their arguments, meaning that both defense and prosection will have one hour instead of only 30 minutes at the May 17 hearing.
On April 20, 2007, Robert told us via e-mail: "We won on both of my motions [i.e., the defense motion opposing the recusal and the defense motion for more time for arguments at the hearing. MS]. In denying the disqualification of the Third Circuit, the court adopted my argument. Even though I will try to get out more detail over the weekend, you may send out the news."
This doesn't tell us yet whether the court's final decision re Mumia will indeed be just, but it's just great news all the same.
So let's continue our struggle for life, liberty, and justice for Mumia and all the many others who are still denied their basic human rights!
With best greetings from AJN,
Hans Bennett & Michael Schiffmann
J4M (Journalists for Mumia)
reach us via
Hans Bennett destroycapitalism@hotmail.com
Michael Schiffmann mikschiff@t-online.de
Journalists for Mumia
PO Box 30770, Philadelphia, PA 19104
April 20, 2007
Dear Friends,
Just an hour ago, Abu-Jamal News (the new news format just hot off the press edited by the equally new outfit "Journalists for Mumia") was informed by Mumia's lead attorney Robert R. Bryan that the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia has
1) ruled against the prosecution's motion that the court recuse itself and
2) given the opposing sides each an extra half hour for their arguments, meaning that both defense and prosection will have one hour instead of only 30 minutes at the May 17 hearing.
On April 20, 2007, Robert told us via e-mail: "We won on both of my motions [i.e., the defense motion opposing the recusal and the defense motion for more time for arguments at the hearing. MS]. In denying the disqualification of the Third Circuit, the court adopted my argument. Even though I will try to get out more detail over the weekend, you may send out the news."
This doesn't tell us yet whether the court's final decision re Mumia will indeed be just, but it's just great news all the same.
So let's continue our struggle for life, liberty, and justice for Mumia and all the many others who are still denied their basic human rights!
With best greetings from AJN,
Hans Bennett & Michael Schiffmann
J4M (Journalists for Mumia)
reach us via
Hans Bennett destroycapitalism@hotmail.com
Michael Schiffmann mikschiff@t-online.de
Saturday, April 21, 2007
ALERT: Police Terror Forces the Clef Club to Close its Doors to Mumia's Birthday Event
The April 24 Birthday event featuring Danny Glover, Sonia Sanchez, DeLacy Davis and many others will go on as planned, AT A NEW LOCATION, THE AFSC ON 15th AND CHERRY STREETS.
After receiving threats and undergoing extreme intimidation from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and its allies, on April 11th the board of directors to the Clef Club voted to cancel its scheduled event to be held on Mumia's upcoming birthday. As a result the program itself WILL NOT BE CANCELLED, BUT MOVED TO THE AFSC ON 15th AND CHERRY STREETS.
While the FOP and their supporters declare this as a victory, in reality it is nothing more than a desperate and cowardly display of corrupt and violent police power, leading up to the Third Circuit's Oral Arguments which will happen on May 17th in Philadelphia. This type of police terror is predictable and in no way new to the movement to Free Mumia. In New York City, the FOP alongside of the NYPD have issued threats and 16 citations against the Remote Lounge - the Club which was scheduled to host "Mumia 911"
Fearing that his family would be in danger by the police, and in outrage over the citations, the owner opted out and was forced to cancel the show which was relocated to the IAC on 55 West 17th Street.
TAKE A STAND AGAINST POLICE TERROR ON APRIL 24!
BUSES WILL BE LEAVING FROM NYC! CALL (212)339-8029 NOW TO PURCHASE A TICKET, OR BUY ONE IN PERSON AT OUR MEETING THIS FRIDAY AT:
6:30PM
St. Mary's Church in Harlem,
521 West 126th Street
between Broadway and Amsterdam
(1 or 9 train to 125th Street)
Download Flyer Here (PDF)
APRIL 24: Mumia's Birthday
Featuring: Danny Glover, Sonia Sanchez, Ramona Africa, DeLacy Davis (of Black Cops Against Police Brutality), Journalist Linn Washington, Exonerated Death-Row Resident Harold Amin Wilson, Ron Hampton (of National Association Of Black Police), and Attorney Michael Coard.
LOCATION CHANGED: AFSC on 15th and Cherry Streets
Doors Open at 5:30 PM
Film Showing of "Framing an Execution" with Danny Glover at 6:00 PM
Speakers will begin at 7:30 Sharp!
THERE WILL BE A "RING AROUND" CITY HALL AT NOON!
REMINDER: On May 17th
Mumia's case will be reviewed by The Third Circuit Court Of Appeals
http://www.freemumia.com/oralarguments.html
in Philadelphia to decide whether Mumia gets a new trial, life in prison without parole, or execution. The whole world is watching how The Third Circuit will rule. We must let them know where we stand: Only Mumia's release or a new trial is acceptable! APRIL 24th WILL BE AN URGENT ORGANIZING EVENT LEADING UP TO THE MAY 17th ORAL ARGUMENTS.
Alert - The prosecution is fighting tooth and nail to cancel the May 17 hearings!
Click Here for Info...
After receiving threats and undergoing extreme intimidation from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and its allies, on April 11th the board of directors to the Clef Club voted to cancel its scheduled event to be held on Mumia's upcoming birthday. As a result the program itself WILL NOT BE CANCELLED, BUT MOVED TO THE AFSC ON 15th AND CHERRY STREETS.
While the FOP and their supporters declare this as a victory, in reality it is nothing more than a desperate and cowardly display of corrupt and violent police power, leading up to the Third Circuit's Oral Arguments which will happen on May 17th in Philadelphia. This type of police terror is predictable and in no way new to the movement to Free Mumia. In New York City, the FOP alongside of the NYPD have issued threats and 16 citations against the Remote Lounge - the Club which was scheduled to host "Mumia 911"
Fearing that his family would be in danger by the police, and in outrage over the citations, the owner opted out and was forced to cancel the show which was relocated to the IAC on 55 West 17th Street.
TAKE A STAND AGAINST POLICE TERROR ON APRIL 24!
BUSES WILL BE LEAVING FROM NYC! CALL (212)339-8029 NOW TO PURCHASE A TICKET, OR BUY ONE IN PERSON AT OUR MEETING THIS FRIDAY AT:
6:30PM
St. Mary's Church in Harlem,
521 West 126th Street
between Broadway and Amsterdam
(1 or 9 train to 125th Street)
Download Flyer Here (PDF)
APRIL 24: Mumia's Birthday
Featuring: Danny Glover, Sonia Sanchez, Ramona Africa, DeLacy Davis (of Black Cops Against Police Brutality), Journalist Linn Washington, Exonerated Death-Row Resident Harold Amin Wilson, Ron Hampton (of National Association Of Black Police), and Attorney Michael Coard.
LOCATION CHANGED: AFSC on 15th and Cherry Streets
Doors Open at 5:30 PM
Film Showing of "Framing an Execution" with Danny Glover at 6:00 PM
Speakers will begin at 7:30 Sharp!
THERE WILL BE A "RING AROUND" CITY HALL AT NOON!
REMINDER: On May 17th
Mumia's case will be reviewed by The Third Circuit Court Of Appeals
http://www.freemumia.com/oralarguments.html
in Philadelphia to decide whether Mumia gets a new trial, life in prison without parole, or execution. The whole world is watching how The Third Circuit will rule. We must let them know where we stand: Only Mumia's release or a new trial is acceptable! APRIL 24th WILL BE AN URGENT ORGANIZING EVENT LEADING UP TO THE MAY 17th ORAL ARGUMENTS.
Alert - The prosecution is fighting tooth and nail to cancel the May 17 hearings!
Click Here for Info...
Excellent article by Linn Washington on police terror in Philadelphia in the face of the possibility of a new trial for Mumia
Excellent article by Linn Washington on police terror in Philadelphia in the face of the possibility of a new trial for Mumia. -Suzanne Ross of the Free Mumia Coalition (NYC)
The Philadelphia Tribune 4/17/07
IMUS ISN'T IS THE ONLY ISSUE TO ADDRESS
By Linn Washington Jr.
Animals! Piece of Trash! Scum bag!
These words sound like the vicious name-calling that got fabled shock-jock Don Imus fired last week.
However, this name-calling has a more homegrown origin.
Yes, there's a radio connection to this expression of hatred.
And, yes, there is a racial animus element embedded in the ill-informed comments containing this name-calling.
But, the culprit here is not the now defunct Imus-In-The-Morning program that blared on both radio and cable television.
These venomous words are some of the verbal vomit hurled recently at Philadelphia's Clef Club expressing outrage toward a program scheduled for next Tuesday at the jazz venue on South Broad Street featuring famed actor/activist Danny Glover.
A centerpiece of this program was the planned showing of a documentary video narrated by Glover examining the controversial case of Philadelphia born, death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Because this program examines the case of Abu-Jamal and is scheduled to take place on Abu-Jamal's birthday, it immediately sparked the ire Philadelphia's police union (the FOP) and local radio personalities supportive of Abu-Jamal's execution for the December 1981 death of Policeman Daniel Faulkner.
The anti-Abu-Jamal barrage of emails and telephone calls unleashed on the Clef Club included declarations perilously close to terroristic threats.
Some of the emails, including from persons identifying themselves as Philadelphia police officers, threatened a withdrawal of police services from the Clef Club.
"Any self respecting police officer in Philadelphia should refuse to answer any calls for service at your establishment," one policeman reportedly stated in an email.
"Since you insist on supporting this piece of trash, I highly recommend that in the future if you find yourself a victim of crime that you DO NOT call 911 for help. Call mumia or MOVE….if you cannot support us why then should we support you?"
While the Imus controversy dominated the national spotlight last week, the Board of the Clef Club decided not to accommodate the Abu-Jamal event.
The Board, according to sources, decided to utilize the venue only for events that support the Club's mission of furthering arts and culture in the community.
The FOP's website offered a different take on the Board's decision.
The Board reviewed the "event and its implications" for Philadelphia police and "moved to cancel the event," stated a FOP website posting.
"The Clef Club Board indicated that they "wish no harm to come to any Philadelphia Police officer ever.""
Funny how many of those citing Free Speech Rights to question the propriety of firing Imus for his latest racist rant never question the propriety of routinely sabotaging Free Speech Rights of those asserting that official misconduct stripped constitutional fair trial rights from Abu-Jamal.
Opponents of Abu-Jamal proclaim his conviction an `open-&-shut' case of guilt.
Yet, authorities used `open-&-shut' following the arrest of a suspect for the May 1981 sniper murder of a Philadelphia policeman.
Police, according to '81 news reports, stated this suspect confessed his involvement in murdering that (black) policeman.
Yet, a jury acquitted the teenaged suspect in this `open-&-shut' case.
Authorities used `open-&-shut' following the June 1981 arrest of a suspect for murdering a Philly organized crime figure. Authorities cited eyewitness identification and a jail-house confession…evidence that sent this suspect to death row.
Yet, evidence later proved that this suspect was framed by two Philadelphia police detectives and a PD sketch artist.
The City of Philadelphia ultimately paid $1.9-million to settle a lawsuit filed by this suspect.
Those responsible for this `open-&-shut' case suspect falsely spending 1,375-days on death row, suffering a nervous breakdown and developing ulcers never faced criminal charges.
Authorities used `open-&-shut' during the 1989, triple murder trial of Harold Wilson.
Wilson, a speaker on the program featuring Glover, spent over 16-years on Pa's death row before his release in November 2005 resulting from serious misconduct by police and prosecutors, including withholding evidence of innocence.
When authorities released Wilson – after robbing a dozen-plus years from his life – they gave him sixty-five cents, a SEPTA token and a warning: Don't come back!
Misconduct by police and prosecutors are elements in the so-called `open-&-shut' conviction of Abu-Jamal – a conviction the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals will review during a May 17th hearing.
The phrase double-standards float around the Imus firing, questioning his sacking while allowing some rap music artists to profit from using similar slurs.
Double-standards undercut the FOP's claims that its staunch stance against Abu-Jamal is simply defending police officers from attack.
In December 1978, the FOP expelled a long-time member for criticizing the televised police beating of a MOVE member during a shoot-out where an officer died.
Prior to the FOP's expulsion, Officer (and local NAACP president) Alfonso Deal received death threats.
Refusals by police to `back-up' Deal while on patrol forced black off-duty policemen to provide protection to Deal.
In March 1991 the City made a six-figure settlement in the lawsuit filed by a police detective who charged ranking Police and FOP officials with viciously retaliating against him for testifying before the Commission investigating the 1985 MOVE bombing.
A 3/14/91 Daily News editorial criticized city officials for failing to fire those responsible for terrorizing that detective.
The national soul-searching following the Imus firing must extend beyond examining broadcast bigotry.
Justice-for-all needs to move from flowery rhetoric to factual reality.
Linn Washington Jr. is an award-winning writer who teaches journalism at Temple University
The Philadelphia Tribune 4/17/07
IMUS ISN'T IS THE ONLY ISSUE TO ADDRESS
By Linn Washington Jr.
Animals! Piece of Trash! Scum bag!
These words sound like the vicious name-calling that got fabled shock-jock Don Imus fired last week.
However, this name-calling has a more homegrown origin.
Yes, there's a radio connection to this expression of hatred.
And, yes, there is a racial animus element embedded in the ill-informed comments containing this name-calling.
But, the culprit here is not the now defunct Imus-In-The-Morning program that blared on both radio and cable television.
These venomous words are some of the verbal vomit hurled recently at Philadelphia's Clef Club expressing outrage toward a program scheduled for next Tuesday at the jazz venue on South Broad Street featuring famed actor/activist Danny Glover.
A centerpiece of this program was the planned showing of a documentary video narrated by Glover examining the controversial case of Philadelphia born, death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Because this program examines the case of Abu-Jamal and is scheduled to take place on Abu-Jamal's birthday, it immediately sparked the ire Philadelphia's police union (the FOP) and local radio personalities supportive of Abu-Jamal's execution for the December 1981 death of Policeman Daniel Faulkner.
The anti-Abu-Jamal barrage of emails and telephone calls unleashed on the Clef Club included declarations perilously close to terroristic threats.
Some of the emails, including from persons identifying themselves as Philadelphia police officers, threatened a withdrawal of police services from the Clef Club.
"Any self respecting police officer in Philadelphia should refuse to answer any calls for service at your establishment," one policeman reportedly stated in an email.
"Since you insist on supporting this piece of trash, I highly recommend that in the future if you find yourself a victim of crime that you DO NOT call 911 for help. Call mumia or MOVE….if you cannot support us why then should we support you?"
While the Imus controversy dominated the national spotlight last week, the Board of the Clef Club decided not to accommodate the Abu-Jamal event.
The Board, according to sources, decided to utilize the venue only for events that support the Club's mission of furthering arts and culture in the community.
The FOP's website offered a different take on the Board's decision.
The Board reviewed the "event and its implications" for Philadelphia police and "moved to cancel the event," stated a FOP website posting.
"The Clef Club Board indicated that they "wish no harm to come to any Philadelphia Police officer ever.""
Funny how many of those citing Free Speech Rights to question the propriety of firing Imus for his latest racist rant never question the propriety of routinely sabotaging Free Speech Rights of those asserting that official misconduct stripped constitutional fair trial rights from Abu-Jamal.
Opponents of Abu-Jamal proclaim his conviction an `open-&-shut' case of guilt.
Yet, authorities used `open-&-shut' following the arrest of a suspect for the May 1981 sniper murder of a Philadelphia policeman.
Police, according to '81 news reports, stated this suspect confessed his involvement in murdering that (black) policeman.
Yet, a jury acquitted the teenaged suspect in this `open-&-shut' case.
Authorities used `open-&-shut' following the June 1981 arrest of a suspect for murdering a Philly organized crime figure. Authorities cited eyewitness identification and a jail-house confession…evidence that sent this suspect to death row.
Yet, evidence later proved that this suspect was framed by two Philadelphia police detectives and a PD sketch artist.
The City of Philadelphia ultimately paid $1.9-million to settle a lawsuit filed by this suspect.
Those responsible for this `open-&-shut' case suspect falsely spending 1,375-days on death row, suffering a nervous breakdown and developing ulcers never faced criminal charges.
Authorities used `open-&-shut' during the 1989, triple murder trial of Harold Wilson.
Wilson, a speaker on the program featuring Glover, spent over 16-years on Pa's death row before his release in November 2005 resulting from serious misconduct by police and prosecutors, including withholding evidence of innocence.
When authorities released Wilson – after robbing a dozen-plus years from his life – they gave him sixty-five cents, a SEPTA token and a warning: Don't come back!
Misconduct by police and prosecutors are elements in the so-called `open-&-shut' conviction of Abu-Jamal – a conviction the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals will review during a May 17th hearing.
The phrase double-standards float around the Imus firing, questioning his sacking while allowing some rap music artists to profit from using similar slurs.
Double-standards undercut the FOP's claims that its staunch stance against Abu-Jamal is simply defending police officers from attack.
In December 1978, the FOP expelled a long-time member for criticizing the televised police beating of a MOVE member during a shoot-out where an officer died.
Prior to the FOP's expulsion, Officer (and local NAACP president) Alfonso Deal received death threats.
Refusals by police to `back-up' Deal while on patrol forced black off-duty policemen to provide protection to Deal.
In March 1991 the City made a six-figure settlement in the lawsuit filed by a police detective who charged ranking Police and FOP officials with viciously retaliating against him for testifying before the Commission investigating the 1985 MOVE bombing.
A 3/14/91 Daily News editorial criticized city officials for failing to fire those responsible for terrorizing that detective.
The national soul-searching following the Imus firing must extend beyond examining broadcast bigotry.
Justice-for-all needs to move from flowery rhetoric to factual reality.
Linn Washington Jr. is an award-winning writer who teaches journalism at Temple University
Hans Bennett interviews Abu-Jamal attorney Robert R. Bryan
Abu-Jamal Attorney Responds to Philly DA
Is the DA afraid the Third Circuit will grant a new trial?
As reported in two recent Associated Press articles April 6 and April 16, the Philadelphia District Attorney has filed a motion asking the entire 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to recuse itself from black death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal's case on grounds that Gov. Ed Rendell, whose wife serves on the court, was district attorney during Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial. The DA argues that if the court rules unfavorably for Abu-Jamal, the defendant could then argue that the ruling was a result of bias from the court, and as the Associated Press wrote, the DA allegedly "wants to leave Abu-Jamal no grounds for any future appeal."
Assistant District Attorney Hugh J. Burns Jr. wrote in his motion that since "Mr. Rendell was the elected district attorney at the time in question, and so would have been responsible for the supposed 'routine' racially discriminatory practices of Philadelphia prosecutors, Abu-Jamal's accusations necessarily implicate Mr. Rendell personally,"
This request followed the March 22 announcement that Abu-Jamal would have oral arguments in Philadelphia on May 17, where the court will consider four different issues that have already been certified for appeal. Supporters have already begun organizing a mass-demonstration in Philadelphia on May 17, and many feel that the DA's request is actually designed 1) to delay the oral arguments and 2) to move Abu-Jamal's case to a more conservative circuit that will be less sympathetic to the issues being presented for a new trial.
Abu-Jamal's attorney, Robert R, Bryan, strongly opposed this move by the District Attorney and filed his response with the court on April 13.
In this interview (conducted on April 16), Bryan responds to this recent move from the DA and provides background on the issues being considered on May 17.
San Francisco attorney Robert R. Bryan has appeared as chief counsel in numerous murder cases and specializes in death-penalty litigation. He is a member of the bar of the United States Supreme Court, California, New York, Alabama, various federal courts, and is the former Chair of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Washington, DC.
Mumia Abu-Jamal first began writing Mr. Bryan in 1986 and in 1991 formally asked him to take his case. The attorney had to decline at that time due to a full schedule of other capital case commitments. In 2003 Mr. Bryan was again approached, and finally agreed to become lead counsel for Mr. Abu-Jamal. He can be contacted via email: RobertRBryan@aol.com
Hans Bennett: Last week, you filed a response to the DA's request to have the 3rd Circuit Court recuse itself? What's this all about?
Robert R. Bryan: I was surprised that the Philadelphia District Attorney actually asked for the disqualification of every judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. This seems really over the top. On Friday, April 13, I filed a response aggressively opposing this effort by the DA. One of my concerns is that the prosecution not be allowed to use this ploy to delay oral argument which is set for May 17.
Mumia has been locked up for over a quarter of a century and on death row for 24. This day for oral arguments has been a long time coming and we do not want justice delayed. That is the bottom line. Also, I feel that this court can be fair. The grounds presented by the DA for disqualification of every judge are baseless and absurd.
I have been doing death penalty work for three decades and this is a novel approach. Of course, in some cases a judge might not be fair and must be disqualified. An example would be when I reopened in New Jersey the Hauptmann-Lindbergh Trial of the Century on behalf of Anna Hauptmann, the widow of Richard Hauptmann. He was executed in 1936 for the kidnap-murder of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.; that was long before I was born. In the 1980s I uncovered evidence suppressed by the government establishing that Mr. Hauptmann was in fact innocent. We were litigating the case in the U.S. District Court, Newark. I asked for the recusal of the judge assigned to the case in the belief he could not be fair because his father had been involved in the initial 1932 Lindbergh kidnap investigation as a police chief.
Recusal is statutorily required where a judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed facts, or where there is the appearance of impropriety. However, I do not see those conditions in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, where the DA wants to disqualify not just one judge, but rather the entire court.
Bennett: Has the three-judge panel even been selected yet?
Bryan: No. We do not at this point know whom the three judges will be to hear and decide the case. For the District Attorney to be asking for disqualification under the circumstances seems absurd.
Bennett: In December, 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals shocked many by agreeing to consider two claims not "certified for appeal" by Judge Yohn in 2001. Do you think the DA is threatened by the 3rd Circuit because they may fairly consider the issues and grant your client a new trial?
Bryan: The prosecution seems intent on doing just about anything to avoid that result: a new trial not riddled with racism. The DA's efforts seem not only for the purpose of delaying the May 17 oral argument, but is also a transparent attempt to maneuver the case into being heard by really conservative judges from other circuits. This court, the Third Circuit, has a reputation for being fair and evenhanded, much more than some of the other courts. That is all Mumia and I want—fairness.
The United States is divided into different circuits. This particular circuit is known for being just, particularly when there have been constitutional abuses and has been willing to grant relief. It is clear what the DA is trying to do. The prosecution wants Mumia's case out of the Third Circuit and heard instead by judges from elsewhere who are more conservative and less concerned about constitutional violations, particularly with death penalty cases such as this.
A word of caution. Being in the Third Circuit certainly does not guarantee a favorable outcome. What Mumia and I want is that his case be fairly heard and adjudged. If that occurs then we have a good chance of being granted a new trial, since the constitutional violations are so egregious. Racism and unfairness are threads that have run through this case since the beginning.
Bennett: In 2003 a state court ruled against considering court stenographer Terry Maurer-Carter's affidavit. Since this time, have you been able to include her affidavit in the current federal appeal, despite the state ruling?
Bryan: Ms. Maurer-Carter came forward in August, 2001 with startling new evidence. She revealed that during the 1982 trial she overheard Judge Albert Sabo state, in reference to Mumia, that he was going to help "fry the nigger." Her sworn declaration was immediately filed in the U.S. District Court. Three weeks later on September 17, 2001, a motion was filed federally in an effort to expand the judicial bias claim, contending that the newly discovered evidence established the judge "was racially prejudiced" against Mumia. The evidence also was submitted to the state court, and then as part of a petition I filed March 8, 2004 in the United States Supreme Court. The issue we presented was whether it is permissible under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments for a judge to preside over a capital murder trial in which he was overheard stating in reference to the accused that he was going to help "fry the nigger." Just quoting those horrible words of Judge Sabo sends chills down my spine.
Bennett: You have included her statement in your current 3rd Circuit appeal, in particular regarding the fourth issue being considered: Judge Sabo's unfairness at the 1995 PCRA evidentiary hearings.
Bryan: Yes. We have four issues in this case and this one concerns Judge Sabo's bias, not at the 1982 trial, but during the 1995 post-conviction (PCRA) evidentiary hearing. I am stuck with that limitation since the lawyers previously on the case did not as a matter of law accuse Judge Sabo of bias at the trial. The judge who was deciding whether or not to grant a new trial in 1995 was the same person who presided over the 1982 trial in which my client was convicted and sentenced to death. Judge Yohn assumed as part of his federal rulings in 2001, that in denying relief Judge Sabo was impartial and fair. Now we know that was not true. When it came to Mumia Abu-Jamal, Judge Sabo made a bigoted remark that he was intent on seeing my client "fry", to be executed. The constitutional principles of due process, fundamental fairness, and equal protection of the law, had taken a holiday from his courtroom. As you know, Mumia has been on death row ever since the trial.
Aside from the numerous violations of my client's constitutional rights detailed in our briefs, we also have this evidence that Judge Sabo said he was going to help the prosecution kill my client, referring to him in the most racist and despicable manner imaginable.
Sabo's "fry the nigger" comment is interrelated with what we are arguing on May 17, but it is not the sole basis of the argument that Judge Sabo was unfair at the 1995 hearing. But it is now part of it and we put it in because it was raised shortly following discovery, and was presented to the U.S. District Court. So I feel it is legitimately there before the Court of Appeals.
As you know, I have litigated numerous death penalty cases around the country for three decades. Back when I was trying many cases in the South, I went before some very racist judges. One even jailed me three days for contempt of court for challenging his racism and bias. Incidentally, my client was cleared—acquitted of murder and all related charges. With all the racism I have witnessed, never have I been before someone who was so arrogant about his or her racism as to just openly talk about it. Mumia's case occurred not in the South, but in Philadelphia, which, aside from the police department, is a sophisticated city. Yet, in this case Judge Sabo refers to Mumia as a "nigger" and boasts about helping the prosecution ensure that he is executed. This is the big gorilla in the room that must be addressed; it cannot be ignored.
Bennett: It's remarkable that Judge Pamela Dembe ruled in 2001 that even if Maurer-Carter was correct, it simply does not matter. She said that since it "was a jury trial, as long as the presiding judge's rulings were legally correct, claims as to what might have motivated or animated those rulings are not relevant."
Bryan: I feel that as a matter of law Judge Dembe was wrong, and of course rejecting that she employed faulty judgment. The subsequent ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which I took to the United State Supreme Court, was likewise based upon illogical reasoning. Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, this issue was also presented during the same period in the U.S. District Court. The sworn declaration of Terri Maurer-Carter was promptly filed federally.
It is interesting that Ms. Maurer-Carter's husband was a police officer and she an official court stenographer who has received awards for the excellence for her court-reporting work. She is just a normal personal, not political, but what Ms. Maurer-Carter overheard really bothered her. I have great respect for her, that she had the courage to come forward with this information. Ms. Maurer-Carter could have remained silent and stayed out of this, and she and her family would certainly feel safer at night.
Bennett: Do you have an estimate of you how long it will take for the 3rd Circuit Court to make the ruling on a new trial?
Bryan: It is difficult to say. The court has a goal of having an internal draft decision within 60 days following assignment or all supplemental briefing. Yet, if a judge on the panel wishes to concur or dissent, he or she should submit the opinion within 45 days after a second judge's approval of the majority decision. These are only targets the court sets for itself so it could reach a decision much quicker, or longer. I hope to have a ruling before the end of the summer, but that depends upon what happens internally with the court; it could be sometime in the fall. I do not think it will sit on this case for a long time. This is a court not known to procrastinate and hold up the wheels of justice.
Bennett: What rulings could the court make?
Bryan: I will give you the two extremes of what might happen: (1) If the court decides that Mumia deserves a new trial, the judges might order a retrial. (2) If the court rules against us on everything, it we would be looking down the barrel of an execution and need to petition the United States Supreme Court. Of course, there are various rulings the court could make between these two extremes, such as sending the case back to a lower court for further hearings, only ordering a retrial on the issues of life or death, etc.
The issues in this case are of great constitutional importance. In additional to the work by associate counsel Professor Judith L. Ritter and me, there has been support from highly respected legal organizations. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has written a friend of the court brief on the "racism-in-jury-selection" issue. There was also a brief filed by the National Lawyers Guild, which has been joined by the National Conference of Black Lawyers, International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute of Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, the Southern Center for Human Rights, and the National Jury Project. That is quite a list of human rights-oriented organizations arguing that this case cries for a new and fair trial not riddled with racism, as it was initially.
Bennett: What can supporters around the world do to best aid your battle in the courts?
Bryan: People need to openly express their concern for human rights, opposition to the death penalty, and demand what we are after in this case: a completely new trial, at the conclusion of that trial, my client could go home to his family. That is the bottom line, and that is what's driving me and the legal team: Mumia's ultimate freedom.
That being said, I consider it very important that people's voices are heard in many ways, like peacefully demonstrating, writing letters to newspaper editors, op-ed pieces, news articles. It is really like what you, Hans, are doing: just getting the word out publicly about the injustices that have occurred in this case—letting the facts speak for themselves. That is what people can do. Of course we need financial support for the legal effort, and there is a fund strictly for the legal defense, the Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal (see below).
The big thing is that that people's voices are heard. I was in Berlin, Germany, in January and spoke to an audience of well over two thousand people. The audience's boisterous reaction to my remarks was overwhelming—they recognized the importance of Mumia to the cause of people's basic rights. There is also much activism in many other countries, such as France, England, Spain, Italy. Mumia Abu-Jamal has become a worldwide symbol in the struggle against the death penalty, and against human rights abuses.
When arrested Mumia was a prominent journalist who was known as the Voice of the Voiceless, because he spoke out against governmental abuses and corruption. The authorities thought when they prosecuted and put him on death row, they would silence him. Ironically he is heard by more people today through radio and print than he was when free. Mumia does not write about himself, but rather about big issues like women's rights, racism, wrongs committed by the U.S. and other governments in Iraq, how we treat prisoners at places like Guantanamo, the education of young people, and poverty.
The Philadelphia District Attorney's goal is to kill Mumia, to see him put him in the death chamber, strapped down, and murdered in the name of the law. The hope of the state is to silence Mumia once and for all.
We all need to understand that the racism and unfairness continues through the present and we are trying to change that.
Bennett: Anything else to add?
Bryan: The Batson issue, which concerns racism in jury selection, is very important. It was not just in my client's case, but it was actually the modus operandi of lawyers in the District Attorney's Office to remove people from the jury who were black and poor. This rendered the trial unfair. The U.S. Supreme Court as well as the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have spoken on this issue, ruling that this type of behavior by prosecutors is constitutionally unacceptable.
Bennett: How long have you and Mumia know each other?
Bryan: Mumia started writing me in 1986 and we eventually got to know each other, but I had to turn down the case because I was too busy with other death penalty work. When he came back to me just over four years ago, I could not say no, because it was too important and he needed help.
Mumia has reminded me that what we are all doing is far bigger that just his case. It relates to everyone on death row, and is about people everywhere who are unfairly treated, political prisoners around the globe. We need to bear in mind that a victory for Mumia Abu-Jamal will help other people. That is Mumia's concern. He hopes that what we are doing in his case will help other death row inmates, and put a spotlight on the things wrong with legal systems everywhere. The racism needs to be exposed, brought out to the light of day, and changed. We are about making change for a lot of people.
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To contribute to the legal defense of Mumia, check should be made payable to the "National Lawyers Guild Foundation." The NLG Foundation is a tax-exempt, nonprofit charitable organization under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3). Donations should be mailed to: Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, P.O. Box 2012, New York, NY 10159.
The four issues being considered are:
#1. Whether the penalty phase of Mumia's trial violated the legal precedent set by the US Supreme Court's 1988 Mills v. Maryland ruling. This issue was grounds for Yohn's overturning the death sentence in 2001 and is now being appealed by the DA. Yohn ruled that sentencing forms used by jurors and Judge Sabo's instructions to the jury were confusing. Subsequently, jurors mistakenly believed that they had to unanimously agree on any mitigating circumstances in order to be considered as weighing against a death sentence.
#2. "Certified for appeal" by Yohn in 2001, the Batson claim, addresses the prosecution's use of peremptory challenges to exclude Blacks from Mumia's jury. In 1986, the US Supreme Court ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that a defendant deserves a new trial if it can be proved that jurors were excluded on the grounds of race.
At Mumia's trial, Prosecutor McGill used 11 of his 15 peremptory challenges to remove black jurors that were otherwise acceptable. While Philadelphia is 44% black, Abu-Jamal's jury was composed of ten whites and only two blacks. From 1977-1986 when current Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell was Philadelphia's DA, the evidence of racism is striking: from 1977-86, the Philadelphia DA struck 58% of black jurors, but only 22% of white jurors.
#3. The legality of McGill's statement to the jury minimizing the seriousness of a verdict of guilt: "if you find the Defendant guilty of course there would be appeal after appeal and perhaps there could be a reversal of the case, or whatever, so that may not be final."
In 1986 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against McGill in another case (Commonwealth v. Baker) on the same grounds. When Mumia addressed this same issue in his 1989 appeal with the State Supreme Court, the court reversed its decision on the legality of such a statement—ruling against the claim for a mistrial.
Incredibly, just one year later, in the very next case involving this issue (Commonwealth v. Beasley), the State Supreme Court flip-flopped and restored the precedent. However, this would not affect the ruling against Mumia, because the court ruled that this precedent would only apply in "future trials."
#4. The fairness of Mumia's 1995-97 PCRA hearings when the retired, 74-year-old Judge Sabo was called back specifically for the hearing. Besides the obvious unfairness of recalling the exact same judge to rule on his fairness in the original 1982 trial, his actual PCRA bias has been extensively documented.
During the 1995 hearings, the mainstream Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the "behavior of the judge…gave the impression, damaging in the extreme, of undue haste and hostility toward the defense's case." Concluding the PCRA hearing, Sabo rejected all evidence and every witness presented by the defense as not being credible. Therefore, Sabo upheld all of the facts and procedures of the original trial as being correct.
For more information, visit mumia.org (Philadelphia), freemumia.com (New York City), freemumia.org (San Francisco), or emajonline.com (Educators for Mumia).
For the latest on Abu-Jamal from the independent media, check out Bennett's new "Voice of the Voiceless" series on Abu-Jamal being published in the months leading up to the oral arguments at: http://hbjournalist1.googlepages.com/ms
Hans Bennett (insubordination.blogspot.com) is a Philadelphia-based photojournalist who has been documenting the movement to free Mumia and all political prisoners for more than 5 years
Is the DA afraid the Third Circuit will grant a new trial?
As reported in two recent Associated Press articles April 6 and April 16, the Philadelphia District Attorney has filed a motion asking the entire 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to recuse itself from black death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal's case on grounds that Gov. Ed Rendell, whose wife serves on the court, was district attorney during Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial. The DA argues that if the court rules unfavorably for Abu-Jamal, the defendant could then argue that the ruling was a result of bias from the court, and as the Associated Press wrote, the DA allegedly "wants to leave Abu-Jamal no grounds for any future appeal."
Assistant District Attorney Hugh J. Burns Jr. wrote in his motion that since "Mr. Rendell was the elected district attorney at the time in question, and so would have been responsible for the supposed 'routine' racially discriminatory practices of Philadelphia prosecutors, Abu-Jamal's accusations necessarily implicate Mr. Rendell personally,"
This request followed the March 22 announcement that Abu-Jamal would have oral arguments in Philadelphia on May 17, where the court will consider four different issues that have already been certified for appeal. Supporters have already begun organizing a mass-demonstration in Philadelphia on May 17, and many feel that the DA's request is actually designed 1) to delay the oral arguments and 2) to move Abu-Jamal's case to a more conservative circuit that will be less sympathetic to the issues being presented for a new trial.
Abu-Jamal's attorney, Robert R, Bryan, strongly opposed this move by the District Attorney and filed his response with the court on April 13.
In this interview (conducted on April 16), Bryan responds to this recent move from the DA and provides background on the issues being considered on May 17.
San Francisco attorney Robert R. Bryan has appeared as chief counsel in numerous murder cases and specializes in death-penalty litigation. He is a member of the bar of the United States Supreme Court, California, New York, Alabama, various federal courts, and is the former Chair of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Washington, DC.
Mumia Abu-Jamal first began writing Mr. Bryan in 1986 and in 1991 formally asked him to take his case. The attorney had to decline at that time due to a full schedule of other capital case commitments. In 2003 Mr. Bryan was again approached, and finally agreed to become lead counsel for Mr. Abu-Jamal. He can be contacted via email: RobertRBryan@aol.com
Hans Bennett: Last week, you filed a response to the DA's request to have the 3rd Circuit Court recuse itself? What's this all about?
Robert R. Bryan: I was surprised that the Philadelphia District Attorney actually asked for the disqualification of every judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. This seems really over the top. On Friday, April 13, I filed a response aggressively opposing this effort by the DA. One of my concerns is that the prosecution not be allowed to use this ploy to delay oral argument which is set for May 17.
Mumia has been locked up for over a quarter of a century and on death row for 24. This day for oral arguments has been a long time coming and we do not want justice delayed. That is the bottom line. Also, I feel that this court can be fair. The grounds presented by the DA for disqualification of every judge are baseless and absurd.
I have been doing death penalty work for three decades and this is a novel approach. Of course, in some cases a judge might not be fair and must be disqualified. An example would be when I reopened in New Jersey the Hauptmann-Lindbergh Trial of the Century on behalf of Anna Hauptmann, the widow of Richard Hauptmann. He was executed in 1936 for the kidnap-murder of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.; that was long before I was born. In the 1980s I uncovered evidence suppressed by the government establishing that Mr. Hauptmann was in fact innocent. We were litigating the case in the U.S. District Court, Newark. I asked for the recusal of the judge assigned to the case in the belief he could not be fair because his father had been involved in the initial 1932 Lindbergh kidnap investigation as a police chief.
Recusal is statutorily required where a judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed facts, or where there is the appearance of impropriety. However, I do not see those conditions in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, where the DA wants to disqualify not just one judge, but rather the entire court.
Bennett: Has the three-judge panel even been selected yet?
Bryan: No. We do not at this point know whom the three judges will be to hear and decide the case. For the District Attorney to be asking for disqualification under the circumstances seems absurd.
Bennett: In December, 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals shocked many by agreeing to consider two claims not "certified for appeal" by Judge Yohn in 2001. Do you think the DA is threatened by the 3rd Circuit because they may fairly consider the issues and grant your client a new trial?
Bryan: The prosecution seems intent on doing just about anything to avoid that result: a new trial not riddled with racism. The DA's efforts seem not only for the purpose of delaying the May 17 oral argument, but is also a transparent attempt to maneuver the case into being heard by really conservative judges from other circuits. This court, the Third Circuit, has a reputation for being fair and evenhanded, much more than some of the other courts. That is all Mumia and I want—fairness.
The United States is divided into different circuits. This particular circuit is known for being just, particularly when there have been constitutional abuses and has been willing to grant relief. It is clear what the DA is trying to do. The prosecution wants Mumia's case out of the Third Circuit and heard instead by judges from elsewhere who are more conservative and less concerned about constitutional violations, particularly with death penalty cases such as this.
A word of caution. Being in the Third Circuit certainly does not guarantee a favorable outcome. What Mumia and I want is that his case be fairly heard and adjudged. If that occurs then we have a good chance of being granted a new trial, since the constitutional violations are so egregious. Racism and unfairness are threads that have run through this case since the beginning.
Bennett: In 2003 a state court ruled against considering court stenographer Terry Maurer-Carter's affidavit. Since this time, have you been able to include her affidavit in the current federal appeal, despite the state ruling?
Bryan: Ms. Maurer-Carter came forward in August, 2001 with startling new evidence. She revealed that during the 1982 trial she overheard Judge Albert Sabo state, in reference to Mumia, that he was going to help "fry the nigger." Her sworn declaration was immediately filed in the U.S. District Court. Three weeks later on September 17, 2001, a motion was filed federally in an effort to expand the judicial bias claim, contending that the newly discovered evidence established the judge "was racially prejudiced" against Mumia. The evidence also was submitted to the state court, and then as part of a petition I filed March 8, 2004 in the United States Supreme Court. The issue we presented was whether it is permissible under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments for a judge to preside over a capital murder trial in which he was overheard stating in reference to the accused that he was going to help "fry the nigger." Just quoting those horrible words of Judge Sabo sends chills down my spine.
Bennett: You have included her statement in your current 3rd Circuit appeal, in particular regarding the fourth issue being considered: Judge Sabo's unfairness at the 1995 PCRA evidentiary hearings.
Bryan: Yes. We have four issues in this case and this one concerns Judge Sabo's bias, not at the 1982 trial, but during the 1995 post-conviction (PCRA) evidentiary hearing. I am stuck with that limitation since the lawyers previously on the case did not as a matter of law accuse Judge Sabo of bias at the trial. The judge who was deciding whether or not to grant a new trial in 1995 was the same person who presided over the 1982 trial in which my client was convicted and sentenced to death. Judge Yohn assumed as part of his federal rulings in 2001, that in denying relief Judge Sabo was impartial and fair. Now we know that was not true. When it came to Mumia Abu-Jamal, Judge Sabo made a bigoted remark that he was intent on seeing my client "fry", to be executed. The constitutional principles of due process, fundamental fairness, and equal protection of the law, had taken a holiday from his courtroom. As you know, Mumia has been on death row ever since the trial.
Aside from the numerous violations of my client's constitutional rights detailed in our briefs, we also have this evidence that Judge Sabo said he was going to help the prosecution kill my client, referring to him in the most racist and despicable manner imaginable.
Sabo's "fry the nigger" comment is interrelated with what we are arguing on May 17, but it is not the sole basis of the argument that Judge Sabo was unfair at the 1995 hearing. But it is now part of it and we put it in because it was raised shortly following discovery, and was presented to the U.S. District Court. So I feel it is legitimately there before the Court of Appeals.
As you know, I have litigated numerous death penalty cases around the country for three decades. Back when I was trying many cases in the South, I went before some very racist judges. One even jailed me three days for contempt of court for challenging his racism and bias. Incidentally, my client was cleared—acquitted of murder and all related charges. With all the racism I have witnessed, never have I been before someone who was so arrogant about his or her racism as to just openly talk about it. Mumia's case occurred not in the South, but in Philadelphia, which, aside from the police department, is a sophisticated city. Yet, in this case Judge Sabo refers to Mumia as a "nigger" and boasts about helping the prosecution ensure that he is executed. This is the big gorilla in the room that must be addressed; it cannot be ignored.
Bennett: It's remarkable that Judge Pamela Dembe ruled in 2001 that even if Maurer-Carter was correct, it simply does not matter. She said that since it "was a jury trial, as long as the presiding judge's rulings were legally correct, claims as to what might have motivated or animated those rulings are not relevant."
Bryan: I feel that as a matter of law Judge Dembe was wrong, and of course rejecting that she employed faulty judgment. The subsequent ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which I took to the United State Supreme Court, was likewise based upon illogical reasoning. Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, this issue was also presented during the same period in the U.S. District Court. The sworn declaration of Terri Maurer-Carter was promptly filed federally.
It is interesting that Ms. Maurer-Carter's husband was a police officer and she an official court stenographer who has received awards for the excellence for her court-reporting work. She is just a normal personal, not political, but what Ms. Maurer-Carter overheard really bothered her. I have great respect for her, that she had the courage to come forward with this information. Ms. Maurer-Carter could have remained silent and stayed out of this, and she and her family would certainly feel safer at night.
Bennett: Do you have an estimate of you how long it will take for the 3rd Circuit Court to make the ruling on a new trial?
Bryan: It is difficult to say. The court has a goal of having an internal draft decision within 60 days following assignment or all supplemental briefing. Yet, if a judge on the panel wishes to concur or dissent, he or she should submit the opinion within 45 days after a second judge's approval of the majority decision. These are only targets the court sets for itself so it could reach a decision much quicker, or longer. I hope to have a ruling before the end of the summer, but that depends upon what happens internally with the court; it could be sometime in the fall. I do not think it will sit on this case for a long time. This is a court not known to procrastinate and hold up the wheels of justice.
Bennett: What rulings could the court make?
Bryan: I will give you the two extremes of what might happen: (1) If the court decides that Mumia deserves a new trial, the judges might order a retrial. (2) If the court rules against us on everything, it we would be looking down the barrel of an execution and need to petition the United States Supreme Court. Of course, there are various rulings the court could make between these two extremes, such as sending the case back to a lower court for further hearings, only ordering a retrial on the issues of life or death, etc.
The issues in this case are of great constitutional importance. In additional to the work by associate counsel Professor Judith L. Ritter and me, there has been support from highly respected legal organizations. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has written a friend of the court brief on the "racism-in-jury-selection" issue. There was also a brief filed by the National Lawyers Guild, which has been joined by the National Conference of Black Lawyers, International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute of Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, the Southern Center for Human Rights, and the National Jury Project. That is quite a list of human rights-oriented organizations arguing that this case cries for a new and fair trial not riddled with racism, as it was initially.
Bennett: What can supporters around the world do to best aid your battle in the courts?
Bryan: People need to openly express their concern for human rights, opposition to the death penalty, and demand what we are after in this case: a completely new trial, at the conclusion of that trial, my client could go home to his family. That is the bottom line, and that is what's driving me and the legal team: Mumia's ultimate freedom.
That being said, I consider it very important that people's voices are heard in many ways, like peacefully demonstrating, writing letters to newspaper editors, op-ed pieces, news articles. It is really like what you, Hans, are doing: just getting the word out publicly about the injustices that have occurred in this case—letting the facts speak for themselves. That is what people can do. Of course we need financial support for the legal effort, and there is a fund strictly for the legal defense, the Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal (see below).
The big thing is that that people's voices are heard. I was in Berlin, Germany, in January and spoke to an audience of well over two thousand people. The audience's boisterous reaction to my remarks was overwhelming—they recognized the importance of Mumia to the cause of people's basic rights. There is also much activism in many other countries, such as France, England, Spain, Italy. Mumia Abu-Jamal has become a worldwide symbol in the struggle against the death penalty, and against human rights abuses.
When arrested Mumia was a prominent journalist who was known as the Voice of the Voiceless, because he spoke out against governmental abuses and corruption. The authorities thought when they prosecuted and put him on death row, they would silence him. Ironically he is heard by more people today through radio and print than he was when free. Mumia does not write about himself, but rather about big issues like women's rights, racism, wrongs committed by the U.S. and other governments in Iraq, how we treat prisoners at places like Guantanamo, the education of young people, and poverty.
The Philadelphia District Attorney's goal is to kill Mumia, to see him put him in the death chamber, strapped down, and murdered in the name of the law. The hope of the state is to silence Mumia once and for all.
We all need to understand that the racism and unfairness continues through the present and we are trying to change that.
Bennett: Anything else to add?
Bryan: The Batson issue, which concerns racism in jury selection, is very important. It was not just in my client's case, but it was actually the modus operandi of lawyers in the District Attorney's Office to remove people from the jury who were black and poor. This rendered the trial unfair. The U.S. Supreme Court as well as the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have spoken on this issue, ruling that this type of behavior by prosecutors is constitutionally unacceptable.
Bennett: How long have you and Mumia know each other?
Bryan: Mumia started writing me in 1986 and we eventually got to know each other, but I had to turn down the case because I was too busy with other death penalty work. When he came back to me just over four years ago, I could not say no, because it was too important and he needed help.
Mumia has reminded me that what we are all doing is far bigger that just his case. It relates to everyone on death row, and is about people everywhere who are unfairly treated, political prisoners around the globe. We need to bear in mind that a victory for Mumia Abu-Jamal will help other people. That is Mumia's concern. He hopes that what we are doing in his case will help other death row inmates, and put a spotlight on the things wrong with legal systems everywhere. The racism needs to be exposed, brought out to the light of day, and changed. We are about making change for a lot of people.
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To contribute to the legal defense of Mumia, check should be made payable to the "National Lawyers Guild Foundation." The NLG Foundation is a tax-exempt, nonprofit charitable organization under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3). Donations should be mailed to: Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, P.O. Box 2012, New York, NY 10159.
The four issues being considered are:
#1. Whether the penalty phase of Mumia's trial violated the legal precedent set by the US Supreme Court's 1988 Mills v. Maryland ruling. This issue was grounds for Yohn's overturning the death sentence in 2001 and is now being appealed by the DA. Yohn ruled that sentencing forms used by jurors and Judge Sabo's instructions to the jury were confusing. Subsequently, jurors mistakenly believed that they had to unanimously agree on any mitigating circumstances in order to be considered as weighing against a death sentence.
#2. "Certified for appeal" by Yohn in 2001, the Batson claim, addresses the prosecution's use of peremptory challenges to exclude Blacks from Mumia's jury. In 1986, the US Supreme Court ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that a defendant deserves a new trial if it can be proved that jurors were excluded on the grounds of race.
At Mumia's trial, Prosecutor McGill used 11 of his 15 peremptory challenges to remove black jurors that were otherwise acceptable. While Philadelphia is 44% black, Abu-Jamal's jury was composed of ten whites and only two blacks. From 1977-1986 when current Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell was Philadelphia's DA, the evidence of racism is striking: from 1977-86, the Philadelphia DA struck 58% of black jurors, but only 22% of white jurors.
#3. The legality of McGill's statement to the jury minimizing the seriousness of a verdict of guilt: "if you find the Defendant guilty of course there would be appeal after appeal and perhaps there could be a reversal of the case, or whatever, so that may not be final."
In 1986 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against McGill in another case (Commonwealth v. Baker) on the same grounds. When Mumia addressed this same issue in his 1989 appeal with the State Supreme Court, the court reversed its decision on the legality of such a statement—ruling against the claim for a mistrial.
Incredibly, just one year later, in the very next case involving this issue (Commonwealth v. Beasley), the State Supreme Court flip-flopped and restored the precedent. However, this would not affect the ruling against Mumia, because the court ruled that this precedent would only apply in "future trials."
#4. The fairness of Mumia's 1995-97 PCRA hearings when the retired, 74-year-old Judge Sabo was called back specifically for the hearing. Besides the obvious unfairness of recalling the exact same judge to rule on his fairness in the original 1982 trial, his actual PCRA bias has been extensively documented.
During the 1995 hearings, the mainstream Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the "behavior of the judge…gave the impression, damaging in the extreme, of undue haste and hostility toward the defense's case." Concluding the PCRA hearing, Sabo rejected all evidence and every witness presented by the defense as not being credible. Therefore, Sabo upheld all of the facts and procedures of the original trial as being correct.
For more information, visit mumia.org (Philadelphia), freemumia.com (New York City), freemumia.org (San Francisco), or emajonline.com (Educators for Mumia).
For the latest on Abu-Jamal from the independent media, check out Bennett's new "Voice of the Voiceless" series on Abu-Jamal being published in the months leading up to the oral arguments at: http://hbjournalist1.googlepages.com/ms
Hans Bennett (insubordination.blogspot.com) is a Philadelphia-based photojournalist who has been documenting the movement to free Mumia and all political prisoners for more than 5 years
Response To State Recusal Motion
From Robert Bryan, Lead Counsel for Mumia...
Dear Friends:
Recently the District Attorney of Philadelphia filed a motion seeking the disqualification of all judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia. The matter has been assigned to a special merits panel of the court.
On Friday, April 13, 2007, we filed the Response of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Appellee and Cross-Appellant, In Opposition To Commonwealth's Motion for Recusal. It is attached. As pointed out in our objection to this "misplaced and absurd" judicial disqualification attempt:
"Further, opposing counsel should not be permitted through this ploy to delay oral argument which is scheduled for May 17, 2007. Mr. Abu-Jamal has been on death row for nearly a quarter of a century, and would like for his case to be heard as scheduled by this Court."
Separately we have submitted a motion seeking an expansion of the time allotted for oral argument (Motion for Enlargement of Time for Parties To Orally Argue, and for Participation By Amici Curiae). In view of the complexity of the case, the 30 minutes allotted to each side seems inadequate. We also ask permission for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the National Lawyers Guild (joined by the National Conference of Black Lawyers, International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice of Harvard Law School, Southern Center for Human Rights, and the National Jury Project), which have filed amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs, to be permitted to argue assuming additional time is granted.
You will be promptly advised upon further developments.
With best wishes,
Robert
=======
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Dear Friends:
Recently the District Attorney of Philadelphia filed a motion seeking the disqualification of all judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia. The matter has been assigned to a special merits panel of the court.
On Friday, April 13, 2007, we filed the Response of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Appellee and Cross-Appellant, In Opposition To Commonwealth's Motion for Recusal. It is attached. As pointed out in our objection to this "misplaced and absurd" judicial disqualification attempt:
"Further, opposing counsel should not be permitted through this ploy to delay oral argument which is scheduled for May 17, 2007. Mr. Abu-Jamal has been on death row for nearly a quarter of a century, and would like for his case to be heard as scheduled by this Court."
Separately we have submitted a motion seeking an expansion of the time allotted for oral argument (Motion for Enlargement of Time for Parties To Orally Argue, and for Participation By Amici Curiae). In view of the complexity of the case, the 30 minutes allotted to each side seems inadequate. We also ask permission for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the National Lawyers Guild (joined by the National Conference of Black Lawyers, International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice of Harvard Law School, Southern Center for Human Rights, and the National Jury Project), which have filed amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs, to be permitted to argue assuming additional time is granted.
You will be promptly advised upon further developments.
With best wishes,
Robert
=======
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
NYC Writers Union "Writers' Celebration" - May 12, NYC
The New York City Writers Union will be holding a writers' celebration of Mumia's 53rd birthday, and a mobilizing event for May 17th's "ALL OUT IN PHILADELPHIA FOR MUMIA'S LIFE DECIDING ORAL ARGUMENTS, HIS LAST CHANCE FOR A NEW TRIAL".
SATURDAY, May 12th
TIME: 1 to 5 PM
PLACE: The Community Church, East 35th Street, between Park and Madison, NYC
SATURDAY, May 12th
TIME: 1 to 5 PM
PLACE: The Community Church, East 35th Street, between Park and Madison, NYC
Mumia Abu-Jamal Oral Arguments Set For May 17
Pam Africa calls for mass-demonstration in Philadelphia, and holding mainstream media accountable
by Hans Bennett
On May 17, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in the case of internationally renowned black death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. The court will consider four different issues that it has already certified for appeal. It will then decide to either grant a new trial, affirm the life sentence, or re-instate the death sentence.
Immediately after this date was announced last week, supporters of Abu-Jamal around the world began mobilizing to support Abu-Jamal at the hearings. Explaining the urgency, Pam Africa (coordinator of Abu-Jamal's support network) says that "Mumia can still be executed. Further, since the Supreme Court is unlikely to hear Mumia's case, this is realistically his last chance to get a new trial. As the history of his case shows, we need public pressure to ensure the court's fairness."
"We're asking people to come to Philadelphia and show that the whole world is watching these oral arguments," said Africa. "I believe Mumia is innocent and am personally calling for his immediate release," Africa said. "However, I'll work with anyone supporting a fair trial. By demanding a new trial, we can work with those who know the trial was rotten but are unsure of Mumia's innocence."
Abu-Jamal's attorney, Robert R. Bryan doubts that his client will appear in court because of a rule that the defendant is not brought in for oral arguments. Africa is upset about this rule because she feels that Abu-Jamal's presence will help to ensure fairness. She asks, "these people are arguing about his life, and he's not allowed to be there to make sure everything is done right?"
Africa is also concerned about the limited time given for the presentation of oral arguments. While the 3 rd Circuit Court has granted 45 minutes total, Abu-Jamal's attorney is arguing for at least an hour. Africa argues that "in order to argue this case, you need much more time than that."
A New Trial?
In 1982, Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in a trial that Amnesty International has declared a "violation of minimum international standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death penalty,"
Calling for a new trial, supporters around the world feel that the original one was tainted by racism, prosecutorial & judicial misconduct, coerced witnesses, suppressed evidence, and a denial of Mumia's constitutional right to represent himself.
His case has attracted activists around the world organizing against racism, poverty, corporate media censorship, mass incarceration, political repression, and the death penalty.
Activist Noam Chomsky argues that "Mumia's case is symbolic of something much broader...The US prison system is simply class and race war...Mumia and other prisoners are the kind of people that get assassinated by what's called 'social cleansing' in US client states like Colombia."
Still on Death Row
In December, 2001 Federal District Court Judge William Yohn affirmed Abu-Jamal's guilt but overturned the death sentence. Citing the 1988 Mills v. Maryland precedent, Yohn ruled that sentencing forms used by jurors and Judge Sabo's instructions to the jury were confusing. Subsequently, jurors mistakenly believed that they had to unanimously agree on any mitigating circumstances in order to be considered as weighing against a death sentence.
Mumia's case is now in the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals. DA Lynne Abraham is appealing the death penalty ruling while Mumia is appealing the guilty verdict.
If the penalty ruling is overturned, a new execution date will be set for Mumia. If his ruling is upheld, the DA can still impanel a new jury to rehear the penalty phase, which could then sentence Mumia to death—regardless of the 3 rd Circuit ruling.
Because the DA appealed Yohn's death penalty decision, Mumia has never left death row, and is still unable to have such "privileges" as full-contact visits with his family.
The Four Issues Being Considered
In December, 2005, the 3rd Circuit announced the beginning of deliberations and shocked many by agreeing to consider two claims not "certified for appeal" by Yohn in 2001.
Mumia's attorney Robert R. Bryan declared it to be "the most important decision affecting my client since his 1981 arrest, for it was the first time there was a ruling that could lead to a new trial and his freedom." The courts are now considering the following four issues:
#1. Whether the penalty phase of Mumia's trial violated the legal precedent set by the US Supreme Court's 1988 Mills v. Maryland ruling. This issue was Yohn's grounds for overturning the death sentence and is now being appealed by the DA.
#2. "Certified for appeal" by Yohn in 2001, the Batson claim, addresses the prosecution's use of peremptory challenges to exclude Blacks from Mumia's jury. In 1986, the US Supreme Court ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that a defendant deserves a new trial if it can be proved that jurors were excluded on the grounds of race.
At Mumia's trial, Prosecutor McGill used 11 of his 15 peremptory challenges to remove black jurors that were otherwise acceptable. While Philadelphia is 44% black, Abu-Jamal's jury was composed of ten whites and only two blacks. From 1977-1986 when current Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell was Philadelphia's District Attorney, the evidence of racism is striking: from 1977-86, the Philadelphia DA struck 58% of black jurors, but only 22% of white jurors.
#3. The legality of McGill's statement to the jury minimizing the seriousness of a verdict of guilt: "if you find the Defendant guilty of course there would be appeal after appeal and perhaps there could be a reversal of the case, or whatever, so that may not be final."
In 1986 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against McGill in another case (Commonwealth v. Baker) on the same grounds. When Abu-Jamal addressed this same issue in his 1989 appeal with the State Supreme Court, the court reversed its decision on the legality of such a statement—ruling against the claim for a mistrial.
Incredibly, just one year later, in the very next case involving this issue (Commonwealth v. Beasley), the State Supreme Court flip-flopped and restored the precedent. However, this would not affect the ruling against Mumia, because the court ruled that this precedent would only apply in "future trials." This suggests that the rulings were designed to specifically exclude Mumia's case from its precedent.
#4. The fairness of Mumia's 1995-97 PCRA hearings when the retired, 74-year-old Judge Sabo was called back specifically for the hearing. Besides the obvious unfairness of recalling the exact same judge to rule on his fairness in the original 1982 trial, his actual PCRA bias has been extensively documented.
During the 1995 hearings, the mainstream Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the "behavior of the judge in the case was disturbing the first time around—and in hearings last week he did not give the impression to those in the courtroom of fair mindedness. Instead, he gave the impression, damaging in the extreme, of undue haste and hostility toward the defense's case."
Concluding the PCRA hearing, Sabo rejected all evidence and every witness presented by the defense as not being credible. Therefore, Sabo upheld all of the facts and procedures of the original trial as being correct.
"I'm Going To Help Them Fry The Nigger"
In 2001 another witness—Terri Mauer-Carter—challenged Sabo's integrity, but the State Supreme Court ruled against the defense's right to include her affidavit in their current federal appeal. Mauer-Carter was working as a stenographer in the Philadelphia Court system on the eve of Mumia's 1982 trail when she states that she overheard Judge Sabo say in reference to Mumia's case that he was going to help the prosecution "fry the nigger."
Journalist Dave Lindorff recently interviewed Mauer-Carter's former boss, Richard Klein, who was with Mauer-Carter when she states she overheard Sabo. A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge at the time, who now sits on PA's Superior Court, Klein told Lindorff: "I won't say it did happen, and I won't say it didn't. That was a long time ago." Lindorff considers Klein's refusal to firmly reject Mauer-Carter's claim to be an affirmation of her statement.
The State Supreme Court ruling was an affirmation of lower-level Judge Patricia Dembe's argument that even if Maurer-Carter is correct about Sabo's stated intent to use his position as Judge to throw the trial and help the prosecution "fry the nigger," it doesn't matter. According to Dembe, since it "was a jury trial, as long as the presiding Judge's rulings were legally correct, claims as to what might have motivated or animated those rulings are not relevant."
Organizing for May 17
Before the May 17 date had been set, Abu-Jamal supporters had already been organizing events for April 24—Mumia's birthday. The event in Philadelphia will show the film Framing an Execution (narrated by Danny Glover), which analyzes the biased presentation of Abu-Jamal's case by Sam Donaldson on ABC's 20/20 in 1999. Afterwards, the forum will discuss new evidence of innocence.
On the same day in France, Abu-Jamal's international supporters will be joined by a US delegation defending last April's naming of a street for Abu-Jamal in the Paris suburb of St. Denis.
"In 2001, when Judge Yohn affirmed Mumia's conviction, he said there was no evidence to show that Mumia is innocent. That is absolutely not true, but Yohn could get away with saying this because the mainstream media did not hold him accountable." Pam Africa argues that independent journalism and aggressive media-activism are urgently needed to challenge the mainstream media to report accurately about the upcoming oral arguments. "Deceitful mainstream media coverage since November has not presented the extensive evidence of Mumia's innocence, and this dishonest coverage makes Mumia seem like a cold blooded killer. Only independent media has been putting the truth out about Mumia."
Among the many stories about Abu-Jamal in the independent press, Africa highly recommends reading about the important new evidence presented in German author Michael Schiffmann's new book on the case—especially the new discovery of crime-scene photos that expose police manipulation of evidence at the scene.
If supporters are unable to travel to Philadelphia on May 17, Africa encourages people do something in their hometown to publicize the oral arguments and hold the mainstream media accountable in their coverage of the case. "Mumia's case represents all that is wrong with this system. We must take action now before its too late."
For more information, check out mumia.org (Philadelphia), freemumia.com (New York City ), freemumia.org (San Francisco), or emajonline.com (Educators for Mumia). For the latest on Abu-Jamal from the independent media, check out Bennett's new "Voice of the Voiceless" series on Abu-Jamal being published in the months leading up to the oral arguments at: http://hbjournalist1.googlepages.com/ms
Hans Bennett (insubordination.blogspot.com) is a Philadelphia-based photojournalist who has been documenting the movement to free Mumia and all political prisoners for more than 5 years
by Hans Bennett
On May 17, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in the case of internationally renowned black death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. The court will consider four different issues that it has already certified for appeal. It will then decide to either grant a new trial, affirm the life sentence, or re-instate the death sentence.
Immediately after this date was announced last week, supporters of Abu-Jamal around the world began mobilizing to support Abu-Jamal at the hearings. Explaining the urgency, Pam Africa (coordinator of Abu-Jamal's support network) says that "Mumia can still be executed. Further, since the Supreme Court is unlikely to hear Mumia's case, this is realistically his last chance to get a new trial. As the history of his case shows, we need public pressure to ensure the court's fairness."
"We're asking people to come to Philadelphia and show that the whole world is watching these oral arguments," said Africa. "I believe Mumia is innocent and am personally calling for his immediate release," Africa said. "However, I'll work with anyone supporting a fair trial. By demanding a new trial, we can work with those who know the trial was rotten but are unsure of Mumia's innocence."
Abu-Jamal's attorney, Robert R. Bryan doubts that his client will appear in court because of a rule that the defendant is not brought in for oral arguments. Africa is upset about this rule because she feels that Abu-Jamal's presence will help to ensure fairness. She asks, "these people are arguing about his life, and he's not allowed to be there to make sure everything is done right?"
Africa is also concerned about the limited time given for the presentation of oral arguments. While the 3 rd Circuit Court has granted 45 minutes total, Abu-Jamal's attorney is arguing for at least an hour. Africa argues that "in order to argue this case, you need much more time than that."
A New Trial?
In 1982, Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in a trial that Amnesty International has declared a "violation of minimum international standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death penalty,"
Calling for a new trial, supporters around the world feel that the original one was tainted by racism, prosecutorial & judicial misconduct, coerced witnesses, suppressed evidence, and a denial of Mumia's constitutional right to represent himself.
His case has attracted activists around the world organizing against racism, poverty, corporate media censorship, mass incarceration, political repression, and the death penalty.
Activist Noam Chomsky argues that "Mumia's case is symbolic of something much broader...The US prison system is simply class and race war...Mumia and other prisoners are the kind of people that get assassinated by what's called 'social cleansing' in US client states like Colombia."
Still on Death Row
In December, 2001 Federal District Court Judge William Yohn affirmed Abu-Jamal's guilt but overturned the death sentence. Citing the 1988 Mills v. Maryland precedent, Yohn ruled that sentencing forms used by jurors and Judge Sabo's instructions to the jury were confusing. Subsequently, jurors mistakenly believed that they had to unanimously agree on any mitigating circumstances in order to be considered as weighing against a death sentence.
Mumia's case is now in the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals. DA Lynne Abraham is appealing the death penalty ruling while Mumia is appealing the guilty verdict.
If the penalty ruling is overturned, a new execution date will be set for Mumia. If his ruling is upheld, the DA can still impanel a new jury to rehear the penalty phase, which could then sentence Mumia to death—regardless of the 3 rd Circuit ruling.
Because the DA appealed Yohn's death penalty decision, Mumia has never left death row, and is still unable to have such "privileges" as full-contact visits with his family.
The Four Issues Being Considered
In December, 2005, the 3rd Circuit announced the beginning of deliberations and shocked many by agreeing to consider two claims not "certified for appeal" by Yohn in 2001.
Mumia's attorney Robert R. Bryan declared it to be "the most important decision affecting my client since his 1981 arrest, for it was the first time there was a ruling that could lead to a new trial and his freedom." The courts are now considering the following four issues:
#1. Whether the penalty phase of Mumia's trial violated the legal precedent set by the US Supreme Court's 1988 Mills v. Maryland ruling. This issue was Yohn's grounds for overturning the death sentence and is now being appealed by the DA.
#2. "Certified for appeal" by Yohn in 2001, the Batson claim, addresses the prosecution's use of peremptory challenges to exclude Blacks from Mumia's jury. In 1986, the US Supreme Court ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that a defendant deserves a new trial if it can be proved that jurors were excluded on the grounds of race.
At Mumia's trial, Prosecutor McGill used 11 of his 15 peremptory challenges to remove black jurors that were otherwise acceptable. While Philadelphia is 44% black, Abu-Jamal's jury was composed of ten whites and only two blacks. From 1977-1986 when current Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell was Philadelphia's District Attorney, the evidence of racism is striking: from 1977-86, the Philadelphia DA struck 58% of black jurors, but only 22% of white jurors.
#3. The legality of McGill's statement to the jury minimizing the seriousness of a verdict of guilt: "if you find the Defendant guilty of course there would be appeal after appeal and perhaps there could be a reversal of the case, or whatever, so that may not be final."
In 1986 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against McGill in another case (Commonwealth v. Baker) on the same grounds. When Abu-Jamal addressed this same issue in his 1989 appeal with the State Supreme Court, the court reversed its decision on the legality of such a statement—ruling against the claim for a mistrial.
Incredibly, just one year later, in the very next case involving this issue (Commonwealth v. Beasley), the State Supreme Court flip-flopped and restored the precedent. However, this would not affect the ruling against Mumia, because the court ruled that this precedent would only apply in "future trials." This suggests that the rulings were designed to specifically exclude Mumia's case from its precedent.
#4. The fairness of Mumia's 1995-97 PCRA hearings when the retired, 74-year-old Judge Sabo was called back specifically for the hearing. Besides the obvious unfairness of recalling the exact same judge to rule on his fairness in the original 1982 trial, his actual PCRA bias has been extensively documented.
During the 1995 hearings, the mainstream Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the "behavior of the judge in the case was disturbing the first time around—and in hearings last week he did not give the impression to those in the courtroom of fair mindedness. Instead, he gave the impression, damaging in the extreme, of undue haste and hostility toward the defense's case."
Concluding the PCRA hearing, Sabo rejected all evidence and every witness presented by the defense as not being credible. Therefore, Sabo upheld all of the facts and procedures of the original trial as being correct.
"I'm Going To Help Them Fry The Nigger"
In 2001 another witness—Terri Mauer-Carter—challenged Sabo's integrity, but the State Supreme Court ruled against the defense's right to include her affidavit in their current federal appeal. Mauer-Carter was working as a stenographer in the Philadelphia Court system on the eve of Mumia's 1982 trail when she states that she overheard Judge Sabo say in reference to Mumia's case that he was going to help the prosecution "fry the nigger."
Journalist Dave Lindorff recently interviewed Mauer-Carter's former boss, Richard Klein, who was with Mauer-Carter when she states she overheard Sabo. A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge at the time, who now sits on PA's Superior Court, Klein told Lindorff: "I won't say it did happen, and I won't say it didn't. That was a long time ago." Lindorff considers Klein's refusal to firmly reject Mauer-Carter's claim to be an affirmation of her statement.
The State Supreme Court ruling was an affirmation of lower-level Judge Patricia Dembe's argument that even if Maurer-Carter is correct about Sabo's stated intent to use his position as Judge to throw the trial and help the prosecution "fry the nigger," it doesn't matter. According to Dembe, since it "was a jury trial, as long as the presiding Judge's rulings were legally correct, claims as to what might have motivated or animated those rulings are not relevant."
Organizing for May 17
Before the May 17 date had been set, Abu-Jamal supporters had already been organizing events for April 24—Mumia's birthday. The event in Philadelphia will show the film Framing an Execution (narrated by Danny Glover), which analyzes the biased presentation of Abu-Jamal's case by Sam Donaldson on ABC's 20/20 in 1999. Afterwards, the forum will discuss new evidence of innocence.
On the same day in France, Abu-Jamal's international supporters will be joined by a US delegation defending last April's naming of a street for Abu-Jamal in the Paris suburb of St. Denis.
"In 2001, when Judge Yohn affirmed Mumia's conviction, he said there was no evidence to show that Mumia is innocent. That is absolutely not true, but Yohn could get away with saying this because the mainstream media did not hold him accountable." Pam Africa argues that independent journalism and aggressive media-activism are urgently needed to challenge the mainstream media to report accurately about the upcoming oral arguments. "Deceitful mainstream media coverage since November has not presented the extensive evidence of Mumia's innocence, and this dishonest coverage makes Mumia seem like a cold blooded killer. Only independent media has been putting the truth out about Mumia."
Among the many stories about Abu-Jamal in the independent press, Africa highly recommends reading about the important new evidence presented in German author Michael Schiffmann's new book on the case—especially the new discovery of crime-scene photos that expose police manipulation of evidence at the scene.
If supporters are unable to travel to Philadelphia on May 17, Africa encourages people do something in their hometown to publicize the oral arguments and hold the mainstream media accountable in their coverage of the case. "Mumia's case represents all that is wrong with this system. We must take action now before its too late."
For more information, check out mumia.org (Philadelphia), freemumia.com (New York City ), freemumia.org (San Francisco), or emajonline.com (Educators for Mumia). For the latest on Abu-Jamal from the independent media, check out Bennett's new "Voice of the Voiceless" series on Abu-Jamal being published in the months leading up to the oral arguments at: http://hbjournalist1.googlepages.com/ms
Hans Bennett (insubordination.blogspot.com) is a Philadelphia-based photojournalist who has been documenting the movement to free Mumia and all political prisoners for more than 5 years
Sunday, March 25, 2007
THE BATTLE IS ON! FROM NOW UNTIL MAY 17 UNTIL VICTORY!
Upcoming Events:
APRIL 15:
HIP HOP BENEFIT FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL AND THE MOVE 9 IN NYC
"MUMIA 911 PART II"
Featuring: A-Alikes, C Rayz Walz, Imessiah Soul, Queen Godis, Seeds of Wisdom, Pat-riot
Sunday, April 15
The Remote Lounge, 327 Bowery St, NYC
(Bet. East 3rd and East 2nd Streets)
8pm, Doors Open At 7:15
$12 At The Door
APRIL 24:
Mumia's Birthday with Danny Glover, Sonia Sanchez, Delacy Davis (of Black Cops Against Police Brutality), Journalist Linn Washington, Exonerated Death-Row Inmate/Activist Harold Amin Washington, Ron Hampton (of National Association Of Black Police), and Attorney Michael Coard.
LOCATION: Cleff Club on Broad at Fitzwater
Doors Open at 6 PM
Film Showing of "Framing an Execution" with Danny Glover at 6:30 PM
Speakers will begin at 7:30 Sharp!
On May 17th Mumia's case will be reviewed by The Third Circuit Court Of Appeals in Philadelphia to decide whether Mumia gets a new trial, life in prison without parole, or execution. The whole world is watching how The Third Circuit will rule. We must let them know where we stand: Only Mumia's release or a new trial is acceptable! APRIL 24th WILL BE AN URGENT ORGANIZING EVENT LEADING UP TO THE MAY 17th ORAL ARGUMENTS.
APRIL 28:
A U.S. Delegation will visit the French city of Saint-Denis on the one year anniversary of the naming of one of its streets in honor of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The delegation will be honoring the activists and mayors of that city for their steadfast support of Mumia in the face of both US and French right wing and police attacks on them.
MAY 11:
The NYC Writers Union will host an event to honor Mumia. Details to be announced.
MAY 17:
ALL OUT IN PHILADELPHIA IN SUPPORT OF MUMIA!
On May 17th Mumia's case will be reviewed by The Third Circuit Court Of Appeals in Philadelphia to decide whether Mumia gets a new trial, life in prison without parole, or execution. The whole world is watching how The Third Circuit will rule. We must let them know where we stand: Only Mumia's release or a new trial is acceptable! MAY 17 WILL BE THE START OF AN ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL STAGE IN THE STRUGGLE FOR MUMIA'S LIFE AND FREEDOM.
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) • info@freemumia.com • (212) 330-8029
APRIL 15:
HIP HOP BENEFIT FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL AND THE MOVE 9 IN NYC
"MUMIA 911 PART II"
Featuring: A-Alikes, C Rayz Walz, Imessiah Soul, Queen Godis, Seeds of Wisdom, Pat-riot
Sunday, April 15
The Remote Lounge, 327 Bowery St, NYC
(Bet. East 3rd and East 2nd Streets)
8pm, Doors Open At 7:15
$12 At The Door
APRIL 24:
Mumia's Birthday with Danny Glover, Sonia Sanchez, Delacy Davis (of Black Cops Against Police Brutality), Journalist Linn Washington, Exonerated Death-Row Inmate/Activist Harold Amin Washington, Ron Hampton (of National Association Of Black Police), and Attorney Michael Coard.
LOCATION: Cleff Club on Broad at Fitzwater
Doors Open at 6 PM
Film Showing of "Framing an Execution" with Danny Glover at 6:30 PM
Speakers will begin at 7:30 Sharp!
On May 17th Mumia's case will be reviewed by The Third Circuit Court Of Appeals in Philadelphia to decide whether Mumia gets a new trial, life in prison without parole, or execution. The whole world is watching how The Third Circuit will rule. We must let them know where we stand: Only Mumia's release or a new trial is acceptable! APRIL 24th WILL BE AN URGENT ORGANIZING EVENT LEADING UP TO THE MAY 17th ORAL ARGUMENTS.
APRIL 28:
A U.S. Delegation will visit the French city of Saint-Denis on the one year anniversary of the naming of one of its streets in honor of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The delegation will be honoring the activists and mayors of that city for their steadfast support of Mumia in the face of both US and French right wing and police attacks on them.
MAY 11:
The NYC Writers Union will host an event to honor Mumia. Details to be announced.
MAY 17:
ALL OUT IN PHILADELPHIA IN SUPPORT OF MUMIA!
On May 17th Mumia's case will be reviewed by The Third Circuit Court Of Appeals in Philadelphia to decide whether Mumia gets a new trial, life in prison without parole, or execution. The whole world is watching how The Third Circuit will rule. We must let them know where we stand: Only Mumia's release or a new trial is acceptable! MAY 17 WILL BE THE START OF AN ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL STAGE IN THE STRUGGLE FOR MUMIA'S LIFE AND FREEDOM.
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) • info@freemumia.com • (212) 330-8029
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Legal Update
From: Atty. Robert R. Bryan
March 22, 2007
Legal Update
Re: Mumia Abu-Jamal v. Martin Horn,
Pennsylvania Director of Corrections
U.S. Court of Appeals Nos. 01-9014,
02-9001 (death penalty)
Dear Friends,
Today notification was received that oral argument in the case of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal, is scheduled for Thursday, May 17, 9:30 am, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Ceremonial Courtroom, 1st Floor, U.S. Courthouse, 6th and Market Streets, Philadelphia. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and the National Lawyers Guild, which have filed amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs, are also participating.
The case concerns Mr. Abu-Jamal's right to a fair trial, the struggle against the death penalty, and the political repression of an outspoken journalist. Racism and politics are threads that have run through this case since his 1981 arrest. The complex issues under consideration, which are of great constitutional significance, include:
-- Whether Mr. Abu-Jamal was denied the right to due process of law and a fair trial under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments because of the prosecutor's "appeal-after-appeal" argument which encouraged the jury to disregard the presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt, and err on the side of guilt.
-- Whether the prosecution's use of peremptory challenges to exclude African Americans from sitting on the jury violated Mr. Abu-Jamal's right to due process and equal protection of the law under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, and contravened Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986).
-- Whether the jury instructions and verdict form that resulted in the death penalty deprived Mr. Abu-Jamal of rights guaranteed by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, and violated Mills v. Maryland 486 U.S. 367 (1988), since the judge precluded the jurors from considering any mitigating evidence unless they all agreed on the existence of a particular circumstance.
-- Whether Mr. Abu-Jamal was denied due process and equal protection of the law under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments during post-conviction hearings as a result of the bias and racism of Judge Albert F. Sabo which included the comment that he was "going to help 'em fry the nigger."
Recently the Phildelphia District Attorney's Office sent a letter to the court suggesting that the entire Third Circuit should disqualify itself from deciding the case of my client. We filed a reply strongly objecting to this absurd request, explaining that the positionof opposing counsel was "utterly unfounded and should be rejected." On March 10 the court rebuked the prosecution, advising that it had failed to follow proper procedure and thus no action would be taken.
Professor Judith L. Ritter, associate counsel, and I are in this case to win a new and fair trial for Mr. Abu-Jamal. The goal is for our client to be free. Nevertheless, he remains in great danger. if all is lost, he will be executed.
Your interest in this struggle for human rights and against the death penalty is appreciated.
Yours very truly,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
March 22, 2007
Legal Update
Re: Mumia Abu-Jamal v. Martin Horn,
Pennsylvania Director of Corrections
U.S. Court of Appeals Nos. 01-9014,
02-9001 (death penalty)
Dear Friends,
Today notification was received that oral argument in the case of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal, is scheduled for Thursday, May 17, 9:30 am, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Ceremonial Courtroom, 1st Floor, U.S. Courthouse, 6th and Market Streets, Philadelphia. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and the National Lawyers Guild, which have filed amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs, are also participating.
The case concerns Mr. Abu-Jamal's right to a fair trial, the struggle against the death penalty, and the political repression of an outspoken journalist. Racism and politics are threads that have run through this case since his 1981 arrest. The complex issues under consideration, which are of great constitutional significance, include:
-- Whether Mr. Abu-Jamal was denied the right to due process of law and a fair trial under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments because of the prosecutor's "appeal-after-appeal" argument which encouraged the jury to disregard the presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt, and err on the side of guilt.
-- Whether the prosecution's use of peremptory challenges to exclude African Americans from sitting on the jury violated Mr. Abu-Jamal's right to due process and equal protection of the law under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, and contravened Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986).
-- Whether the jury instructions and verdict form that resulted in the death penalty deprived Mr. Abu-Jamal of rights guaranteed by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, and violated Mills v. Maryland 486 U.S. 367 (1988), since the judge precluded the jurors from considering any mitigating evidence unless they all agreed on the existence of a particular circumstance.
-- Whether Mr. Abu-Jamal was denied due process and equal protection of the law under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments during post-conviction hearings as a result of the bias and racism of Judge Albert F. Sabo which included the comment that he was "going to help 'em fry the nigger."
Recently the Phildelphia District Attorney's Office sent a letter to the court suggesting that the entire Third Circuit should disqualify itself from deciding the case of my client. We filed a reply strongly objecting to this absurd request, explaining that the positionof opposing counsel was "utterly unfounded and should be rejected." On March 10 the court rebuked the prosecution, advising that it had failed to follow proper procedure and thus no action would be taken.
Professor Judith L. Ritter, associate counsel, and I are in this case to win a new and fair trial for Mr. Abu-Jamal. The goal is for our client to be free. Nevertheless, he remains in great danger. if all is lost, he will be executed.
Your interest in this struggle for human rights and against the death penalty is appreciated.
Yours very truly,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Friday, March 23, 2007
Oral Arguments for Mumia in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals will finally begin on May 17th
Oral arguments for Mumia in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals will finally begin on:
May 17th, 9:30 AM
at the US Courthouse in Philadelphia
PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE LEGAL UPDATE REGARDING THIS IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT IN MUMIA'S CASE at www.freemumia.com/pdfs/3.22.07Update.pdf
May 17th, 9:30 AM
at the US Courthouse in Philadelphia
PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE LEGAL UPDATE REGARDING THIS IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT IN MUMIA'S CASE at www.freemumia.com/pdfs/3.22.07Update.pdf
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Update from Mumia's Attorney
For the Dear Friends:
Since last spring we have been engaged on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal in briefing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia. It is the most extensive I have seen in three decades of specializing in capital litigation. The pending issues concern the death penalty, racism that has permeated the proceedings for a quarter of the century, and prosecutorial and judicial abuse. They are of great constitutional significance. Last fall I was notified by the court that oral arguments would be scheduled for January, but that was later rescinded. At this time we have no indication as to when we will be permitted to orally argue the merits of the issues.
In November Mumia and I together sent letters to the Mayor of Paris and its Council. It was in response to an appalling letter sent to Paris by a few misguided politicians from the Philadelphia area. I wrote: "Their demand that the honorary citizenship of Mr. Abu-Jamal be revoked is an affront not only to the citizens of Paris, but is insulting to people around the globe who are opposed to the death penalty and human-rights abuses." Mumia's letter eloquently pointed out that "these people are merchants of death who wish to trick you into their campaign to not only kill my client, but also to wipe [his] name from the face of the earth. Their deal is but another lie, a devil's bargain that they are powerless to grant under any stretch of American or international law.
I am pleased to advise that the Mayor's office has responded in a most positive manner. In the great French tradition of championing human rights, the December 5 response to me said:
The Mayor of Paris has received your letter concerning the situation of your client, Mumia ABU-JAMAL and thank you.
As mentioned in your mail, some representatives of the city of Philadelphia have recently wished to express their disapproval toward the decision of the Paris City Council to have selected in December 2001, Mumia ABU-JAMAL as "honorary citizen of the City of Paris".
Though the denunciation by these representatives is concentrated on the Cities of Paris and of Saint Denis, nobody ignores that many other Cities in France, in the United states and in the world, have shown their support to Mumia ABU-JAMAL.
We have established that the arrival of this Delegation in France, announced for end of November, has simply never taken place.
It is clear that the city of Paris stays mobilized in this fight and wish to affirm with force its (engagement) commitment in order that the capital punishment shall one day disappear of the planet.
I will be grateful for you to transmit this information to your client and assure him of the support of the City of Paris of which he is honorary citizen.
The original letter from Paris is available at http://www.freemumia.com/pdfs/2006DE1.PDF.
We will keep you informed as there are further developments in the case.
With best wishes,
Robert
============
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Since last spring we have been engaged on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal in briefing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia. It is the most extensive I have seen in three decades of specializing in capital litigation. The pending issues concern the death penalty, racism that has permeated the proceedings for a quarter of the century, and prosecutorial and judicial abuse. They are of great constitutional significance. Last fall I was notified by the court that oral arguments would be scheduled for January, but that was later rescinded. At this time we have no indication as to when we will be permitted to orally argue the merits of the issues.
In November Mumia and I together sent letters to the Mayor of Paris and its Council. It was in response to an appalling letter sent to Paris by a few misguided politicians from the Philadelphia area. I wrote: "Their demand that the honorary citizenship of Mr. Abu-Jamal be revoked is an affront not only to the citizens of Paris, but is insulting to people around the globe who are opposed to the death penalty and human-rights abuses." Mumia's letter eloquently pointed out that "these people are merchants of death who wish to trick you into their campaign to not only kill my client, but also to wipe [his] name from the face of the earth. Their deal is but another lie, a devil's bargain that they are powerless to grant under any stretch of American or international law.
I am pleased to advise that the Mayor's office has responded in a most positive manner. In the great French tradition of championing human rights, the December 5 response to me said:
The Mayor of Paris has received your letter concerning the situation of your client, Mumia ABU-JAMAL and thank you.
As mentioned in your mail, some representatives of the city of Philadelphia have recently wished to express their disapproval toward the decision of the Paris City Council to have selected in December 2001, Mumia ABU-JAMAL as "honorary citizen of the City of Paris".
Though the denunciation by these representatives is concentrated on the Cities of Paris and of Saint Denis, nobody ignores that many other Cities in France, in the United states and in the world, have shown their support to Mumia ABU-JAMAL.
We have established that the arrival of this Delegation in France, announced for end of November, has simply never taken place.
It is clear that the city of Paris stays mobilized in this fight and wish to affirm with force its (engagement) commitment in order that the capital punishment shall one day disappear of the planet.
I will be grateful for you to transmit this information to your client and assure him of the support of the City of Paris of which he is honorary citizen.
The original letter from Paris is available at http://www.freemumia.com/pdfs/2006DE1.PDF.
We will keep you informed as there are further developments in the case.
With best wishes,
Robert
============
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Support the Publicity Campaign to Name A Harlem Street in Honor of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Like Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Joe Doherty of Ireland, former political prisoners who have streets named after them in New York already, Mumia has contributed to world events and struggles such as opposing wars in Iraq, Africa and Central America, speaking out for housing, jobs, health care, including HIV-AIDS, against police brutality and for community control. On death row, Mumia has published five books (Live from Death Row, All Things Censored, Death Blossoms, On a Move, We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party) and weekly commentaries.
Since 1976, 123 people have been freed from death row. Being on death row does not necessarily mean that you are guilty. In protest of the reactionary and racist nature of his trial and sentencing, Mumia was awarded honorary citizenship in Paris, France and has a street named after him in nearby St. Denis. If Europe can address U.S. death penalty injustice, why can't we?
The Free Mumia Abu Jamal Coalition (NYC) is building the campaign to honor Mumia with a street in Harlem, as a way of bringing awareness of his case to the greater public so that he can win his release. We would like to give this cause a boost with television ads which cost $50 per time slot (after production to air on BET and TV 9. Please consider what you can do to help.
Get more information at our website, www.freemumia.com.
Please download the donation form at:
http://www.freemumia.com/pdfs/newform.pdf
Since 1976, 123 people have been freed from death row. Being on death row does not necessarily mean that you are guilty. In protest of the reactionary and racist nature of his trial and sentencing, Mumia was awarded honorary citizenship in Paris, France and has a street named after him in nearby St. Denis. If Europe can address U.S. death penalty injustice, why can't we?
The Free Mumia Abu Jamal Coalition (NYC) is building the campaign to honor Mumia with a street in Harlem, as a way of bringing awareness of his case to the greater public so that he can win his release. We would like to give this cause a boost with television ads which cost $50 per time slot (after production to air on BET and TV 9. Please consider what you can do to help.
Get more information at our website, www.freemumia.com.
Please download the donation form at:
http://www.freemumia.com/pdfs/newform.pdf
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