FREE MUMIA NEWS
The EMERGENCY RESPONSE NETWORK is in FULL EFFECT. Continue to lobby all people, groups, politicians, etc. to support Mumia. Show tapes, call shows, have programs, send emails. GET ON THE MOVE FOR MUMIA!
D.A. Lynn Abraham - Voice - 215-686-8700 Fax - 215-686-8024
US Atty Gen. Janet Reno - Voice - 202-514-2000 Fax - 202 514-4371
"Every generation has a moral assignment. Ours is to save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal" -- Ossie Davis
The next nine months will be critical for the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal. By the end of this year, Mumia will be in the federal courts. This will be his only chance to present the witnesses and obtain the evidence that were denied him by the Pennsylvania courts.
The Effective Death Penalty Act, signed into law on April 24, 1996, was designed to make it almost impossible to have the federal courts review and overturn unjust and racist acts by state courts. History teaches us that justice does not come by the orderly workings of "the law," but through the actions and demands of the people.
Our movement must now grow in a series of leaps, beginning with this great demonstration today. From today forward, each day counts. Each of us must return home as organizers on a mission.
Here are the crucial next steps:
1. Be in Philadelphia for the July 4th weekend march and organizers conference, plus civil disobedience at the Liberty Bell at noon on July 3. On-going civil disobedience actions through the year. Young people: come to Philly Freedom Summer June 28 to July 11.
2. Build for the National Week for Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, September 19-25, a week of programs, teach-ins, and actions for Mumia throughout the country, ending with "100 Cities for Mumia" mass actions on September 25. Participate in the cultural events of "Mumia 911," a National Day of Art to Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal on September 11.
3. Take these plans out to organizations, churches, and unions in your community. Get them to take it out to their people. Establish an emergency response plan in the event of a new death warrant.
4. Join and be active in a national or local group or coalition working for Mumia, and support the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
MILLIONS FOR MUMIA
Int'l Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, 215-476-8812
Academics for Mumia Abu-Jamal, 609-497-7918
Bruderhof, 724-329-8573
Campaign to End the Death Penalty, 312-409-7145
Free Mumia Coalition, 212-330-8029
Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, 415-821-0459
National Peoples Campaign, 212-633-6646
Refuse & Resist!, 212-713-5657
The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal
"Don't tell me about the valley of the shadow of death. I live there."
So begins the book Live from Death Row, by acclaimed writer and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on death row for over 15 years for the killing of a Philadelphia police officer. An award-winning journalist, political activist and one-time member of the Black Panther Party, Mumia has faced one miscarriage of justice after another.
In 1981, Mumia stopped a cab he was riding in to try to stop a police officer from assaulting a Black man. The man turned out to be Abu-Jamal's brother - stopped for a minor traffic violation. According to eyewitnesses, an unidentified person shot at officer Daniel Faulkner and fled. Mumia was shot in the chest by Faulkner. Witnesses say that Mumia was left bleeding on the curb for 45 minutes while police officers took turns beating him.
He was charged with the murder of Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death in 1982. But from the start the case was full of holes:
Ballistic experts never matched any of the bullets found in Faulkner's body or anywhere on the scene to the gun that allegedly belonged to Mumia. The bullet in Faulkner's brain was a .44-caliber, whereas the gun police say belonged to Mumia was a .38.
Police tested the murder weapon for fingerprints but didn't find Mumia's. And Mumia's hands were never tested for powder burns which would indicate he had fired a weapon.
Several police witnesses testified that Mumia had confessed on the night of the shooting. But the arresting officer's report mentions no confession. He was conveniently on vacation during the trial, and Judge Albert Sabo rejected a motion to postpone the proceedings until his return.
Of more than 125 witnesses interviewed by police, prosecutors found only two who identified Mumia as the person who shot Faulkner. Both witnesses were facing other criminal charges, making them vulnerable to threats - and deals - from the prosecution. One, Cynthia White, changed her story several times before implicating Mumia in the killing.
One defense witness, Veronica Jones, testified that police offered her and one of the prosecution witnesses a deal: finger Mumia in court and they could continue to work as prostitutes without being arrested. Judge Sabo ordered these remarks stricken from the court record.
Another witness, a white cab driver named Robert Chobert, first reported to police that the shooter was 225 pounds and "ran away" from the scene. Why Chobert changed his story became clear 13 years later, when he admitted that at the time of the shooting he had been driving a taxi cab without a license while on probation for felony arson. Years later, he was still driving his cab without a license, unhindered by police.
Four witnesses said that they saw a man other than Mumia flee from the scene of the crime.
The trial was held in Philadelphia - a city where 1,200 cases of police misconduct are under review. More than 300 convictions by Philadelphia courts have been overturned because of manufactured or planted evidence used by police to frame innocent people. At least 137 people have already been found innocent and released from prison after their cases were reviewed.
The judge in Mumia's case, Judge Albert Sabo, has sentenced thirty-two people to death - more than twice the number of people than any other judge in this country. All but two were people of color. The American Lawyer described him as "oozing partiality toward the prosecution" during the Mumia case.
Mumia's 1989 appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was denied, and his death sentence upheld.
In Mumia's 1990 appeal, the Supreme Court upheld the right of prosecutors to use Mumia's past affiliation with the Black Panther Party in their case against him. Yet 17 months later, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of a Delaware man because prosecutors had presented at his sentencing hearing evidence of his affiliation with the fascist Aryan Brotherhood.
In June 1995, Mumia filed a Petition for Post-Conviction Relief (PCRA) seeking a new trial. The evidentiary hearing on his PCRA was held before Judge Sabo, who (surprise!) denied the petition. Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas Ridge set an execution date for August of that year, but Mumia got a stay of execution - in large part because of large-scale national and international protest.
Meanwhile, Mumia's defense lawyers have uncovered an avalanche of evidence backing Mumia's innocence.
Mumia appealed Sabo's decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Last August the court sent Mumia's case back to the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas for additional testimony regarding police misconduct.
On October 1, 1996, Veronica Jones came forward and testified that she had been pressured by police to lie in Mumia's trial. Just as she took the stand to testify to this, Sabo threatened her with seven years in prison for perjury if she gave two conflicting versions under oath. Undeterred, she testified. At the end of her testimony, District Attorney Fisk called in two police officers and had her arrested in the courtroom for having missed a two-year-old court date!
Then, in last June's hearings, Pamela Jenkins, a 16-year-old prostitute and police informant in 1981, testified that she was pressured by police officer Tom Ryan (who was her boyfriend at the time) to identify Mumia as the shooter, even though she was not present at the scene of Faulkner's death.
Now the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has denied his appeal for a new trial. Mumia's lawyers will appeal his case at the federal level. Meanwhile, Gov. Ridge has vowed to set a new execution date for Mumia as soon as possible.
Mumia's attorney Leonard Weinglass recently wrote: "For more than 15 years, Mumia, who has lived in the shadow of death, has asserted his innocence. The new information brought in the last two years... supports that claim.
"Once again, the American system of criminal justice is being challenged by issues of race, class and politics. The life of a Black political activist lies threatened by those same forces who have historically urged a national system of intimidation and control.
"Nothing short of a complete vindication for Mumia Abu-Jamal, already too late after 15 years of tortuous incarceration, will prevent yet another injustice in a history already saturated with the blood of innocents."
from The New Abolitionist - November 1998, Volume II, Issue 5 Campaign To End The Death Penalty, Chicago, IL
We are putting together a new book to let people know what is going on and need your documentation! Send as e-mail attachments or mail to ICFF-MAJ, P.O. Box 19709, Phila., PA 19143.
ONA MOVE!
Ona MOVE!