BY GLOVA SCOTT AND HATTIE McCUTCHEON
PHILADELPHIA - Pennsylvania governor Thomas Ridge signed
the death warrant for political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal
June 1, and set August 17 as the date of execution.
Ridge ordered three other executions at the same time. Last month, Pennsylvania authorities put to death the first state prisoner in 33 years.
"Consigning Jamal to death with a stroke of a pen was a particularly vindictive act, as Governor Ridge is well aware that Jamal's attorneys are set to file legal papers seeking a new trial and the setting aside of Jamal's death sentence on June 5," Abu-Jamal's lead council, Leonard Weinglass, stated.
"By his actions, Governor Ridge has shown his policy to be a vengeful race to death with alarming indifference to the judicial process."
According to Weinglass, "the appeal will demonstrate unequivocally that Mumia was the victim of a politically motivated, racially biased prosecution in which evidence of his innocence was suppressed."
Philadelphia police brutally beat Abu-Jamal
On Dec. 9, 1981, Philadelphia police officer Daniel
Faulkner was shot to death on a public street. Abu-Jamal was
also shot. Despite the seriousness of his injuries Abu-Jamal
was brutally beaten by the police at the scene and at the
hospital. Witnesses reported seeing the police ram his head
into a pole as they carried him to the police van. The cops
harassed nurses who treated Abu-Jamal, telling them, "You
should let the son of a bitch die."
Jamal was convicted April 3, 1982, of killing Faulkner and sentenced to death after less than four hours of deliberation by a mostly white jury.
The jury included one man whose close friend had been shot while serving on the Philadelphia police force and a female juror married to a cop.
At the time of his arrest, Abu-Jamal was a prominent radio reporter in this city. The Philadelphia Inquirer, a major daily, recognized him as, "an eloquent activist not afraid to raise his voice." At the time of his arrest, Abu-Jamal was president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. He was particularly noted for his probing of the 1978 police assault on the home occupied by the MOVE organization, which left a police officer dead. Nine MOVE members were convicted of that killing and given 30-100-year sentences.
At his trial the prosecutors tried to prove that Abu-Jamal ran up behind Faulkner and shot him in the back. According to the prosecution, when Faulkner fell, Abu-Jamal stood over him and emptied his revolver into the officer. Once down, Faulkner shot back. Then Abu-Jamal supposedly sat down on the curb and waited for the police backup to arrive.
The prosecution claims that Abu-Jamal's gun was the murder weapon. Police ballistic experts, however, testified that the bullets that killed Faulkner and others recovered at the scene could not be matched to Abu-Jamal's gun. Fingerprints on the gun did not match Abu-Jamal's.
Four witnesses reported a third man at the scene shot Faulkner and fled. "These four people were effectively silenced through coercion and harassment," explains Abu- Jamal's defense team.
The prosecution's "star" witnesses were prostitutes, who identified Mumia Abu-Jamal as the shooter, but also made contradictory statements. They testified they were offered deals - "the right to work their corner unmolested by the police in exchange for testimony fingering Mumia."
The Mumia Abu-Jamal defense effort has received international support from human rights organizations, students, labor unions, political groups, and others fighting for his life from the United States to Germany to South Africa. Tens of thousands of people have signed petitions or sent individual letters to Pennsylvania officials demanding Abu-Jamal not be executed.
Among Abu-Jamal's supporters are Ossie Davis and Mike Farrell who co-chair the Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal. Others include Harry Belafonte; Whoopi Goldberg; State Rep. David Richardson; Rep. Ron Dellums; Cyril Ramaphosa, secretary general of the African National Congress; and many others.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, National Conference of Black Lawyers, and the National Black Police Association have all written letters or filed legal briefs questioning the fairness of his trial.
Campaign of actions
Press conferences and rallies were held June 5 in
Philadelphia; New York; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; and
other cities.
Some 350 people attended the rally at Philadelphia City Hall. "This is just a fight on another front. Don't panic," Abu-Jamal urged in a taped message to his supporters.
Weinglass joined the rally after submitting an appeal for a new trial. "This 300-page appeal proves that Abu-Jamal never had a trial. He didn't have a defense lawyer. He didn't have an impartial judge. And the jury was racially selected," he stated.
Weinglass is also filing motions with the Post-Conviction Review Appeal (PCRA) including a request that Judge Albert Sabo recuse himself from the review. Sabo consistently hears his own PCRA's, which is unusual among Philadelphia judges. Known to members of the bar as the "prosecutor in robes," Sabo sentenced Mumia to death, and has sentence more people to death - 31 - than any other judge in the country, all but 2 of whom were non-white.
"The papers that we filed are very powerful. We are strong on the law. We are strong on the facts," Weinglass said. "But is that enough?" pointing to the recent execution of an innocent man in Illinois.
Mumia Abu-Jamal has waged a determined battle not to be silenced. As well-known actor Ossie Davis explained, "Mumia is somebody we desperately need alive. We cannot let them take such a voice from us. We call on all decent people in the country to put up a struggle of gigantic proportions."
Weinglass commented, "If they can succeed in executing Mumia - with all the questions about his innocence and whether he got a fair trial, it will be very difficult to mount successful cases for anyone else."