The following is (essentially) the text of a leaflet giving the history of Mumia Abu-Jamal's case. The leaflet was distributed by Equal Justice, USA, a project of the Quixote Center A few changes have been made to bring things up to date. Equal Justice USA can be reached at P.O. Box 5206, Hyattsville MD 20782, 301-699-0042, (fax) 301-864-2182, Quixote@igc.apc.org Equal Justice USA is helping to coordinate the campaign on Mumia's behalf.
In 1982, Jamal was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer and sentenced to death despite evidence that points to his innocence. Over the last decade, appellate courts have refused to recognize the racial and political biases that violated Jamal's human and constitutional rights and led to his conviction and death sentence.
Jamal has always maintained his innocence. The night of the shooting, he was driving a cab when he came upon a Philadelphia police officer beating his brother, who had been stopped for making a wrong turn onto a one-way street. Jamal rushed to the scene to stop the beating. What happened next still remains unclear. According to eye witnesses, someone fired on the officer and then fled. Jamal took a bullet in the abdomen and was left bleeding on the curb when the police backup arrived.
Witnesses maintain that Jamal was beaten at the scene. One witness testified that 45 minutes transpired before Jamal was taken to the hospital where, according to staff, he was beaten again. It took two hours surgery to remove the bullet that had perforated his liver and lodged in his back.
The state argued Jamal's guilt and quickly pushed the case to trial despite the seriousness of his injuries. Questions remain as to how thoroughly the police pursued other possible assailants.
All of Jamal's direct appeals have been exhausted. A death warrant can be signed at any time. But public pressure continues to avert a death warrant, allowing time for the legal team - headed by renowned defense attorney Leonard Weinglass - to investigate the case and prepare a petition for a new trial.
One eyewitness described an assailant more than 50 pounds heavier than Jamal. Another testified the assailant wore an Afro while Jamal wore his hair in dreadlocks. Yet another described someone with dreadlocks running away from the scene. (Jamal was unable to run away as he was seriously injured.)
The court awarded Jamal only $150 for pre-trial investigation. This, compounded by the state's failure to provide the addresses of eyewitnesses, meant the defense was able to find only two eyewitnesses before the trial date.
The ballistic evidence presented at the trial was speculative and the murder weapon was never recovered, though the state claimed it was a gun legally registered in Jamal's name. Yet police ballistics experts were unable to match it to any of the bullets found in the officer's body or at the scene. A dusting of the weapon just hours after the incident failed to reveal Jamal's prints.
The prosecution called a series of police witnesses who testified that Jamal had confessed to the shooting. Yet the report of the arresting officer mentioned no such confession. At the time of the trial, this officer was on vacation, and the court denied requests to postpone the trial until he returned.
Jamal sought and was initially granted the right to defend himself. Then, during jury selection, a court appointed attorney - who openly told the court he had neither the time nor training to handle the case - was forced on Jamal. His efforts to have this attorney removed because he was ineffective were denied by the trial court as well as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. This attorney has since been disbarred.
Such racial bias in the jury selection is a common practice of the Philadelphia D.A.'s office from the head of the homicide unit on down. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that purposeful racial discrimination during jury selection denies the constitutional ``protection that a trial by jury is intended to secure'' (Batson v. Kentucky), but failed to apply the provision retroactively. In 1989, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied Jamal's appeal on this basis.
Further, the court allowed the prosecution to exclude ``for cause'' a juror who questioned whether he could vote for the death penalty. Meanwhile the defense's challenge of a juror who admitted his bias against Jamal was denied.
A Philadelphia Inquirer review of 35 of Sabo's trials found that ``through his comments, his rulings and his instructions to the jury'' Sabo ``favored prosecutors.'' In one noted case, Sabo urged the prosecutor to introduce evidence, saying it would be helpful to a conviction.
Appelate courts have overturned verdicts in 18 of Sabo's cases, five of them death sentences.
In the 1986 case Commonwealth v. Baker (a case also prosecuted by McGill and presided over by Sabo), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that similar language concerning the appeals process ``minimize(d) the jury's sense of responsibility for a verdict of death'' and overturned the death sentence. But in reviewing Jamal's case in 1989, the court reversed this precedent and upheld the death sentence. In a 1990 case, they re-established this precedent, ``precluding all remarks about the appellate process in all future trials.'' (Commonwealth v. Beasley) So the question begs to be answered: Why was Jamal's case treated differently?
Breaking another precedent, Jamal's appeal was decided by only four member of the seven-Justice Supreme Court - the first such review by so few justices in Pennsylvania's history. Chief Justice Robert Nix heard the argument but did not participate in the court's decision. Justice McDermott cast the fourth vite necessary to uphold the death sentence though his impartiallity was questionable. In the middle of the trial, he and Jamal had a bitter verbal exchange after McDermott denied Jamal's appeal to have his court-appointed lawyer removed, ruling that a defense attorney is an officer of the court and, therefore, takes orders from the court and not from the defendant.
The defense objected to this line of questioning, but Judge Sabo overruled. The judge concluded that - though he was not under oath - Jamal had opened himself up to cross-examination simply by addressing the jury. Such proceedings clearly violated Jamal's First Amendment rights of free speech and association. Yet, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court concluded in Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal that allowing Jamal's political views to influence the jury's sentence was not the same as punishing him for them.
In October 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Jamal's appeal of this Pennsylvania court decision. Yet, in March 1992, the court overturned the death sentence of a Delaware man, David Dawson, due to evidence submitted by the prosecution at his sentencing hearing concerning his affiliation with the Aryan Brotherhood - a white supremacist prisoner organization. The high court took issue with the lack of expert testimony about the Aryan Brotherhood, concluding, in the words of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, ``the Aryan Brotherhood evidence was employed simply because the jury would find these beliefs morally reprehensible.'' (Dawson v. Delaware)
Similarly, the jury in Jamal's case heard no expert testimony about the BPP. Prosecutor McGill surely intended the nearly all-white jury to find this affiliation ``reprehensible,'' especially when he, not an expert, equated BPP membership with cop-killing.
By ruling with Dawson, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an earlier Delaware Supreme Court decision. The decision upheld Dawson's death sentence, citing just one case - Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal - to justify its decision. Yet oddly, the U.S. Supreme Court never mentioned Jamal's case in its Dawson opinion. Nor did it offer any explanation as to why it handled Jamal's case differently. Why the double standard?
Why?
Mumia Abu-Jamal's case illustrates several ways in which racial, economic and political biases are structurally embedded in our criminal justice system.
The case raises serious questions. Why should the prosecution go to such lengths to exclude black jurors and to prosecute Jamal on the basis of his political background? Why would the Pennsylvania Supreme Court both violate its own precedents, upholding Jamal's death sentence, and overlook numerous violations of his rights? Why the U.S. Supreme Court's inconsistent approach to the First Amendment?
Prison demographics are similar to those of death row. Almost 50% of U.S. prisoners - a population which has doubled in the last decade - are people of color. Most prisoners are unemployed or underemployed when they enter the system. Not surprisingly, most prison sentences are for economic crimes such as larceny and burglary. Put in a global context, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
One important example is the case of Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a former leader in the New York City branch of the BPP. In 1971, Bin Wahad was convicted of the attempted murder of two NYC police officers and sentenced to 25 years to life. Bin Wahad's attorneys filed a civil rights action against the F.B.I. and the New York Police Department in 1975. As a result of this action, 300,000 pages of COINTELPRO documentation were eventually released, detailing an extensive campaign to destroy the BPP and other black nationalist organizations. The documents also revealed that information demonstrating Bin Wahad's innocence had been deliberately supressed. Faced with reopening a politically embarassing case, a New York State court overturned the conviction and Bin Wahad was freed on March 22, 1990.
Court-appointed attorneys must often go to a federal court to be compensated because of Philadelphia's dire economic situation: it leads a national list of counties facing major budgetary shortfalls. Only about 80 of the city's 8000 lawyers both qualify and are willing to represent capitally-charged defendents. The Philadelphia D.A.'s office zelously seeks the death penalty in 50% of all homicide cases, whether or not the facts warrant it. This not only places an undue burden on the defense, it insures that a ``death-qualified'' jury is seated, automatically barring the service of anyone opposed to the death penalty. Death-qualified juries are widely understood to be guilt-prone juries.
The Philadelphia Police Department has earned a national reputation for its brutality, especially against the black community. During the days of COINTELPRO, the department - headed by the late Frank Rizzo - served as the F>B.I.'s cooperating local police agency.
Both as police chief and mayor, Rizzo was frequently charged with brutality and racism in his words and actions. In August 1970, Rizzo personally led a raid on the local BPP headquarters where a SWAT team dragged a dozen or so people into the street. They were stip-searched at gunpoint and forced to wait naked onthe sidewalk before they were finally arrested. All were soon released because no meaningful charges were ever filed.
Targeted Advocate? By early 1981, Jamal was a prominent journalist in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Inquirer recognized him as ``an eloquent activist not afraid to raise his voice.'' The Philadelphia Magazine named him one of ``81 people to watch in 1981.''
His work became controversial and his relentless coverage of the 1978 police attack on the MOVE organization's Powelton Village commune, which left a police officer dead. The subsequent trial and conviction of nine MOVE members led to sentences of thirty to one hundred years. Jamal's coverage seriously questioned the police's brutal use of force (against the MOVE household and the surrounding neighborhood) and the fairness of the trial. The government lacked evidence linking any one defendant to the shooting. Medical evidence suggests that the police officer may have been killed by police crossfire.
Jamal's reporting evoked condemnation from Mayor Rizzo, who openly blamed ``a new breed of advocacy journalism'' for the violent clash between MOVE and the police. Such accusations rang hollow on May 13, 1985 when the Philadelphia police used plastic explosives to bomb a MOVE household, killing eleven MOVE members (including five children) and leaving the surrounding African American neighborhood in ashes.
No city official was ever indicted for the atrocity. Only the lone adult survivor of the bombing, MOVE member Ramona Africa, was prosecuted on riot charges. Having served her full sentence of seven years, Africa was released on May 13, 1992. Her real crime: survival?
The progeny of Alcatraz and Marion. SCI Greene represents a national trend in high-tech imprisonment unbound by Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Over 40 states have established such a ``control unit'' - a prison designed to exert psychological as well as physical control over its captives via isolation, banishment and other repressive measures.
On Friday the 13th of January, Mumia Abu-Jamal was moved to SCI Greene and is now one of 74 death row prisoners held there.
Join the campaign! Contact Equal Justice USA for organizing materials. Call, write or fax Governor Ridge and insist that he not sign Jamal's or any other death warrants.
Governor Thomas Ridge, Main Capitol Building, Room 225 Harrisburg, PA 17120 717-783-1198, (fax) 717-783-1396
Send a copy of your letter to Equal Justice USA, your local newspaper and to Mumia Abu-Jamal at #AM-8335, SCI Greene, 1040 East Roy Furman Hwy, Waynesburg, PA 15370-8090.