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Mumia At The Crossroads in the Age of Obama April 03, 2010

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL is an African-American writer and journalist who has spent the last 24 years on Pennsylvania’s death row. His demand for justice and a new trial is supported by heads of state from France to South Africa, by Nobel Laureates, the European Parliament, city governments from Detroit to San Francisco to Paris, France, scholars, religious leaders, artists, scientists, the Congressional Black Caucus and other members of U.S. Congress, and by countless thousands who cherish democratic and human rights the world over.

 

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Jamal’s journalistic skills, historical analysis and eloquent pen have only confirmed his reputation as “voice of the voiceless.” With judicious historical insight and pointed probing of the issues, he continues to question and enlighten his readers through scores of columns, illuminating such issues as U.S. empire, terrorism, poverty, the U.S. support of Pakistan during the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq, and so much more. (See the “Mumia Index” on this site.) His columns and essays continue to find place in scholarly books as well as in the street newspapers of the homeless.

 

Working people have expressed their support for Jamal through their leading regional, national and international trade union bodies. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union closed down West coast ports for the day of April 24, 1999, to support Mumia’s bid for a new trial.

 

Jamal’s books and over 500 published columns have been adopted as resource material for the teaching and inspiration of a growing number of students, youth, and educators who have come to see their futures as intimately tied to the outcome of this case. The 1982 trial that convicted Jamal of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner has been challenged by leading legal analysts and scholars, from Stuart Taylor writing in the prestigious American Lawyer magazine, to Per Walsoe of the Supreme Court of Denmark, to Amnesty International which issued a special report in February 2000, claiming that “justice would best be served by the granting of a new trial…” to Jamal.

 

While Jamal has worked while confined as an advocate for so many others, he has maintained his own innocence from the beginning, and does so in ever clearer and more emphatic tones to the present day. His attorneys have presented compelling evidence that key witnesses were intimidated or coerced to provide false testimony, that a purported “confession” by Mumia was likely fabricated by police, and that vital evidence pointing to his innocence was withheld from the defense. A key eyewitness has now recanted critical court testimony she gave under police intimidation and which was used against Jamal.

 

The confused and flagrantly-biased character of the prosecutors’ case against Mumia has only mushroomed over the years: yet another affidavit has been offered that casts doubt on the original witnesses’ claims that Mumia had confessed to the murder; another man now has even stepped forward to claim that he is the one who killed the officer Mumia was convicted of killing; and a court stenographer swears in another affidavit that she heard Mumia’s original judge, Albert Sabo, say during a court recess, “Yeah, and I’m gonna help ’em fry the nigger.” (Up to the time of his death just a few years ago, Judge Sabo maintained he had been racially unbiased throughout Mumia’s trial.)

 

Jamal was forced to appeal his conviction before this same judge who had sentenced him to death in 1982. Judge Sabo was notorious for presiding over capital cases resulting in 33 people being sentenced to death (all but two, people of color), more than twice the number of any sitting judge in the United States.

 

So confused and biased is the case against Mumia that a U.S. District Judge finally had to acknowledge just one of the problems of Mumia’s conviction, and in 1999 he thus vacated the death sentence against Mumia. The prosecution, however, with the help of police unions like the Fraternal Order of Police, are still working tirelessly and vigorously to see that he is executed. Mumia remains on death row while the prosecution appeals the suspension of a death sentence. Meanwhile, Mumia’s attorneys press on to gain an overturning of the judgment of guilt against Mumia toward the end of achieving his freedom. His life still hangs in the balance, with death just a few callous and cruel decisions away.

 

■ Jamal has long been a POLITICAL TARGET as a prominent journalist critic of police brutality and racism in Philadelphia since the days of Mayor Frank Rizzo.

 

■ Jamal is made more vulnerable by sweeping JUDGMENTS AGAINST DISSENTERS as “terrorists,” and he has become less protected today, as many progressive activists in post-9/11 USA turn more of their attention and energy toward the war in Iraq, tensions in the Middle East and general surveillance issues in the U.S.

 

■ Jamal’s life is increasingly put at risk because even in post-9/11 USA he remains a vigorous critic of POLICE REPRESSION AND LAW ENFORCEMENT USE OF EXCESSIVE FORCE. Whether writing about the outrage of torture at the Guantánamo Base detention center, or in the jails and lockups of Brooklyn, New York, and Austin, Texas, Mumia’s as “voice for the voiceless” puts him at ever greater risk.

 

■ Jamal has challenged the present political priorities of SPENDING MORE FOR WAR AND PRISONS THAN FOR EDUCATION. The youth who increasingly rally to Mumia’s cause in the name of justice and fair play know that we build jailhouse cell blocks more rapidly than schoolhouse classrooms.

 

"BEATING BACK BATSON" (April 6, 2009)

[NOTE from Sis. Marpessa:  Here's a link to excerpts of Ass't DA McMahon's training video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv9SJPa_dF8 ]

 

Check that short piece out (57 secs), and then please re-read this piece Bro. Mumia wrote last year:

 

[col. writ. 9/6/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

 

For those who read court opinions, few can ignore the U.S. Supreme Court's 1986 Batson v. Kentucky decision.

 

Essentially, it prohibited the State from removing Black jurors for racial reasons. It re-wrote the rules from the Swain v. Alabama ( 1965) case, where the court required systematic discrimination over a number of cases, over a period of years. Needless to say, such a challenge was clearly beyond the resources of most people, and relatively few were made, and even fewer successful. It is hard to resist the suspicion that this was merely judicial lip service to a principle that was easily ignored, in the breach.

 

For, it took over a generation, over 20 years, for Swain to be overruled by Batson, and now, Batson is beginning to bear an eerie resemblance to its unworkable parentage, because courts have been loathe to grant relief, and have either created new rules, or simply ignored its dictates.

 

We see this at work recently in a number of cases, among them Com. v. (Robert) Cook, WL 284060 (July 24, 2008). In this case, the DA used 74% of his strikes to remove 14 Black jurors. Incredibly, the Phila. Court of Common Pleas initially found that even this didn't constitute a prima facie case of discrimination. Later, it found a prima facie case, but ruled that the DA put forth sufficient race-neutral reasons for exclusion, and therefore not a violation of Batson.

 

Recently, the PA Supreme Court agreed, even though the DA couldn't recall why he removed 2 Black jurors -- or, in other words, couldn't articulate a justification.

 

Now remember -- Batson states that the improper removal of one juror violates the constitution. One -- not 14.

 

But here's the kicker. The DA in Mr. Cook's case made a video training tape, where he taught his fellow prosecutors how to violateBatson - and how to lie about it to judges.

 

But perhaps the then prosecutor, Jack McMahon, didn't need to work that hard, for courts would take up the slack. For where the DA can't remember a reason, the court will invent one.

 

This is especially egregious in this case, for the man who wrote the opinion was the DA when McMahon made the tapes, but now sits as Chief Justice of the court. Can you spell 'conflict of interest?' Did he recuse himself? (What do you think?)

 

For over a decade, Pennsylvania courts have painted McMahon as the bad guy, a kind of rogue prosecutor, and most of his convictions have been reversed (except Cook's), but McMahon wasn't, and never should've been, the issue. For he was simply describing the pattern and practice of the office, and training his colleagues in techniques used over years of trials.

 

Mr. McMahon was putting into words what DAs did to get convictions. Does that mean his office sought a fair and impartial jury? In McMahon's words, " Well, that's ridiculous. You're not trying to get that." In fact, McMahon explained, their jobs were to get the most "unfair" jury possible. And, in many cases, that meant getting as few Blacks to serve on the jury as possible.

 

Batson is as empty as Swain was, for if they don't want to give it up, any reason will do.

 

They proclaim ideals of fairness that bear no relationship to the real process happening daily in courtrooms all across America.

 

That would be, to quote McMahon, "ridiculous."

 

© Mumia Abu-Jamal. April 2009