TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE: PENNSYLVANIA COURT RULES AGAINST MUMIA
By Monica Moorehead
October 16, 2003--Another shameful chapter has been written in the U.S. annals of injustice in the legal case of African American political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, still on Pennsylvania's death row.
On Oct. 8, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court issued a 12-page decision dismissing an appeal from Abu-Jamal. Submitted last Dec. 16, the appeal had challenged a Post Conviction Relief Act ruling written by Judge Pamela Dembe for the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.
In Dembe's ruling of Nov. 21, 2001, she had said that the court could no longer hear new defense witnesses who had not been presented at the last PCRA hearing in 1995. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in upholding this decision, says a petition by Abu-Jamal to present new witnesses was "untimely" and that his lawyers should have filed it within a year after the first judgment of sentence, which was on June 10, 1991. It was filed on July 3, 2001.
Abu-Jamal is accused of having killed a white police officer, Daniel Faulkner, on Dec. 9, 1981. In 1999, Arnold Beverly, who admits to being a mob hit man, confessed on videotape to having killed Faulkner. Based on this evidence, Abu-Jamal's appeal stated, according to the State Supreme Court, that the "PCRA court should have used its inherent power under common law to review his claims under Pennsylvania's writ of habeas corpus."
Abu-Jamal's petition stated that the original trial had been tainted with racism because Judge Albert Sabo, the presiding judge in the original trial and also at the 1995 PRCA hearing, had made a racist remark against Abu-Jamal in a private conversation overheard by a white stenographer, Terri Maurer-Carter. These legal and political arguments were also dismissed by the Supreme Court ruling.
Was this court just upholding the law in its Oct. 8 ruling? Legally, it could appear that way. But the ruling reflects a much deeper political motivation.
The Pennsylvania judicial system is working in cahoots with the Philadelphia police to legally lynch Abu-Jamal because he is a revolutionary who has been outspoken against police brutality and all forms of repression.
Recently, important rulings by the Pennsylvania courts have brought into question the legality of the death penalty in the areas of suppression of crucial evidence as well as the racist dismissal of Black jurors by prosecutors.
This should have shone a light on the sham of a trial that Abu-Jamal received. Yet he still faces the death penalty. Federal District Judge William Yohn overturned his death sentence at the end of 2001, but Yohn's ruling remains temporary and could still be reversed, depending on how Abu-Jamal's appeals play out.
Despite these legal setbacks and persistent health problems due to inhumane prison treatment, Abu-Jamal continues to speak out against injustice at home and abroad with his insightful written and audio columns. As much as the racist ruling class seeks his silence, Abu- Jamal's anti-war voice will be heard at the Oct. 25 national protest in Washington, D.C., against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Connect to www.prisonradio.org to hear Abu-Jamal's columns.
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