Mumia's Attorneys File Response to Judge Dembe
On Friday, December 7, amid demonstrations slated to draw thousands of protestors to the streets of Philadelphia, death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal's attorneys will file their final legal brief with Judge Pamela Dembe to demand a hearing in state court to present professional hit man Arnold Beverly's testimony that he and not Mumia shot and killed Police Officer Daniel Faulkner because the officer was an obstacle to the "pay-off" racket that corrupt police and organized crime were running in downtown Philadelphia in the 1980's. Beverly's written and videotaped confessions have previously been filed in state and federal court with a mass of corroborating evidence including a lie detector test that Beverly passed.
Quoting the Philadelphia Inquirer's dramatic November 12 editorial demanding a moratorium on all executions in Pennsylvania because they "disproportionately condemn[s] minorities and the poor, and sometimes even the innocent," Mumia's attorneys remind Judge Dembe that a Federal Judge has just overturned the conviction and death sentence in the very case she relies on to claim that she has no jurisdiction to hear their petition the case of Otis Peterkin. In that case, because Peterkin had missed recently-enacted filing deadlines, the state supreme court refused to hear his claims that he was denied a fair trial, was the victim of prosecutorial misconduct, and there was insufficient evidence to convict him.
According to Mumia's attorneys, "what the Pennsylvania Supreme Court achieved in Peterkin was to conceal a grave and flagrant miscarriage of justice which it was its very task to remedy." Mumia's attorneys argue that, in following the Peterkin decision, Judge Dembe "achieves precisely the same with ... [her] refusal to hear Petitioner Jamal's claims that he is innocent; that the real killer has confessed and exonerated him; [and] that his prior attorneys, [Leonard] Weinglass and [Daniel] Williams, suppressed this and other evidence of his innocence ... because they themselves were the victims of death threats."
Mumia's attorneys also draw Judge Dembe¹s attention to Court Reporter Terri Carter's testimony that, at the time of Mumia's trial, she overheard Judge Albert Sabo say, referring to Mumia that, "Yeah, and I’m going to help 'em fry the n*****r.”
Their legal brief disagrees with Dembe's "surprising and unsustainable position that an openly racist judge who expresses the specific intention to contrive with the prosecution to procure the conviction and death sentence of a defendant [because of his race] does not deprive the defendant of his constitutional right to a fair trial." Mumia's lawyers argue that "any exercise of discretion by a judge whose expressed purpose in making his rulings was to 'help 'em fry the n*****r’ must necessarily be an abuse of discretion."
Sunday, December 9, will mark the 20th anniversary of the incident in which Mumia Abu-Jamal was shot and Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was killed. Prominent civil rights leaders and a delegation of French human rights activists, including a representative of the Mayor of Paris, who recently named Mumia an "honorary citizen of Paris," are expected to join protest demonstrations to demand that Mumia be freed.
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