YOUR SUPPORT NEEDED NOW!

Mon, 13 Mar 2000

The life of Ponchai Kamau hangs over the altar of political ambition.

His trial which resulted in a contested death sentence has been criticized in several points, among them prosecutorial misconduct in voir dire.

Many men and women on America's death rows are there not so much because of a bad act, but because of chronically bad lawyering.

The Texas Supreme Court has even given its judicial seal of approval to the twisted Texas practice of calling sleeping lawyers "adequate counsel." There are many people like Ponchai who may be guilty of something, but not Capital Murder. Ponchai Wilkerson's case, like so many others, is often the result of prosecutorial ambition, counsels' laziness and a defendant's poverty.

While Ponchai now has only hours of life measured to him, it is still an appropriate time to speak out against the political machine of death in favor of the simple human right of life.

It is easy for so called abolitionists to pick and choose cases which may seem popular, but it is cases like Ponchai that are also classic cases of the innocent flaws in the death machine. Let us fight for all on death row and stop "the tinkering with the machinery of death." Let us abolish the racist death penalty in America.

On the Move!
Mumia Abu-Jamal
March 13, 2000