Mumia Abu-Jamal fights life imprisonment
by LeiLani
September 13, 2012
Mumia Abu-Jamal
|
As activists gear up for a Sept. 14 event in New York promoting the struggle
to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, the state of Philadelphia has lodged another attack
against him. On Aug. 15, this internationally revered political prisoner was
illegally sentenced to life imprisonment.
Abu-Jamal, a MOVE Organization supporter and a former Black Panther Party
member, is known as the “voice of the voiceless” for his continued
anti-racist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist journalism. After being
framed and convicted for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer,
Abu-Jamal spent decades in solitary confinement, as a worldwide movement
coalesced to free him. In December Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams
announced that the state was no longer seeking a death sentence for Abu-Jamal,
and he was released into the general prison population.
While the state backed off in the face of continued activism in support of
Abu-Jamal – and perhaps in the hope that the movement for his freedom
would dissipate — it resumed its assault on Abu-Jamal’s life nine
months later. Without any notice to Abu-Jamal or to his lawyers, Philadelphia
Court of Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe sentenced him to life imprisonment
without parole on Aug. 15.
A press statement from the International Concerned Family and Friends of
Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) notes that
“all sentences … require a formal proceeding allowing the person to
be sentenced the right to be heard and to challenge his sentence.” (Aug.
21) The sentencing is therefore illegal and, as with many of the state’s
maneuverings in this decades-long case, in violation of Abu-Jamal’s
rights.
Dembe had shown her willingness to deny Abu-Jamal justice in the past. In
2001, she refused to hear a legal challenge regarding the racist bias of
convicting Judge Albert Sabo, who was overheard by a stenographer saying that
he was going to “help them fry the n——-“ before
Abu-Jamal’s trial.
Abu-Jamal filed a Post-Sentencing Motion on Aug. 23. Rachel Wolkenstein,
Abu-Jamal’s attorney, reports: “Mumia’s motion not only
attacks his own sentence to ‘slow death row,’ but makes the
constitutional challenge to life imprisonment without parole, solitary
confinement for death-row inmates and solitary confinement in general. Mumia is
fighting with and for the entirety of ‘incarceration
nation.’” (Aug. 24 email)
In addition to the demand to free Abu-Jamal and all U.S. political
prisoners, the Sept. 14 event will focus on ending mass incarceration and
solitary confinement and on closing New York’s infamous Attica prison.
Speakers will include ICFFMAJ leader Pam Africa; Michelle Alexander, author of
the book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness”; activist and former political prisoner Angela Davis;
attorney Soffiyah Elijah; Jazz Hayden, a community “cop-watch”
activist who is currently being framed by the New York Police Department; Marc
Lamont Hill, who with Abu-Jamal co-authored the book “The Classroom and
the Cell”; and Princeton University Professor Cornel West, who has been
active in the campaign against the NYPD’s racist
“stop-and-frisk” policies.
For more information, tickets and to sign a petition
supporting the closing of Attica, visit freemumia.com.
