Mumia's Case at Critical Hour

Defense Papers Filed

Highlighting the urgency of the fight for freedom for death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, in a matter of months the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia is expected to issue what could be the final decision in his case. Last month, Mumia filed a concluding legal brief in the court, following the filing of the prosecution’s brief. It is not clear whether the court will hear oral argument on these briefs. The court decision will determine what lies next for Mumia: the reimposition of his death sentence and the threat of a new death warrant, his entombment for life in Pennsylvania’s prison system, a new trial or further legal appeals.

The court has agreed to hear only three of the dozens of constitutional violations in Mumia’s blatant frame-up on false charges of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. One is the racist jury-rigging that kept black people off the jury in his 1982 trial. Mumia is also challenging the prosecutor’s closing argument that the jury should err on the side of convicting Mumia without worrying about the consequences because Mumia would have “appeal after appeal,” vitiating the legal principle of “reasonable doubt.” The last issue is the notorious bias of racist hanging judge Albert Sabo during the 1995 post-conviction hearings.

Any one of these aspects of Mumia’s frame-up legal proceedings should mandate that the conviction be overturned. But the courts have repeatedly rubber-stamped Mumia’s false conviction and ignored the mountain of evidence proving his innocence, including by refusing to hear the confession of Arnold Beverly that he shot Faulkner and that Mumia had nothing to do with it. The Court of Appeals will also not hear how the Philadelphia cops coerced individuals into testifying as witnesses against Mumia and, working with the D.A., manufactured a bogus claim that Mumia had confessed to the killing.

In the fight for Mumia’s freedom, it is crucial to understand the depth of the state’s determination to kill Mumia or to keep him locked up for life. The racist capitalist rulers see in Mumia—a former Black Panther Party member, a MOVE supporter and eloquent spokesman for the oppressed—a threat who must be silenced.

The state’s venom is on display in the very first pages of the D.A.’s current brief, in which they sneer at the description of Mumia as a “renowned journalist.” In fact, it was Mumia’s prominence in his youth as Minister of Information of the Philadelphia Black Panther Party chapter and later as a journalist who exposed the racist Philly cops’ vendetta against the MOVE organization that kept him in the state’s cross hairs. As Mumia’s brief points out, at the time of his conviction he was an award-winning broadcast news reporter known as the “Voice of the Voiceless” and head of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, having been named by Philadelphia Magazine as “one of the people to watch in 1981.” Mumia has continued to speak out courageously and powerfully from his prison cell.

Giving a flavor of the lynch mob atmosphere at the 1982 trial, Mumia’s papers quote the prosecutor as saying that he was willing to allow a black woman on the jury because “she hates” Mumia, to which Sabo commented approvingly, “She’ll hang him.” Mumia’s history with the Black Panther Party and MOVE organization was raised repeatedly by the prosecutor to whip up racist prejudice, not only during sentencing but as early as a pretrial bail hearing. It was in this climate of Jim Crow “justice” that a court stenographer, Terri Maurer-Carter, overheard Sabo obscenely boast, “I’m going to help them fry the n----r.”

Significantly, the D.A.’s current brief cites the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1987 ruling in McCleskey v. Kemp. Presented with an exhaustive study showing that blacks are far more likely than whites to be sentenced to death, the highest court in the land affirmed its commitment to racist lynch law by assuming the validity of the study and then ruling that McCleskey could be executed anyway. The court rejected McCleskey’s argument on the grounds that, “taken to its logical conclusion, [it] throws into serious question the principles that underlie the entire criminal justice system.” Indeed! The barbaric death penalty, which in the U.S. is rooted in black chattel slavery, is the pinnacle of the whole system of racist capitalist repression. Warren McCleskey—convicted solely on the testimony of a jailhouse informant promised leniency in return for his services—was executed by the State of Georgia on 25 September 1991.

The Third Circuit Court that is now supposed to review the briefs in Mumia’s case sent many of its members to testify for the reactionary Samuel Alito during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in January. Among the members of this court is Marjorie Rendell—wife of Democratic Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, who as Philly D.A. oversaw Mumia’s frame-up prosecution. In an interview with the French Communist Party newspaper L’Humanité earlier this year, Mumia commented that he has “very little hope in a favorable decision” from this court.

Mumia’s case graphically demonstrates that there is no justice in the capitalist courts. While all legal proceedings and legal remedies must be pursued on his behalf, what is crucially needed is mass protest, centered on the social power of the labor movement, in the U.S. and internationally to demand Mumia’s freedom. In the 1930s, the American Communist Party and International Labor Defense led mass protests calling for freedom for the “Scottsboro Boys”—nine black youths framed up on false charges of raping two white women, with eight of them sentenced to death. It was due to this international protest campaign that the Supreme Court was compelled to recognize that the wholesale exclusion of black jurors violated the constitutional right to a “jury of one’s peers.”

In 1995, an international protest movement stayed the executioner’s hand after a death warrant for Mumia was signed. Today, it is urgently necessary to revitalize mass, labor-centered protest on Mumia’s behalf. Mobilize now to free Mumia! Abolish the racist death penalty!