Reinstatement of Death Sentence Still Looms—Free Mumia Now!

Racist Supreme Court Denies Mumia’s Appeal

The following statement was issued on April 7 by the Partisan Defense Committee—a class-struggle, non-sectarian, legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League.

Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life is in imminent danger! In a naked display of racist contempt, the U.S. Supreme Court on April 6 summarily turned down without comment Mumia’s petition to overturn the frame-up conviction that led to a death sentence for this innocent man. While it took less than one business day for the Court to reject Mumia’s petition, which was based on the exclusion of eleven of 15 prospective black jurors from his 1982 trial, the racists in black robes have for weeks been considering the Philadelphia district attorney’s appeal to reinstate the death sentence, which was overturned by U.S. District Court Judge William Yohn in 2001. Make no mistake! The neo-segregationist high court of American capitalism could well be preparing the noose for Abu-Jamal’s legal lynching. What is necessary is the mobilization of the multiracial working class independent of and in opposition to the capitalist state and its political representatives, whether Democrat, Republican or Green. Free Mumia! Abolish the racist death penalty!

A former Black Panther Party spokesman, supporter of the Philadelphia MOVE organization and award-winning journalist, Mumia was framed up on charges of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner on 9 December 1981. For 27 years, the cops, prosecutors, bourgeois politicians and their media jackals have howled for Mumia’s blood because they see in Mumia a voice of defiant opposition to all forms of racist discrimination. Mountains of evidence, not least the confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner, have proven Mumia’s innocence. But court after court has refused to even consider the evidence. As Mumia put it in an April 6 interview, the Court’s decision shows that “law is politics by other means and that the Constitution means nothing, that a fair jury means nothing.” Mumia’s case demonstrates that there is no justice in the capitalist courts. The courts, prisons and police exist to maintain, through organized violence and terror, the rule of the capitalists over working people.

Since taking up Mumia’s case in 1987, we have advocated pursuing all possible legal proceedings, while fighting against any illusions in the courts of the capitalist class enemy. Our program of class-struggle defense is diametrically opposed to that of the liberals and reformists, who promote dangerous illusions that the courts can provide justice for Mumia. These illusions have been codified in the subordination of the demand for Mumia’s freedom to the call for a “new trial.” This has been promoted for many years by the Workers World Party, International Socialist Organization, Socialist Action (SA), International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal led by Pam Africa and the San Francisco Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal led by SA honcho Jeff Mackler.

We fight for Mumia’s freedom as part of the struggle for black liberation based on the program of revolutionary integrationism. We fight against every manifestation of racist oppression, a struggle that can be victorious only through the full social, political and economic integration of black people into an egalitarian socialist society. For black liberation through socialist revolution! Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent! Free Mumia now! Abolish the racist death penalty!