Mumia Abu-Jamal Is Innocent! Free Him Now!

Federal Appeals Court: D.A. Demands Mumia’s Execution

In the latest threat to the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, on November 9 the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia heard oral arguments on whether or not to reinstate the death penalty for this class-war prisoner. A prize-winning journalist and supporter of the Philadelphia MOVE organization, Mumia was railroaded to death row in 1982 on false charges of killing police officer Daniel Faulkner. To secure a death sentence, prosecutors painted a lying portrait of Mumia as a committed “cop killer” from the time he was a 15-year-old Black Panther Party spokesman.

As hundreds rallied for Mumia outside the courthouse, scores of cops and Feds under the watch of the Department of Homeland Security put the area under tight security. Inside the courtroom was a large contingent from the Fraternal Order of Police (F.O.P.). Along with the press, supporters of Mumia entering the hearing were subjected to a canine unit sniffing their bags and bodies, treated as potential “terrorists.”

At issue in the Third Circuit hearing were the jury instructions during the sentencing phase of Mumia’s 1982 trial. In 2001, federal judge William Yohn, while upholding every aspect of Mumia’s frame-up conviction, overturned the death sentence. Yohn found the sentence to be unconstitutional under the precedent of the Mills v. Maryland decision because the sentencing form and jury instructions did not allow jurors to freely consider the mitigating circumstances weighing against a death sentence.

Yohn’s ruling had been upheld by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. But last January the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Third Circuit decision, all but ordering the reinstatement of Mumia’s death sentence. The Court cited its earlier decision reinstating the death sentence for neo-Nazi Frank Spisak, whose sentence had also been overturned due to improper jury instructions. As we wrote at the time in “Supreme Court of Death Rules Against Mumia Abu-Jamal” (WV No. 951, 29 January): “Spisak is a sociopath who admitted to killing his victims and made no secret of his admiration for Adolf Hitler. Mumia has always maintained his innocence and won acclaim as the ‘voice of the voiceless’ for his powerful commentaries. The Court is consciously manipulating abhorrence of the fascist Spisak’s crimes to set a precedent for the legal murder of Mumia, a man whose ‘crime’ was to stand up to the racist capitalist rulers.”

Just days before the current hearing, Robert Bryan, who had been Mumia’s main lawyer for seven years, was fired. Bryan would not honor Mumia’s request that Widener University law professor Judith Ritter, who had argued the specific question of jury instructions and mitigating circumstances before, be his sole spokesman at the hearing. Outrageously, in his motion to the court withdrawing from the case, Bryan asserted he had been “threatened by those in the ‘movement’ claiming to oppose execution of the client,” treacherously adding his voice to the slanders by the police and their press agents who brand Mumia’s supporters as criminals.

The three-judge panel maintained an appearance of impartiality, asking probing questions of prosecutor Hugh J. Burns Jr. It should be noted that in May 2007, the same panel had appeared favorable to Mumia before ruling against him on crucial issues brought by Mumia: the racist jury-rigging in the initial trial; the prosecutor’s prejudicial summary argument that Mumia would have “appeal after appeal” so the jury need not worry about sentencing him to death; Mumia’s grossly biased appeal hearings were held before the notorious “hanging judge” Albert Sabo. Known as the “king of death row,” Sabo also presided over Mumia’s original trial, when he was overheard saying he would help the prosecutors “fry the n----r.” It may take months for the Third Circuit to announce its decision on the death sentence, which will then likely be appealed to the Supreme Court.

From day one, the courts, backed by Democratic and Republican politicians, have colluded with the police and prosecutors against Mumia. At every level, the courts have refused to consider mountains of evidence of Mumia’s innocence, not least the confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Daniel Faulkner on 9 December 1981. While supporting the use of every legal means available to Mumia, we place no trust in the courts of the class enemy. As we have long stressed, what is needed is mass protest centered on the social power of the working class.

In the latest phase of the campaign to legally lynch Mumia, the Philadelphia F.O.P. has endorsed a movie, The Barrel of a Gun, directed by black Republican Tigre Hill. The lying premise of this slick, sick documentary is that Mumia, as a supporter of the Black Panthers in his youth and a journalist championing MOVE’s cause, was predisposed toward killing cops. Along with the Centurion motorcycle gang, police packed the September 21 Philadelphia premiere of this hit piece, breaking into cries of “Kill him!” and “Fry him!” according to anti-Mumia blogger Conor Corcoran.

In an effort to counter Hill’s smear job, a film titled Justice on Trial: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal opened the same night in Philadelphia. Produced by Baruch College professor Johanna Fernandez, the film interviews J. Patrick O’Connor, author of The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and features much evidence of Mumia’s innocence. However, the film steers clear of the most compelling evidence, not least Mumia’s statement about what happened the night of Faulkner’s killing and Arnold Beverly’s confession that he and another man were hired to kill Faulkner, who had become a problem for the mob and corrupt cops (see the July 2006 Partisan Defense Committee pamphlet, The Fight to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal).

Many of Mumia’s liberal and even leftist supporters reject the Beverly confession, with its clear picture of organized, murderous cop corruption, as incredible. In fact, this is standard fare for the capitalists’ thugs in blue, not least in Philadelphia. Since March last year, 15 Philly cops have been arrested on corruption charges, six were nabbed in three drug investigations and two are charged with murder, the latest arrest coming only days before the Third Circuit hearing.

In their legal persecution of Mumia, a defiant opponent of racist state terror, the capitalist rulers are sending a message to anyone who might struggle against their system of exploitation and oppression. Outside the court hearing, supporters of the Spartacist League and the Partisan Defense Committee carried signs reading: “There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!” and “Obama’s ‘War on Terror’=Imperialist Occupation Abroad, Political Repression at Home.” In contrast, a Workers World/International Action Center contingent combined their standard call for a “new trial” for Mumia with appeals to U.S. Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama and his top cop, Eric Holder, to speak out against the death penalty and “investigate” Mumia’s case. Preaching reliance on the forces of racist capitalist “law and order,” the reformists are an obstacle to militant struggle in defense of Mumia.

Mumia’s cause must be a clarion call for all opponents of the racist death penalty, which in the U.S. is the legacy of chattel slavery. If linked to a revived labor movement, the fight for Mumia’s freedom could strike a powerful blow against the system of state terror employed by the capitalists against the working class, black people and all the oppressed. In polemicizing against the reformists’ appeals to Obama and Holder, we wrote in WV No. 941 (28 August 2009): “The stakes are high and the situation is grim, but any real fight for Mumia’s freedom must be based on a class-struggle opposition to the capitalist rulers, who have entombed this innocent black man in prison for more than half his life.”