Hundreds in Philly Demand: Free Mumia!
https://socialistaction.org/2020/08/22/hundreds-in-philly-demand-free-mumia/
August 22, 2020
By JEFF MACKLER
Three hundred activists mobilized on July 4 at Philadelphia’s City Hall
to demand “Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and All Political Prisoners.” Pam
Africa, chair of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia
Abu-Jamal, addressed the rally and welcomed the outpouring of a new
generation of anti-racist activists. Africa noted that July 4th protests
for Mumia Abu-Jamal’s freedom had been organized annually for decades to
mark the racist admonitions to the jury in 1982 by the presiding judge
to hurry their deliberations so that they could go home to celebrate the
holiday. They did so and found Abu-Jamal guilty on July 2 and imposed
the death penalty a day later. The July 4th rally was initiated by a
broad range of organizations supporting Abu-Jamal’s freedom struggle.
Imprisoned since 1981 on frame-up murder charges of Philadelphia police
officer Daniel Faulkner, Mumia, as he is known by friends and supporters
worldwide, has been for decades a leading critic of the racist criminal
“justice” system in all its myriad aspects.
Mumia’s tormentor Frank Rizzo
The July 4 protest occupied the very plaza where a statue of
Philadelphia’s white supremacist former Chief of Police and then Mayor,
Frank Rizzo, was dramatically taken down in the wake of the mass
national mobilizations that forced the removal of statues honoring
racist figures from the Civil War era to the present. Rizzo, indeed, as
Philadelphia police chief, early on threatened Mumia with police
retaliation following Mumia’s central role as an award-winning
journalist covering the U.S. Justice Department’s filing corruption
charges against and securing prison sentences for a number of
Philadelphia cops charged with engaging in prostitution rings, drugs and
other such ventures. Then a radio journalist, Mumia was similarly
central to the defense of the MOVE human and animal rights organization,
whose members were persecuted by racist police and whose Powelton
Village, West Philadelphia commune was attacked by police in 1978. Nine
MOVE members were arrested and subsequently sentenced to prison terms
exceeding 40 years. Rizzo later bombed the MOVE house, killing 11
people. Indeed, it was Rizzo, who publically stated that Mumia “would be
held responsible” for his journalistic attacks on Philadelphia police.
Shortly after, Mumia became a victim of the horrific police/court
frame-up trial that ended with a death penalty sentence.
Following decades of litigation and a massive national and international
movement that included the largest demonstrations ever for a political
prisoner – 25,000 each in San Francisco and Philadelphia in 1999 – Mumia
defeated two court-ordered attempts at his execution and finally won a
decision that took him off death row in 2011, when his death penalty
sentence was reversed due to fundamentally flawed instructions to the
jury. Yet he remained in prison, where he is currently serving a life
sentence.
New appeal rights won
Two years ago, this sentence itself was brought into question when
Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Leon Tucker, the first Black judge to
become involved in Mumia’s case, ordered a review of all the decisions
against Mumia by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Tucker’s ruling
effectively re-opened Mumia’s case. Mumia had previously exhausted all
his appeals. Citing the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision that a
prosecutor – in Mumia’s case then Philadelphia District Attorney Ronald
Castillo – who later becomes a judge, cannot rule in a case that he
previously prosecuted. Castillo, who later became a Pennsylvania Supreme
Court judge, refused to recuse himself from ruling in Mumia’s appeal,
ignoring Mumia’s demand in an appeal that he recuse himself. The simple
notion that one cannot be a prosecutor and then a judge in the same
case, thus allowed Mumia to continue his legal battle for exoneration. I
might add that it was Castille, in his capacity as District Attorney,
who presided over the preparation of an official Pennsylvania state
video instructing prosecutors in how to remove Blacks from juries, based
on the premise that Blacks were less likely to vote for the death
penalty than whites.
Mumia’s infamous 1982 trial
Volumes have been written about every aspect of Mumia’s 1982 racist
trial presided over by the infamous “hanging judge” Albert Sabo, who
declared in his antechambers before entering the courtroom, in front of
another judge and award-winning court stenographer Terry Maurer Carter,
“Yeah, I’m going to help ‘em fry the n****r.” Mumia’s trial was so
replete with massive suppression of evidence of innocence, intimidation
of witnesses, exclusion of Black jurors, lying police testimony –
including literally driving exculpatory eyewitnesses out of town and
hiding testimony of an eyewitness who saw Faulkner’s murder and two men
fleeing the scene while Mumia lay wounded on the ground – that
organizations ranging from Amnesty International, the European
Parliament and the NAACP to hundreds of national and local U.S. trade
unions and several city councils in major cities across the country have
demanded a new trial or Mumia’s freedom.
Faulker and FOP win delay
With Judge Tucker’s ruling last year to essentially reopen all Mumia’s
Pennsylvania Supreme Court appeal denials some 30 years ago, the stage
was set for an unprecedented review of major rulings against him. But
this review itself has been stalled when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court
last year approved an unusual “King’s Bench” petition filed by Daniel
Faulkner’s widow, Maureen Faulkner, who alleged that the current
Philadelphia District Attorney, Larry Krasner, who declined to challenge
the Trucker ruling reopening Mumia’s appeals, was guilty of bias in
hiring staff members who were Mumia supporters. Faulkner, supported by
the Fraternal Order of Police, which has campaigned for Mumia’s
execution since 1981, demanded that Krasner be removed. In March 2020,
the PA Supreme Court appointed Senior Superior Court Judge John Cleland
as a Special Master to review Faulkner’s charges and make a
recommendation as to their validity back to the Supreme Court.
Mumia’s lead attorney Judith Ritter told Socialist Action that to date
there is no news as to Cleland’s report, although she expected it may
become public, perhaps in the months ahead. Nevertheless, Ritter told
this writer that in today’s context of the dramatic emergence of massive
anti-racist protests across the country she was confident “that truths
long hidden or denied on a broad range of issues provided renewed
reasons for optimism in winning Mumia’s freedom.”
Free Mumia!
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