This case should be written about in any newspaper or blog, or on any website
that represents itself as supporting Democracy and civil liberties. It has been
a travesty of justice, and Munia is an incredibly strong person. Two of is
books are on Bookshare.
Miriam
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From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey ;
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2017 10:27 AM
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Subject: [blind-democracy] Mumia Abu-Jamal fights for a new trial and freedom
https://socialistaction.org/2017/04/25/mumia-abu-jamal-fights-for-a-new-trial-and-freedom/
Mumia Abu-Jamal fights for a new trial and freedom
/ 13 hours ago
May 2017 Mumia Ap. 24 Marty
By JEFF MACKLER
On Mumia Abu-Jamal’s birthday, April 24, over 100 demonstrators mobilized
outside the Pennsylvania Superior Court in Philadelphia in solidarity with
Mumia’s effort to reverse his 1982 frame-up murder conviction and win a new
trial that could lead to his freedom.
Represented by Judy Ritter, Mumia’s Philadelphia-based attorney, and Christina
Swarms, of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, Mumia petitioned the
court for a new Post Conviction Relief Act hearing based on last year’s U.S.
Supreme Court decision in the case of Williams v.
Pennsylvania.
The Williams decision reversed a death-penalty conviction on the grounds that a
state attorney had served as prosecutor and later as a Pennsylvania Supreme
Court judge in the same case—a clear conflict of interest, said the court. In
Mumia’s case, Philadelphia’s Senior Assistant District Attorney, Ronald
Castille, served as a prosecutor in Mumia’s 1982 trial. Castille, who in the
name of the state of Pennsylvania authorized a racist video instructing state
prosecutors how to exclude Blacks from juries, later refused to recuse (remove)
himself from adjudication of Mumia’s Pennsylvania Supreme Court appeals between
1995 and 2008, when he was a member of that court.May 2017 Mumia Ap. 24 B Marty
Ritter and Swarms presented a clear case for the applicability of Williams to
Mumia’s conviction and demanded the reversal of the Supreme Court’s findings
and a new trial. Philadelphia state attorneys countered, as expected, that the
Williams decision contained “exceptions” that prevented appeals such as
Mumia’s—i.e., that Castille had played only a minor role in Mumia’s trial and
that it was otherwise not pertinent to Mumia’s case.
In another landmark case, last month Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
officials unsuccessfully sought to avoid a court order instructing prison
authorities to administer Mumia’s long-sought anti-viral Hepatitis C medication
and virtual cure. Mumia is now receiving this life-saving medication, but only
after a two-year delay, during which time his Hepatitis C disease, contracted
through a 1981 blood transfusion after a police officer shot him, had developed
into cirrhosis of the liver, the extent of which is still unknown.
While the presiding judge on April 24 appeared to be sympathetic to Mumia’s
legal arguments, a decision was deferred to an unspecified time.
Needless to say, if the “law of the land” is applied to Mumia’s case, a new
trial would allow for the first time a wealth of evidence of innocence to be
introduced that had been previously banned from the courtroom by the racist
judge Albert Sabo, who in his antechambers immediately before entering the
courtroom notoriously stated, “Yeah, and I’m going to help ’em fry the n****r.”
Mumia Abu-Jamal is perhaps the world’s best known political prisoner. He has
been imprisoned for 36 years, and on death row for 30 of those years. His fight
for a new trial and freedom has been supported by organizations ranging from
Amnesty International and the NAACP to the European Parliament and scores of
national and local trade unions and city governments in the U.S. and abroad.
Mumia’s appeals, always in accord with established court decisions and
legislation, have been repeatedly denied—so much so that the term “Mumia
exception” has become commonplace with regard to the basic operations of the
U.S. criminal injustice system. Mumia was convicted by a mainly white jury,
from which Blacks had been systematically and illegally excluded. He was
physically banned from the courtroom during much of his trial. Eyewitnesses
were intimidated to alter their testimony or otherwise prevented from
testifying to his innocence at trial, and evidence was manufactured by corrupt
state investigators and prosecutors.
Mumia has become a stunning symbol of the brutal racist and class-biased system
of injustice that permeates U.S. society today—a gulag system, in which nearly
7 million human beings are incarcerated or subjected to “criminal” oversight
jurisdictions, the largest number and percentage of a population of any country
in the world.
Were it not for 36 years of national and international mobilizations to save
Mumia from the executioners’ grasp, he would have been “legally”
murdered long ago. Indeed, the latter end was sought by Philadelphia state
prosecutors and the Fraternal Order of Police for three decades, and only ended
when a critical court victory ruled that a state prosecutor’s closing remarks
at Mumia’s trial were fundamentally flawed.
Given the choice of granting Mumia a new trial, in which evidence of innocence
could be presented for the first time—thereby exposing the monstrous
police/prosecutor frame-up of Mumia—or agreeing to a new sentence of life
imprisonment, Pennsylvania officials opted to forego efforts to kill Mumia, who
is now serving a life term at SCI Mahoney in Frackville, Pa.
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! End the Death Penalty! For a New Trial Now!
Photos by Marty Goodman / Socialist Action (Top) Pam Africa of the
International Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal speaks at April 24 rally
outside the courthouse in Philadelphia. (Below) April 24 march in Philadelphia.
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April 25, 2017 in Black Liberation, Philadelphia, Prisons. Tags: Mumia
Related posts
Mumia’s Attorneys Appeal Court’s Refusal to Hear Frame-Up Evidence
Major Court Victory for Mumia!
No Death Sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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