It’s Time to Act for Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal!

On October 8 2003, the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has once more denied an appeal by the African American journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal to hear evidence that he was falsely convicted and sentenced to death for murdering a policeman, and that he never had a fair trial.

This ruling comes on top of a long series of court decisions rejecting to look into the events that led to his guilty verdict and death sentence in 1982. The constitutional guarantees against a false conviction of any citizen were, and are, thus being turned into so many sheets of waste paper.

In fact, it is hardly in doubt that

· Abu-Jamal’s jury was selected in accord with racist criteria, i.e., he was never judged by a constitutionally guaranteed jury of his peers

· witnesses testifying against him were coached and coerced until the said they “right” thing

· police and security officers perjuried themselves by falsely claiming that Abu-Jamal had confessed to the murder, and indeed boasted about it

· forensic, including ballistic, evidence was not collected, bent or ignored, with the apparent intent to reconcile it with the prosecution scenario

· all facts pointing to other perpetrators of the murder attributed to Abu-Jamal were studiously ignored

· the prosecutor used Abu-Jamal’s membership in the Black Panther Party and the political analysis by that party of the ways of the powerful in the United States – “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” – to portray Abu-Jamal as a danger for society and to incite the jury to agree on a death sentence.

But by now, with Mumia Abu-Jamal having already spent more than twenty years behind bars on account of a highly questionable first-degree murder conviction, there is even more.

In its recent rejection of Abu-Jamal’s appeal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (PSC) didn’t even look into the many factual issues (even including testimony by a man who claims that he, not Abu-Jamal, shot the policeman in question). Since there are more than enough of these issues, this is a scandal.

Moreover, very solid evidence has come to light that the presiding judge of Abu-Jamal’s trial, Albert F. Sabo, has said during the trial that “I’m going to help the prosecution fry the nigger.” This shocking utterance from, of all people, a judge should all by itself be enough to invalidate Abu-Jamal’s conviction and death sentence. But in a equally shocking move, the PSC has taken the position that Judge Albert F. Sabo’s biased and racist stance as revealed in this remark has had no influence on his handling of Abu-Jamal’s trial!

As Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case is moving into its last phase at the federal level, it is time for all conscientious people to speak out and to act. In the name of justice, we must fight now for the fulfillment of the following demands in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal:

· Overturn the conviction!

· All the evidence must be heard!

· Mumia Abu-Jamal must be set free or given a new trial with due supervision guaranteeing its fairness!

We will be following these issues very closely to look for it that justice is done in this case.

For more information about Friends of Justice, visit the Mumia Watch on ZNet at http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Mumia/mumiacrisis.htm

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