If you would like to come down to Philly with the Free Mumia Coalition, call 212 330-8029 and leave your name and phone number on that hotline. Your call will be returned!
WE CALL FOR THE
RELEASE OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL NOW!
On
Tuesday, June 25, 2013 at 11:30AM supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal will
gather outside the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 530 Walnut Street (17th Floor), Philadelphia, to call for the release of the world renowned imprisoned journalist.
At
1:15PM that day, the Court will hear oral arguments on an appeal filed
by Abu-Jamal challenging his resentencing from death to life in prison
without parole. At issue is a motion filed by the President of the
Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, Judge Pamela Dembe, that failed to
notify the defendant or his attorneys of his resentencing. In so doing,
Judge Dembe violated Abu-Jamal's rights to notice of sentencing, to be
present and make a statement, and to be apprised of his right to appeal
the sentence. These rights are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and
by the laws of the state of Pennsylvania. Had Abu-Jamal not discovered
and filed a timely appeal to Judge Dembe's motion, his right to file
future appeals would have been irreparably compromised.
The unconstitutionality of Judge Dembe's
undisclosed filing echoes the history of due process violations in the
Abu-Jamal case, which spans more than three decades. In the original
trial the judge, prosecutor, and police conspired to suppress evidence
of innocence and to obtain a conviction. The prosecution's case
was built on the specious premise that only three people were present at
the time of the shooting, but a fourth person – the probable
perpetrator – was seen fleeing the scene after Officer Daniel Faulkner
was fatally shot. The police, prosecutor Joe McGill, and presiding judge
Albert Sabo suppressed this from both the defense and jury. In
addition, the bullet that killed Officer Faulkner was never matched to
Abu-Jamal's gun, and police failed to perform routine tests on
Abu-Jamal's hands, which would have determined that he had not shot a
gun that night.
Judicial bias, impropriety and contempt for the defendant also figure prominently in this history. At
the original trial, Judge Sabo twice refused to recuse himself: when
his impartiality as a former Under Sheriff of Philadelphia County was
questioned; and again, when he came out of retirement to
hear Mumia's 1995 Post Conviction Relief Act Hearing—the most important
appeals hearing in the case –on the judicial and prosecutorial violations of the very case over which he presided 15 years earlier.
Similarly, in 1998, Judge Ron
Castille of the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court was asked to recuse
himself from the case; in his previous role as Philadelphia DA he
presided over numerous challenges to Abu-Jamal's appeals, including the
claim of racial discrimination in jury selection. Castille's unethical
conduct was later exposed because his name and the seal of his office
were stamped on the so-called McMahon tapes, discovered in 1997. The
tapes were instructional lectures to new prosecutors on how to eliminate
jurors unlikely to convict. In violation of Batson v. Kentucky,
some instructions suggested elimination on the basis of race, one of
Abu-Jamal's strongest claims for a new trial. Abu-Jamal's attorneys
called for Judge Castille's recusal in hearing Abu-Jamal's appeal and
petition for a new trial because the judge had received financial
contributions and support from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). In a
written defense refusing to do so, he explained that four other judges
out of the seven-judge panel received FOP funding.
In 2008, acknowledging the unequal application of the law in the case of Abu-Jamal, Judge Thomas Ambro of the Third Circuit Court wrote that the decision to deny Abu-Jamal the so-called Batson
claim of discrimination in jury selection "goes against the grain of
our prior actions." In previous cases with exactly the same claims, the
court had
granted new trial relief to the defendants, but this time it ruled
against Mumia in a two to one decision that overturned the court's own
precedents.
In
2011, Abu-Jamal's death sentence was confirmed unconstitutional when a
Supreme Court motion allowed to stand the past rulings of four federal
judges who had as early as 2001 set aside the death penalty in this
case. In late 2011, Archbishop Desmond Tutu called for Abu-Jamal's
release -- "Now
that it is clear that Mumia should never have been on death row in the
first place, justice will not be served by relegating him to prison for
the rest of his life….Based on even a minimal following of international
human rights standards, Mumia must now be released….District Attorney
Seth Williams [should] rise to the challenge of reconciliation, human
rights, and justice: drop this case now, and allow Mumia Abu-Jamal to be
immediately released."
Because
for more than 28 years Abu-Jamal was wrongly subjected to inhumane
conditions on death row, because he is innocent, because he has been
consistently denied his Fifth Amendment right to a fair trial, and
because of the uninterrupted history of judicial and prosecutorial
corruption and police conspiracy in this case, his supporters call for
Mumia Abu-Jamal's immediate release.
--
SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!
Free All Political Prisoners!
nycjericho@gmail.com • www.jerichony.org###
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