Mumia Abu-Jamal

Von: "MUMIA ABU-JAMAL" <>
Betreff: !*New Petition /
Bro. Linn Washington
article on Mumia!
Datum: Samstag, 21. März 2009 16:29
 
via: Hans Bennett
==============
Hi folks,
 
I am sending you Linn Washington’s new Mumia article, as well as a
petition to the US Supreme Court, started by German supporters, and
cited by LinnWashington in his article. Please help spread the word!
 
Best,
 
Hans Bennett
 
Abu-Jamal-News.com
 
 
 
------------------------------------
 
Dear co-strugglers for Mumia,
 
please find attached the call for action - to sign an online-
petition to the justices of the US Supreme Court.
 
We launched it two weeks ago in Germany and Austria - and it is
mushrooming now.
 
 
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/supreme/petition.html
 
 
 
It could be a wonderful tool to gain more awarenss and public support
in this critical state of Mumia's life.
 
Please spread it as far as you can! Post it, send it around, use all
your powerful means of creating news and attention.
 
Please feel free to change the pre-text in all ways you see fit -
and sign it with your own name or organisation!
 
The greatest thing of course would be if Amnesty could support
it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
 
 
*****************************************************************
German Network Against the Death Penalty and to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
 
www.inprisonmywholelife.com - www.mumia-hoerbuch.de - www.mumia.org
 
Phone: 0049-6221-889 49 55 - anna.schiff@t-online.de
********************************************
http://www.counterpunch.org/washington03202009.html
 
Weekend Edition
March 20-22, 2009
 
The Latest Twist in
the Mumia CaseSupreme Test
By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.
 
During a jailhouse interview in 1978 a Philadelphia radical awaiting
trial for a policeman’s death advanced a salient observation about a
fundamental flaw in America’s legal system.
The "System just make and break laws as it see fit!" noted this
radical who for years had battled Philadelphia authorities arbitrarily
bending and breaking laws to brutally assault his organization.
This observation by a member of Philadelphia’s MOVE organization would
prove both prophetic and profound for the journalist conducting that
jailhouse interview – Mumia Abu-Jamal.
 
Four years after that 1978 interview, Abu-Jamal stood trial for
murdering a Philadelphia policeman. That trial produced a conviction
so mired in controversy that today millions around the globe support
Abu-Jamal as the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
 
Abu-Jamal cites that radical’s observation in his new book "Jailhouse
Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners vs. the U.S.A." (City Lights
Books 2009).
This is the sixth book written by Abu-Jamal during his twenty-five-
plus years on Pennsylvania’s death row. This book examines inmates
who’ve learned law through self-study to challenge criminal
convictions and conditions inside prisons.
Abu-Jamal, in Chapter 2 of his new book, provides his assessment of
American law terming it an "instrument of the powerful, mortality be
damned. For the weak, the powerless, the oppressed, the law is more
often a hindrance than a help."
That radical’s observation about arbitrary operation in the justice
system accurately describes the Abu-Jamal case where courts – state
and federal – have repeatedly altered and/or abrogated established law
to block Abu-Jamal receiving relief granted to other inmates raising
the same legal challenges.
 
The latest example of this alter-law-to-undermine-Abu-Jamal dynamic
drives his appeal currently pending before the US Supreme Court. This
appeal attacks the 2008 ruling by a federal 3rd Circuit Appeals Court
panel that created a new legal standard for persons challenging racist
jury selection practices by prosecutors.
That newly created legal standard advanced by two 3rd Circuit judges
to reject voluminous evidence documenting racist jury selection
practices by the prosecutor during Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial erects
courtroom procedures far in excess of procedures required by existing
US Supreme Court and 3rd Circuit rulings.
 
The third member of that three-judge 3rd Circuit panel issued a 41-
page dissent that repeatedly upbraided his panel colleagues for
radically changing the established jury discrimination standards
applied by their Circuit and the US Supreme Court.
 
"Why we pick this case to depart from [3rd Circuit precedent] I do not
know," Judge Thomas Ambro noted in his 2008 dissent.
 
Incredibly, that panel’s ruling – later backed by the full 3rd Circuit
– faults Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial attorney for not strictly following
procedures the US Supreme Court didn’t adopt until 1986…four years
after Abu-Jamal’s trial.
An internet based petition campaign requesting the US Supreme Court to
overturn the 3rd Circuit ruling and grant Abu-Jamal a court hearing on
the jury selection discrimination issue amassed over 1,200 signatures
in just a few days.
This petition campaign initiated by a coalition of anti-death penalty
groups in Germany has gained signatures from persons in
Germany,Austria, Brazil and Turkey despite it not being formally
launched internationally. So far, petition signers include noted
German actors, actresses, activists, academics, civic leaders and one
member of the German parliament.
 
The prosecutor during Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial used 10 of 15 preemptory
challenges to purge potential black jurors – more than twice the
exclusion rate expected with race-neutral procedures.
Abu-Jamal’s richly detailed appeal to the US Supreme Court, prepared
by lead defense lawyer Robert R. Bryan, includes an examination of the
"culture of discrimination" operative among Philadelphia prosecutors.
Bryan’s appeal highlights 11 separate rulings where federal and Pa
state courts specifically faulted Philadelphia prosecutors for
engaging in intentional discrimination during jury selection. Six of
those 11 rulings cited in Bryan’s appeal came from the 3rd Circuit.
 
Further, Bryan’s appeal, referencing dozens of court rulings
nationwide, cites a US Supreme Court ruling where one Justice utilized
a scholarly statistical study documenting Philadelphiaprosecutors
purging potential black jurors at twice the rate of whites during
death penalty trials between 1981 and 1997.
Interestingly, just days before that 2008 3rd Circuit ruling, the US
Supreme Court granted a Louisiana death row inmate a new hearing after
finding race tainted jury selection practices during his trial.
 
This Supreme Court ruling applied standards less stringent than those
the 3rd Circuit created in the Abu-Jamal ruling.
 
The author of that Supreme Court ruling, Justice Samuel Alito,
formerly served on the 3rd Circuit where he participated in rulings
granting relief to inmates victimized by prosecutorial jury selection
improprieties less onerous than those in the Abu-Jamal case.
 
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s legal brief filed on
behalf of Abu-Jamal’s US Supreme Court appeal criticizes the 3rd
Circuit panel’s "departure from controlling precedent" – faulting that
ruling for improperly increasing the evidentiary burden on defendants
raising jury discrimination claims.
 
The NAACP Defense Fund’s brief warns that the 3rd Circuit’s ruling
"threatens to dramatically reduce the pool of cases eligible for
judicial review…" because it "directly contradicts" repeated US
Supreme Court rulings.
 
Philadelphia prosecutors are asking the US Supreme Court to reinstate
Abu-Jamal’s death sentence and reject his request for relief regarding
jury selection discrimination.
 
That 2008 3rd Circuit ruling upheld a federal District Court judge’s
elimination of Abu-Jamal’s death sentence after finding flaws in forms
used by the jury that condemned him to death.
 
The push by Philadelphia prosecutors to execute Abu-Jamal comes at a
time when states around the nation are backing away from the death
penalty.
 
This week, New Mexico became the 15th state to repeal the death
penalty. NM Governor Bill Richardson, when signing the repeal
legislation, noted the exonerations of four death row inmates in that
state.
 
Six of the 130 death row exonerations nationwide come fromPennsylvania.
 
The judge presiding at Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial, Albert Sabo, has the
dubious judicial distinction of handling the largest number of death
penalty convictions in America. Courts have overturned two-thirds of
those capital convictions in Sabo’s court citing faults by
prosecutors, defense attorneys and Sabo himself.
 
Philadelphia’s District Attorneys Office is currently resisting
actions by Philadelphia’s Mayor to sharply reduce spending by all city
government departments due to a billion dollar budget deficit.
Philadelphia prosecutors have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars
battling Abu-Jamal’s appeals in state and federal court.
 
Critics of Philadelphia’s DAs Office constantly cite fiscally wasteful
procedures like relentlessly resisting legal relief to inmates granted
by courts upon findings of faults by police and prosecutors.
Philadelphia District Attorney "Lynne Abraham is costing the City a
‘ton’ fighting police corruption cases," said Robert "Sugar Bear"
Lark, an inmate still sitting on Pa’s death row because Philadelphia
prosecutors are battling a 2007 federal court ruling overturning his
conviction.
 
Linn Washington Jr. is an Associate Professor of Journalism at Temple
University in Philadelphia and a weekly columnist for The Philadelphia
Tribune – America’s oldest black owned newspaper.
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