Mumia Abu-Jamal

Von: "MUMIA ABU-JAMAL" <>

Betreff: !*Dangerous News:

US Supreme Court Might

Reinstate Death

Penalty for Mumia

Datum: Sonntag, 11. Oktober 2009 17:23

 

From: Hans Bennett/Mumia NYC -- Remember to check out Pam Africa

tomorrow (Monday) from 8-9AM at WWW.900AMWURD.COM

------

We have been saying that there is a strong possibility that the US

Supreme Court will reinstate the Death Penalty for Mumia. This while

the leading candidate running to replace Lynne Abraham as Attorney

General is calling for Mumia's execution and a new hit piece film by

Tigre Hill "The Barrel of a Gun" is scheduled to be released around

December 9th, the 28th anniversary of Mumia's arrest and the beginning

of the subsequent conspiracy to have him executed. Now this article.

Please pay close attention and stay tuned for our messages. --

Suzanne Ross, for the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition

 

This is most alarming news:

 

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202434453364&Ohio_Death_Penalty_Case_Might_Determine_AbuJamals_Fate

 

Ohio Death Penalty Case Might Determine Abu-Jamal's Fate

 

Shannon P. Duffy

The Legal Intelligencer

October 12, 2009

 

 

Lawyers for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal will be watching

closely on Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court takes up an Ohio death

penalty case because its outcome may very well decide whether Abu-

Jamal's death sentence will be reinstated.

 

 

In April, Abu-Jamal lost his final appeal seeking a new trial for the

December 1981 murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner

when the justices refused to take up the issue of whether blacks were

unfairly excluded from the jury.

 

 

But, at the time, the justices took no action on a companion petition

filed by the Philadelphia district attorney's office demanding

reinstatement of Abu-Jamal's death sentence despite having discussed

it weeks before.

 

 

Now it appears certain that the high court has decided to hold the

Philadelphia prosecutors' petition in abeyance pending the outcome of

Smith v. Spisak -- an Ohio case that raises strikingly similar issues

to those in Abu-Jamal's case.

 

 

If the prosecutors in that case are successful and win reinstatement

of the death sentence imposed on Frank G. Spisak, the justices may

then see no need to take up Abu-Jamal's case.

 

 

Instead, at that point, it's likely that the justices would simply

issue a one-page order in Abu-Jamal's case that would summarily

reverse the decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and

order the appellate court to reconsider whether Abu-Jamal's death

sentence should be reinstated.

 

 

Why is Abu-Jamal's case so similar to Spisak's? Both were on death row

for notorious murders, but both won rulings in federal court that

granted them partial new trials limited to the penalty phase.

 

 

In both cases, the federal courts' decisions to overturn the death

sentences hinged on Mills v. Maryland -- a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court

decision that governs how juries should deliberate during the penalty

phase of a capital trial.

 

 

The Mills ruling struck down a Maryland statute that said juries in

capital cases must be unanimous on any aggravating or mitigating

factor. Voting 5-4, the justices declared that unanimity was properly

required for any aggravating factor, but that mitigating factors --

those that weigh against imposing a death sentence -- must be handled

more liberally, with each juror free to find on his or her own.

 

 

Since then, Mills has proven to be a powerful tool for defense lawyers

aiming to overturn death sentences in numerous other states.

 

 

The question now before the courts is whether Mills truly requires

that death sentences in other states be overturned if the juries in

those states might have been confused by faulty instructions or

verdict forms and led to believe that mitigating factors require

unanimity.

 

 

Perhaps even more important to the justices is a corollary question of

federalism: Is it fair for the federal courts to overturn a state

court's decision on how to interpretMills by imposing its own

interpretation that extends Mills beyond its original scope?

 

 

It's possible that the justices will provide the answers to those

questions in Spisak's case that will be immediately applied to Abu-

Jamal's case -- with Abu-Jamal and his lawyers forced to simply watch

and wait until that happens.

 

 

Spisak, 57, was sentenced to death in 1983 for a killing spree at

Cleveland State University after a monthlong trial that reportedly

included testimony that he was a neo-Nazi and cross-dresser.

 

 

According to briefs in the case, Spisak killed Horace T. Rickerson,

Timothy Sheehan and Brian Warford and also shot at John Hardaway and

Coletta Dartt. Hardaway was shot seven times but survived and

identified Spisak as the shooter.

 

 

After his arrest, Spisak confessed to all five shootings and declared

that his actions were motivated by his hatred of gay people, blacks

and Jews.

 

 

As Ohio prosecutors argued in their Supreme Court brief, Spisak

"proudly testified at length as to his neo-Nazi beliefs and told the

jury that those beliefs had motivated the murders."

 

 

In 2006, the 6th Circuit overturned Spisak's death sentence based on a

Mills violation as well as findings that his lawyers were ineffective

and had "demonized" Spisak during the trial.

 

 

The Supreme Court overturned the ruling and ordered the 6th Circuit to

study the case again in light of two other decisions by the high court.

 

 

But the 6th Circuit in 2008 reinstated its prior decisions, finding

they were correct.

 

 

Now the Supreme Court has taken the Spisak case up a second time to

tackle the question of whether the 6th Circuit failed to give proper

deference to the Ohio state courts "when it applied Mills v. Maryland

to resolve ... questions that were not decided or addressed in Mills."

 

 

Abu-Jamal's lead lawyer, Robert R. Bryan of San Francisco, said in

April that the issue in Spisak is "very similar" to the issue raised

in the prosecutors' petition in Abu-Jamal's case.

 

 

"The question we've got," Bryan said at the time, "is whether we'll be

left dangling in the wind until Spisak is decided."

 

 

In the prosecutor's petition in Abu-Jamal's case, Deputy District

Attorney Ronald Eisenberg argued that the 3rd Circuit failed to give

the proper deference to the rulings of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court

which had addressed the Mills issue in 1995 and -- relying on a 3rd

Circuit decision -- concluded that the Pennsylvania jury instructions

did not run afoul of Mills.

 

 

But by the time Abu-Jamal's case made its way into the federal courts,

the 3rd Circuit "had changed its mind," Eisenberg argued, with a

series of decisions that said the Pennsylvania courts' analysis of

Mills was not only wrong but unreasonable.

 

 

Eisenberg urged the justices to see a difference between Mills --

where the Maryland jury was specifically instructed that it had to be

unanimous on mitigating factors -- and the situation in states like

Pennsylvania, where the issue is much subtler and hinges on

speculation by the federal courts that the jury might have been

confused.

 

 

"The difficulty with the 3rd Circuit's 'risk of confusion' view is

that Mills, quite simply, stated no such rule," Eisenberg argues.

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