{"id":16073,"date":"2019-10-16T13:34:35","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T17:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/2019\/10\/16\/a-new-phase-in-mumias-case\/"},"modified":"2019-10-16T13:34:35","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T17:34:35","slug":"a-new-phase-in-mumias-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/2019\/10\/16\/a-new-phase-in-mumias-case\/","title":{"rendered":"A new phase in Mumia\u2019s case"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Oct.
Judith Ritter, Mumia\u2019s chief attorney, speaks to the press. (Cherri Gregg \/ KCBS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By JOHN LESLIE<\/b><\/p>\n

At a meeting in Philadelphia on Sept. 28, organizers discussed the opening of a new phase in the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, the noted journalist and political prisoner who was convicted on false charges of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. Last year, in a series of court appearances, Mumia\u2019s lawyers challenged Mumia\u2019s conviction and argued for a new appeals process under the Williams v. Pennsylvania<\/i> decision.<\/p>\n

Terrance Williams had been convicted and sentenced to death for robbery and murder. Ron Castille, the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, had been the district attorney of Philadelphia when Williams was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. When Williams appealed, his attorneys asked that Justice Castille recuse himself from the case given his previous role as prosecutor. Castille refused. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a prosecutor who later becomes a judge should recuse himself or herself if asked to hear an appeal in a case they had prosecuted.<\/p>\n

Mumia\u2019s attorneys sought to prove Castille\u2019s involvement in his prosecution, since Castille had refused to recuse himself from Mumia\u2019s appeal. They also argued on the basis of bias. On Dec. 27, 2018, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Leon Tucker ruled in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal, holding that the actions of former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Judge Ronald Castille had demonstrated a \u201clack of impartiality\u201d and \u201cthe appearance of bias.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attorney Judith Ritter explained to the Sept. 28 meeting that this was based on the discovery of a 1990 letter from DA Castille to Governor Bob Casey urging him to sign death warrants for death row inmates \u201cto send a clear and dramatic message to all police killers that the death penalty in Pennsylvania actually means something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Initially, the current Philadelphia district attorney,<\/span> Larry Krasner, had indicated that he planned to appeal Tucker\u2019s decision. Krasner reversed course on April 17, withdrawing his appeal. This represents a major victory in the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.<\/p>\n

What was in the boxes?<\/b><\/p>\n

On Dec. 28, 2018, employees of the district attorney\u2019s office announced that while searching for office furniture they had found six previously \u201cunknown\u201d boxes labeled with Mumia\u2019s name. Activists immediately <\/span>questioned the circumstances under which these boxes were \u201cmisplaced,\u201d In these boxes, Mumia\u2019s attorney, Judith Ritter, discovered new information that points to prosecutorial misconduct in Mumia\u2019s original trial.<\/p>\n

For example, the notes of prosecutor Joe McGill from 1982 indicate the race of potential jurors in Mumia\u2019s case, a potential violation of the Batson<\/i> decision, which states that a juror may not be dismissed through a prosecutor\u2019s peremptory challenge on the basis of race and that the prosecutor must provide a valid reason for doing so.<\/p>\n

With the agreement of Judge Sabo, the DA\u2019s office <\/span>failed to notify the defense that a supposed eyewitness, Robert Chobert, a cab driver, had a suspended driver\u2019s license and at the time of the trial was on probation for an arson-for-hire crime in which he threw a Molotov cocktail at a school. Also in the newly-discovered information was the fact that Chobert had written a letter to McGill demanding to know, \u201cWhere\u2019s my money?\u201d During the 1995 appeal, it was revealed that Chobert believed that the DA\u2019s office would help him get his license back.<\/p>\n

Another witness, Cynthia White, had pending prosecutions for prostitution and was brought to testify against Mumia from jail in Massachusetts. Prosecutors offered to help White out with her cases in exchange for her testimony. Defense lawyers were not notified. In a memo from after Mumia\u2019s trial, assistant DAs were told to \u201ctalk to Joe McGill\u201d before proceeding with charges against White. It\u2019s unusual that a homicide prosecutor would take an interest in minor cases.<\/p>\n

Another recent development is that Maureen Faulkner, the widow of Officer Faulkner has filed a motion pro se<\/i> alleging that District Attorney Krasner and others in his offices have conflicts of interest in Mumia\u2019s case and asking that the case be taken from the jurisdiction of the DA and placed under the aegis of the state attorney general, who has been hiring former ADAs fired by Krasner.<\/p>\n

The frame-up and mass struggle\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award-winning journalist and former member of the Black Panther Party (BPP), was convicted of the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner in a frame-up trial featuring unreliable witnesses and little physical evidence. The district attorney\u2019s office used Mumia\u2019s former membership in the BPP to argue for the death penalty. At the time of the trial, Judge Albert Sabo, also a member of the FOP, was overheard by a white court stenographer, saying that he was going to \u201chelp them [prosecutors] fry that n****r.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Philadelphia DA\u2019s office is well known for biased prosecutions and suppression of evidence in both death penalty and other cases. The DA\u2019s office was exposed for a 1986 training video that taught assistant DAs how to keep Blacks off juries. In Mumia\u2019s case, crime scene photos taken by photojournalist Pedro Polokoff showed cops holding guns taken in evidence with their bare hands, and showed the hat of deceased Officer Daniel Faulkner placed on top of Mumia\u2019s brother Billy Cook\u2019s VW<\/i>, though it appears on the sidewalk in the official police photos. The ballistics evidence was questionable. The Polokoff photos also don\u2019t show the cab allegedly driven by Chobert at the scene.<\/p>\n

An international mass movement grew in response to Mumia\u2019s case. The movement\u2019s steadfast determination to save Mumia\u2019s life helped win a reversal of the death sentence, which was commuted to a life sentence.<\/p>\n

Mumia\u2019s health problems in prison<\/b><\/p>\n

Although Mumia\u2019s death sentence was overturned, he was later struck by a series of potentially life-threatening illnesses. It became clear that the Department of Corrections was neglecting symptoms of diabetes. He experienced chronic fatigue, painful itching, and eczema, which worsened when doctors prescribed a topical ointment. In 2015, Mumia was hospitalized for diabetes and in the same year initiated legal action to receive treatment for Hepatitis C. It took a two-year struggle to get life-saving medication for Mumia\u2018s Hepatitis C.<\/p>\n

More recently, Mumia\u2019s supporters have successfully fought to make sure that he received cataract surgery to stave off the threat of blindness. The left eye was successfully corrected on Aug. 29, and the next surgery is to be this month. At every turn, Mumia and his supporters have struggled to make sure that he received proper treatment in the face of death by medical neglect.<\/p>\n

The success of the next phase of the legal case depends on our ability to build a mass mobilization of all supporters of human rights and justice around the demand, Free Mumia! It wasn\u2019t legal arguments alone that beat back the threat of execution. Working people and the oppressed can\u2019t rely on the courts, cops and capitalist politicians to protect us. Now is the time to intensify the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 4, a march for Mumia and all victims of police\u00a0 <\/span>violence took place in Philadelphia. Activists assembled at the statue to former mayor Frank Rizzo, notorious for his racist and brutal methods when he was chief of police, and marched to the Locust St. site where Mumia was wounded in 1981 and arrested for allegedly killing Officer Faulkner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By JOHN LESLIE At a meeting in Philadelphia on Sept. 28, organizers discussed the opening of a new phase in the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, the noted journalist and political prisoner who was convicted on false charges of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. Last year, in a series of court appearances, Mumia\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13882114,"featured_media":14834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30851],"tags":[30116],"class_list":["post-16073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racism","tag-prisons"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"es","enabled_languages":["en","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t