5 April 2013
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Mumia Abu-Jamal Attorneys Challenge Resentencing Process
On February 25, attorneys for class-war prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal
filed an appeal challenging the secretive court order that sentenced him to life
without parole last August. The sentence was mandated by Pennsylvania statute
following Mumia’s removal from death row in December 2011, after the
Philadelphia district attorney’s office ended its campaign to legally lynch
him (see “Drive to Execute Mumia Halted,” WV No. 993, 6 January 2012).
Mumia’s legal papers note that while the outcome of a hearing may have been
preordained, the deprivation of his basic due process rights jeopardizes future
legal efforts to fight for his freedom.
Seeking a new sentencing hearing, the brief details how the court
violated both Pennsylvania law and due process rights by imposing sentence
without notice to Mumia or his counsel, preventing Mumia from being present and
offering information and argument. The brief further notes, “In fact, there is
no record that the sentencing took place in open court at all.”
The secret resentencing of Mumia had more in common with the
conclave of the College of Cardinals to anoint the new pope than the due process
that purports to be the underpinning of American “justice.” Barring Mumia
recalled his eviction from most of the 1982 trial in which he was sentenced to
death by a judge who was overheard promising, “I’m going to help them fry the
n----r.” Once again the courts have demonstrated that from the day he was
falsely charged with the killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner,
this lifelong fighter for black freedom has no rights the capitalist rulers are
bound to respect.
Mumia was targeted by the racist cops from the age of 15, when he
donned the beret of the Black Panther Party. The murderous fury of the police
was reinforced when he became a renowned journalist known as the “voice of the
voiceless” and, in the late 1970s, a supporter of the demonized and brutalized
Philadelphia MOVE commune. Mumia’s innocence of Faulkner’s murder is a fact as
demonstrable as the earth is round. But court after court has refused to even
consider the mass of evidence proving this.
Mumia’s conviction was based on lying testimony extorted by the
cops, a “confession” manufactured by the police and prosecutors and phony
ballistics “evidence.” In 2001, Mumia’s attorneys presented in state and federal
courts the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he and another man were hired
for the job because Faulkner “was a problem for the mob and corrupt policemen
because he interfered with the graft and payoffs made to allow illegal
activity,” such as prostitution, gambling and drugs (see the September 2001
Partisan Defense Committee pamphlet, Mumia Abu-Jamal Is an Innocent
Man!). At the time, the Philadelphia police were under three corruption
investigations by the Feds, encompassing virtually the entire chain of command
that oversaw the “investigation” of Faulkner’s death.
Mumia may no longer live in the shadow of the executioner, instead
condemned to what he describes as the “‘slow’ Death Row” of life in prison. From
the 1887 execution of four anarchist labor organizers known as the Haymarket
martyrs, the gallows and dungeons are the capitalist rulers’ reward for fighters
for the exploited and oppressed. Today such prisoners include American Indian
Movement leader Leonard Peltier, eight MOVE members and Jaan Laaman and Thomas
Manning of the Ohio 7. The PDC, a class-struggle legal and social defense
organization associated with the Spartacist League, urges union militants, black
activists and radical youth to take up the cause of freedom for Mumia and all
the class-war prisoners.
* * *
Contributions for Mumia’s legal defense can be made out to the
National Lawyers Guild Foundation, earmarked for “Mumia,” and mailed to:
Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, 132 Nassau Street, Room 922, New York, NY
10038. To correspond with Mumia, write to: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335 SCI Mahanoy,
301 Morea Road, Frackville, PA 17932.
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