[moki]

This is a very interesting case. From many Internet sites, it sounds like Mumia is a talented journalist who has been railroaded by a corrupt legal system, and persecuted because he is black. I did a Google search, and the first couple of dozen hits all parroted this article, a number of them even in other languages, written by people who no doubt believe the American justice system is corrupt.

However, this case is not as it appears. Read the following article first:

from: http://www.freemumia.org/intro.html

.....

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning Pennsylvania journalist who exposed police violence against minority communities. On death row since 1982, he was wrongfully sentenced for the shooting of a police officer. New evidence, including the recantation of a key eyewitness, new ballistic and forensic evidence and a confession from Arnold Beverly (one of the two killers of Officer Faulkner) points to his innocence! Mumia had no criminal record.

For the last 21 years, Abu-Jamal has been locked up 23 hours a day, denied contact visits with his family, had his confidential legal mail illegally opened by prison authorities, and put into punitive detention for writing his first of three books while in prison, Live From Death Row.

His case is currently on appeal before the Federal District Court in Philadelphia. Mumia's fight for a new trial has won the support of tens of thousands around the world, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, The European Parliament, Alice Walker, Paul Newman, Maya Angelou, Sister Helen Prejean, Danny Glover, Rage Against The Machine, the Detroit and San Francisco City Councils, Amnesty International, and many others. Mumia Abu-Jamal's fate rests with all those people who believe in every person's right to justice and a fair trial.

"I remain innocent. A court cannot make an innocent man guilty. Any ruling founded on injustice is not justice. The righteous fight for life, liberty, and for justice can only continue." Mumia Abu-Jamal , Oct. 31, 1998

Facts about Mumia's 1982 trial:

* The policeman was killed with a 44 caliber gun. Abu-Jamal's gun which he was licensed to carry as a night-time taxi driver, was a 38 caliber.

* The police never tested Abu-Jamal's gun to see if it had been recently fired. They never tested his hands to see if he had fired a gun. They have never shown Abu-Jamal 's gun to be the fatal weapon.

* No police officers present at Abu-Jamal's arrest claimed to have heard Jamal's "confession" until two months after it allegedly occurred. This was right after Abu-Jamal had filed police brutality charges.

* Abu-Jamal's doctor said that Abu-Jamal, who was unconscious, said nothing. He reported that a nurse found police with loaded guns pointed at Mumia as he lay unconscious in his hospital bed.

* William Singletary, a Vietnam veteran and local businessman, saw the whole incident and has testified that Abu-Jamal was not the shooter. However, the police forced him to change his story and intimidated him into leaving Philadelphia.

* Other key witnesses, such as Veronica Jones -- who now testifies in support of Abu-Jamal, were harassed into giving false testimony. Two prosecution witnesses were given special favors, including exemption from criminal prosecution, for their testimony.

Elements in an unfair trial:

* The Judge, Albert Sabo, sentenced more people to death than any other sitting judge in the US.

* The public defender didn't interview a single witness in preparation for the trial, and didn't have funds for defending a capital case.

* The prosecutor removed 11 qualified African Americans from the jury. He also argued for the death penalty because of Mumia's membership in the Black Panther Party, a practice later condemned as unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.

* The racial bias of Philadelphia's courts has resulted in 120 people on death row, all but 13 non-white.

Sounds terrible, doesn't it? Well, there's more to the story, a whole lot more. Here is an extensive rebuttal of every myth perpetuated by Mumia's supporters:

http://www.danielfaulkner.com/mythsdir.html

Definitely go to that link -- the rebuttal is incredibly complete, and factual. Certainly this story itself is interesting, on many levels, but most interesting to me is how people like Mumia can manage to seem persecuted and victimized the by repeating of false statements in the press, and on the Internet, and yet the reality is significantly different.

[Uday's Carcass]

I've seen the reports on this guy. Definitely a cop-killer.

Rot in your cell, Mumia.

[kvm_mkdb]

Originally posted by moki:
Definitely go to that link -- the rebuttal is incredibly complete, and factual.

While factual, that rebuttal is far from complete.
You can read a report by Amnesty International about the case:

Based on its review of the trial transcript and other original documents, Amnesty International has determined that numerous aspects of this case clearly failed to meet minimum international standards safeguarding the fairness of legal proceedings.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/re...ia/conclu.html

[MacGorilla]

I don't know if he is guilty or not but based on what I've seen and read, he deserves a new trial.

[OldManMac]

Originally posted by Uday's Carcass:
I've seen the reports on this guy. Definitely a cop-killer.

Rot in your cell, Mumia.

Apparently, you have the definitive answer on this. Why don't you share your information with the authorities and those who believe otherwise, so this issue can be settled once and for all.

[Mithras]

This is yet another case where both sides have some points, but the whole thing gets wrapped up in partisan flamebaiting. My opinion is that:

(1) Mumia killed the cop.
(2) The trial was unfair and stacked against him by some understandably pissed-off cops.

I think the Leonard Peltier case is similar.

If you think about it, it boils down to the heart of a constitutional democracy: if someone is guilty, is the government justified in using any means available to convict them?

[zigzag]

It's my impression (and we can only go on impressions here) that Mumia did not receive the most judicious trial but it's also my impression that he's guilty.

The reality is that very few people get complete defenses - there isn't enough time or money. And it's difficult to find a case in which a judge doesn't err in some fashion, either from bias or oversight or both. Judges are, after all, human. What ultimately matters is whether the jury had enough information to make a fair determination, and in this case, despite the blemishes, I believe they did. Mumia is just more adept than others at enlisting the help of the media and the celebrity left. Both sides cherry-pick the record for things that support their cause, although in this case it appears to me that Mumia's side does a lot more cherry-picking than the other.

Still, it's healthy to go through this process. Maybe the Supreme Court will find reversible error, maybe they won't.

We would all be saved a lot of trouble of this sort if we simply eliminated the death penalty. Nevermind the moral issues - it causes far more trouble and expense than it's worth.

[moki]

Originally posted by MacGorilla:
I don't know if he is guilty or not but based on what I've seen and read, he deserves a new trial.

Well, what amazes me is that if you look at the points made on that freemumia.org page, they are basically repeating falsehoods that have been entirely rebutted. Yet because they are repeated often enough, people believe them.

I went down the list, and compared all of the claims made by the various "free mumia" pages, and then compared them to the reasoned rebuttal here (which is supported by the record): http://www.danielfaulkner.com/mythsdir.html

...and it was pretty clear to me that this was just Mumia's propaganda machine put in full swing... and plenty of misguided folks probably fell for it.

[theolein]

Originally posted by moki:
Well, what amazes me is that if you look at the points made on that freemumia.org page, they are basically repeating falsehoods that have been entirely rebutted. Yet because they are repeated often enough, people believe them.

I went down the list, and compared all of the claims made by the various "free mumia" pages, and then compared them to the reasoned rebuttal here (which is supported by the record): http://www.danielfaulkner.com/mythsdir.html

...and it was pretty clear to me that this was just Mumia's propaganda machine put in full swing... and plenty of misguided folks probably fell for it.

I wouldn't know if he shot the policeman or not, although I remember it being reported (on South African TV). It seems as if he fired the gun, but it also seems as if his trial was unfair.

The amnesty international report is interesting, in amongst other things, when it is placed and studied side by side with the danielfaulkner site that rebuts some of the "myths". There seem to be no contradictions between the two. The amnesty report doesn't deny the crime and the danielfaulkner site doesn't mention the trial procedings much.

It does seem as if his trial was stacked against him. I wonder if the police simply weren't confident that they would win the case and therefore "helped" out. The Judge's actions seem to be pretty poor as well, and I wonder, if any of this is true, why no further attempt has been made to get another judge on grounds that the judge was partial or making errors?

[zigzag]

Originally posted by theolein:
The Judge's actions seem to be pretty poor as well, and I wonder, if any of this is true, why no further attempt has been made to get another judge on grounds that the judge was partial or making errors?

There have been numerous appeals for a retrial, all of which have been denied after lengthy review on both the state and federal levels. The U.S. Supreme Court has denied certiorari twice, which means that after reviewing the decision of the lower appellate court, they found no reason to review the matter further. The case is on appeal yet again, awaiting a decision from yet another federal judge.

Most judges make errors of one kind or another in the course of a trial, some insignificant, some large. It's almost inevitable, because trials are complicated matters. In order to grant a retrial, the appellate court has to find that the error(s) made a material difference (it's more complicated than that, but that's the essence of it). In other words, it's not enough to show error - you have to show what's called "reversible error."

It's easy to pick isolated comments and/or actions from judges and argue that they were biased against one party or the other, but it's important to consider them in context. Judges are often trying to control a circus-like atmosphere and and are often scolding people for one reason or another - it doesn't necessarily mean that the defendant hasn't had a fair shot or that the jury is unable to make a fair and impartial decision. If a retrial was granted every time a judge made an intemperate remark, we would hardly be able to convict anyone. Judges also have to have a certain amount of discretion when making decisions about the conduct of a trial - it's only when there's a clear abuse of discretion that you get a retrial.

My impression is that Mumia is mostly a very good bullsh*t artist and that many of his supporters have bought into it. And I say that as someone who knows full well that cops, prosecutors, and judges are capable of very sinister things. I don't see this as one of those cases, although I'll keep an open mind.

Again, we could save ourselves a lot of trouble if we did away with the death penalty. It causes far more trouble than it's worth. Were it not for the death penalty, this case would not have received so much attention.

[Millennium]

The judge in his case was a known racist, at least outside the courtroom and quite possibly inside the courtroom. The judge should be disbarred at the absolute least, and frankly should be in jail for life himself.

Should Mumia be freed? Not necessarily. But he should get a new trial, and whether or not he should be freed ought to be decided based on the outcome of that.

[zigzag]

Originally posted by Millennium:
The judge in his case was a known racist, at least outside the courtroom and quite possibly inside the courtroom. The judge should be disbarred at the absolute least, and frankly should be in jail for life himself.

Based on what, exactly? I've read the accounts and all I can see is that he's a tough judge. The system is full of tough judges. I don't always like them either but the system doesn't guarantee for or against tough or easy judges.

Maybe he's a racist. There are a lot of racist judges. But you have to look at the actual trial record, not the judge's supposed reputation. I have yet to see anything actually on the record that tells me that Mumia got railroaded. Virtually everything I've read in that vein has been taken out of context, exaggerated, or fabricated.

I'm not defending Judge Sabo - I have no interest in Judge Sabo whatsoever. I'm just saying that what counts is the actual trial record, not all the other stuff being thrown around.

Let's not forget that Mumia was convicted and sentenced by a jury, not by Judge Sabo.

I've belonged to the ACLU and I've donated to AI. Cops, prosecutors and judges are all capable of sinister things. I'm just not persuaded that it happened in this case.

[moki]

Originally posted by Millennium:
The judge in his case was a known racist, at least outside the courtroom and quite possibly inside the courtroom. The judge should be disbarred at the absolute least, and frankly should be in jail for life himself.

Exactly what is this documentation you speak of? I read over some of the trial transcripts, and the judge followed the letter of the law, and actually was rather patient with Mumia (who was clearly attempting to just disrupt the court).

[Brien]

I say, inject him... the same propagand for him has been around for at least 10 years, and has been rebutted several times.