PHILADELPHIA: When police officers arrived as backup during a traffic stop in 1981, they found black activist Mumia Abu-Jamal sitting on a curb with a bullet in his chest and a gun by his side. Officer Daniel Faulkner lay dying from bullets fired from Abu-Jamal's gun.
The facts seem brutally clear to prosecutors, but Abu-Jamal's writings from death row have sparked a boisterous, global "Free Mumia" movement that has attracted celebrities and endured for a quarter century. On Thursday, the movement's claims that he is the victim of a racist U.S. justice system reach the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after decades of litigation.
Abu-Jamal's death sentence was overturned in 2001. Prosecutors are asking the appeals court to reinstate it, while Abu-Jamal's attorney will challenge his 1982 conviction.
Abu-Jamal, 53, has written several books while offering radio and Web commentaries delivered at times through prison phone calls. The writer Alice Walker compared him to Nelson Mandela, while actors Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen and others have supported his cause. A suburb of Paris has named a street after him, while the wife of former French president Francois Mitterand visited him in prison.
Three issues are on the table Thursday: whether the trial judge was racially biased, whether the judge erred in instructing jurors on the death penalty, and whether the prosecution preferred white jurors.
Abu-Jamal is not entitled to be in court.
Abu-Jamal had once channeled his intelligence and charisma into work as a radio reporter. But he was perhaps floundering by 1981 and was driving a cab the night of Faulkner's death.
According to witnesses, Faulkner had pulled over Abu-Jamal's brother, William Cook, on a downtown street when Abu-Jamal ran to the scene from his nearby taxi.
Ballistics evidence showed that Abu-Jamal — born Wesley Cook — shot Faulkner in the back, Faulkner shot back and then Abu-Jamal stood over the fallen officer and emptied his weapon, prosecutors say.
Little has been said about motive. Abu-Jamal has never testified.
"That case was the strongest case that I ever had," Joseph J. McGill, the lead prosecutor at the 1982 trial, said this week. "You have everything in terms of evidence, but the key evidence is he never left the scene."
Responding to the jury issue, McGill said he had hoped to seat four blacks, but that the defense struck one and another was removed by the judge. That left 10 whites and two blacks.
As for the judge, the late Albert Sabo presided at both the two-week trial and a lengthy post-conviction hearing in 1995. Abu-Jamal contends Sabo was a pro-police racist.
Sabo reportedly used a racial epithet to refer to Abu-Jamal, according to lawyer Robert R. Bryan, who represents Abu-Jamal on appeal.
"Judge Sabo stated ... that he was 'going to help 'em fry the n-----,'" Bryan wrote, quoting from a court stenographer's 2001 deposition.
Faulkner's widow, Maureen, will be in court Thursday. She admits, at age 50, to sometimes feeling worn down by it all.
"Right now, the federal courts aren't even looking at if he's guilty or innocent, they're looking at a technicality," she said Tuesday.
___
On the Net:
Free Mumia site: http://www.mumia.org
Daniel Faulkner site: http://www.danielfaulkner.com
Poster Comment:
There are seriously bad holes in the procecution's case, and Mumia should never have been convicted. I am convinced that there is a good chance this all was a set-up, and that someone hit Danny Faulkner and set Mumia up for the fall.
I would like very much to see Mumia freed; whether the conviction is overturned or not.