Appeals pending as Mumia marks 20 years on death row
By Charles Robideau
     On July 3, Mumia Abu-Jamal marked the completion of 20 years on Death Row.
     It was on that date in 1982 that a jury in Philadelphia voted to impose the death penalty, a day after they had convicted him of shooting to death Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.
     If there was cause for celebrating the 20th anniversary, it was that Mumia is still in sound body and mind in his cell at SCI Greene, the state prison in Waynesburg, having lived through two execution warrants signed by Gov. Tom Ridge.
     Meanwhile, Mumia’s case has become a dense tangle of actions and decisions in both state and federal courts with no resolution in sight.
     The process has been punctuated by writs for execution signed by Ridge in 1995 and 1999, each of which came only days before a major filing by Mumia’s lawyers. This circumstance was explained when it was revealed that prison officials intercepting Mumia’s mail had been illegally notifying state officials of the impending appeals.
     Compounding the complexity was the entry of a new team of lawyers, replacing the team that had handled Mumia’s appeals for about 10 years.
     The original team, headed by Leonard Weinglass, was fired by Mumia in March, 2001, after Weinglass’s assistant Daniel Williams, published a book on the case, "Executing Justice," in which Williams asserted opinions on an issue of crucial importance to the case – the 1999 confession by a professed hit-man, Arnold Beverly, that he, not Mumia, had shot Officer Faulkner in a hit jointly planned by corrupt police and organized crime figures.
     Faulkner had been gunned down at about 4 a.m. on December 9, 1981, in Central Philadelphia, after a sidewalk confrontation with Mumia’s brother. Mumia, who had been parked nearby in his taxi, rushed to the scene and was himself shot, either by Faulkner or another officer.
     Williams, in his book, termed as "bona fide lunacy" any reliance on the Beverly confession, even though it could prove Mumia’s innocence and explain many unresolved issues.
     Mumia’s new legal team, headed by Eliot Lee Grossman of Alhambra, Cal., and including Marlene Kamish of Pittsburgh, took over in May, 2001, and immediately sought to have the Beverly confession accepted by the Philadelphia court as evidence in a new appeal.
     The new team also sought acceptance of statements by other witnesses that would add new evidence favorable to Mumia or tend to discredit testimony of prosecution witnesses at the original trial.
     In July, 2001, the new team filed a major new appeal under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Review Act (PCRA), in which a central claim was that Mumia had been badly represented by the previous lawyers, in part because of their refusal to consider the Beverly confession and other evidence that would prove Mumia’s innocence.
     In making this charge, the new lawyers suggested that Weinglass and Williams were afraid to pursue the underlying allegations of corruption in the Philadelphia Police Department. If Mumia were found innocent after a new trial with new evidence, the new petition stated, it would reveal that Mumia had been framed, witnesses pressured, and evidence either suppressed or doctored.
     "The Petitioner (Mumia) did not shoot and kill Police Officer Faulker," the petition states. The Petitioner was shot and framed as a result of stumbling into the middle of a plot by corrupt elements in the police department, working in tandem with organized crime, to eliminate a police officer who was getting in the way of their protection racket.
     "The petitioner was not shot and framed in this case because he was Mumia Abu-Jamal, the leading black activist. The Petitioner was shot and framed in this case because he was a young black man in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Petitioner was shot and framed because the police were involved in the murder of one of their own. Since they were involved in the murder of one of their own they needed a fall guy.
     "What could make this case more open and shut than if a young black man, like the real killer, was found at the scene, apparently shot by the dying officer? Nobody was ever likely to look any further if this man was a nobody. . . .Nobody would ever have looked any further if that young black man had not been the Petitioner Mumia Abu-Jamal."
     This petition, to the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, is still under review by the Court.
     Meanwhile, last December, a federal District Judge in Philadelphia ruled on a major federal court appeal filed by Weinglass and Williams in October, 1999. That "Habeas Corpus" petition had asked for a new trial, based on 29 claims of error in the original trial and subsequent unsuccessful appeals, and it sought to rescind Mumia’s death sentence, based on erroneous instructions to the jury by the trial Judge, Albert F. Sabo.
     Federal Judge William H. Yohn Jr. dismissed all 29 claims that might have given Mumia a new trial. But he vacated the death penalty, ruling that, under the law, the state must hold a new penalty hearing within 180 days or Mumia would automatically be re-sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
     Both sides have appealed the ruling, which leaves Mumia still under the death sentence.
     Another issue surfaced this year when Mumia’s lawyers discovered a videotape made by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office shortly after Mumia’s trial. The tape instructed prosecutors how to keep blacks off of jury panels hearing cases against black defendants, while staying within the law against jury packing.
     The district attorney at the time was Ronald D. Castille, who is now a justice on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which will rule on Mumia’s appeal.
     Mumia’s lawyers sought to take testimony from Castille about his role in making the videotape, but the request was denied by the Supreme Court on June 14. Mumia’s lawyers then filed a "recusal motion" demanding that Castille remove himself from hearing Mumia’s appeal.