Black journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal has been in prison for almost half of his life, more than 24 of these years on death row. December 9, 2007 is the 26th anniversary of his incarceration. In legal terms, Mumia’s case has now almost reached its final decision, even though this tells us little about the additional time in prison that is still to be expected. One thing, however seems to be absolutely certain: Without the publicity that has surrounded his case, he would long be dead by now, and without the renewed attention of the public, he will never be able to leave death row a free person. In the following we want to show to our readers how it was possible that a case of racist and political oppression that was so well known in the 1990s could apparently disappear forever in the depths of the U.S. criminal justice systems.

Mumia Abu-Jamal in the U.S. of the 1950s and the 1960s Mumia Abu-Jamal was born in Philadelphia in the year 1954 – the same year when the U.S. Supreme Court put an official end to racial segregation in U.S. schools. Up to that point, the United States had practiced a racist apartheid regime similar to the one that ruled in South Africa until well into the 1990s. In the 1960s, Mumia, then still a teenager, participated in many demonstrations against racism and the discrimination of Black U.S. citizens. After becoming a victim of racist police brutality himself early on, he realizes that in order to abolish racist discrimination, strong forms of Black self-organization are necessary. Thus, in early 1969, he is one of the co-founders the Black Panther Party (BPP) in his town of birth Philadelphia; he becomes its local media representative and contributor to its nation newspaper, The Black Panther. In the course of this work, he travels wide areas of the U.S. in the following 18 months and, among other topics, reports on the murder of the well-known Chicago Panther activist Fred Hampton and his body guard Mark Clark organized by the FBI. One interesting thing in this connection is that in a 1970 interview following the Hampton murder he is quoted with words that were again quoted out of context in his later 1982 murder trial, resulting in a death sentence: “Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.” Mumia had used this quote from Mao Zedong to characterize the brutal treatment of African Americans and their organizations such as the BPP at the hands of the police but in his final summation the prosecutor presented it as if this were the political philosophy, not of the U.S. state, but of Mumia and the Panthers! After, at the beginning of the 1970s, the FBI counterintelligence program COINTELPRO results in devastating success in splitting and finally destroying the BPP, Mumia leaves the organization in disappointment and completes his education at the Goddard College in Vermont. There, he encounters radio journalism, which is from now on the profession that captures his mind and soul. After his return to Philadelphia, it looks as if a really big career as a news caster was waiting for the talented journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. For a while, he is the candidate for a national program comparable to the TV literary talk show such as the one of Ophra Winfred. As he becomes increasingly well known, however, some of the themes he covers get him into trouble. He doesn’t constrain himself to reporting uncontroversial issues, but continues to report about “hot” topics such as racist police brutality and police corruption, as well as the miserable social situation most Blacks are forces to live in. This both cost him most of his well-paid radio jobs, but was also the origin of his appreciative nickname, “Voice Of The Voiceless.” In 1978, he and other critical journalists are subjected to a vitriolic attack by Frank Rizzo, then Mayor and before police commissioner of Philadelphia, at a press conference. The police had stormed the compound of the radical eco-organization MOVE, and in the process, a cop was killed, apparently in the crossfire of his own colleagues. Mumia and the other critical journalists were accused by the mayor to have caused this by the critical slant of their reporting. Rizzo’s speech ends with a direct threat: “They believe what you write, and what you say, and it's got to stop. And one day, and I hope it’s in my career, you're going to have to be held responsible and accountable for what you do.” Mumia’s Arrest and Trial 1981/1982 And the treat came true quickly, on December 9, 1981. Mumia, who by then as a freelance journalist was forced to moonlight as a cab driver to support his family, saw how a cop viciously beat his brother Billy and got out of his cab to help him. The cop, Daniel Faulkner, shot Mumia down and was then killed himself under circumstances not really known to this day. The police officers arriving shortly after this immediately recognized the opportunity to silence this well-known critical journalist once and for all. In this connection, it speaks volumes that the director of the political division arrived at the crime scene less than 10 minutes after the events, even though he had no business being there. That the cops manipulated the crime scene right from the start is by now proven by incontrovertible photographic evidence. Witnesses who talked about as fourth man who ran away after the shooting were ignored. For the “investigating” cops, Mumia had to be the perpetrator right from the beginning. While spirited to the hospital, the severely wounded Mumia Abu-Jamal is brutally kicked and beaten, but somehow survives. After he files a police brutality complaint a couple of weeks later, some of the cops involved all of a sudden claim to remember – 2 to 3 months after the fact – that Mumia had confessed to the murder that night. Scurrilously, before that the three trained police officers and two hospital guards allegedly never thought about reporting this to their superiors. But the prosecution itself was also pretty busy. Before the 1982 trial against Mumia, the prosecution systematically kicked black people off the jury and got rid of almost all exculpatory witnesses. Moreover, the police attempted to press into service “eye witnesses” who had never been at the scene but were susceptible to police pressure because of their own crime record, such as Pamela Jenkins, who testified about this in a 1997 hearing. A cop perjuring himself by claiming to have found and “secured” Mumia’s gun and who we now know destroyed all evidence on the gun was part of the program, as were forensic investigations allegedly not undertaken about whether Mumia’s gun had even been fired that night. The fact that Mumia, defended only by an inexperienced and unwanted public defender forced upon him, was found guilty can hardly be surprising. The goal of the trial becomes super-obvious during the penalty phase. The prosecutor demanded the death penalty, claiming that Mumia’s radical journalistic activity proved he was a dedicated cop killer. As sketched above, in a 1970 interview Mumia had commented the murder of black militants by the police with the words: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” When asked during the trial whether he still stuck to this, Mumia said he believed that the history of the U.S. had shown this claim to be true. That prosecutor McGill was able to thereby convince the jury that Mumia was an unrepentant cop killer must certainly be seen as one of his professional “masterpieces.” One must however say that he was strongly supported in this by the presiding judge, Albert F. Sabo, who never objected to illegal attempts to influence the jury and even was overheard by a court stenographer as saying “Yeah, and I’m going to help them fry the nigger” during a short court recess on the first day of the trial. Life on Death Row Since May 1983, Mumia has been on death row, many years in SCI Greene in rural Pennsylvania, far away from Philadelphia, a fact which makes visits by relatives a rare and expensive event for prisoners. On six to nine feet, without unfiltered daylight or sounds from the outside, Mumia continues to live and work as the “voice of the voiceless.” His voice continues to be heard.(Interview with Mumia). On workdays, he has two hours in the yard, which he uses for sports, but also for legal advice to his fellow prisoners. Thus, a few years ago he helped Harold Wilson to win a new trial, which ended with Wilson’s acquittal and his freedom after 18 years on death row. (Wilson) The Fight for a New Trial Since a federal judge overturned Mumia’s death sentence in 2001 because of faulty instructions of the jury on the correct way to mete out a death sentence, Mumia again tries to get a new, and this time “fair,” trial. Neither he nor any of his supporters is naïve enough to believe that all of a sudden, the courts have become fair. But since August 2003, Mumia disposes of a highly competent defense team led by San Francisco attorney Robert R. Bryan. The defense succeeded to get a hearing before the 3rd Federal Court of Appeals on May 17, 2007 on 3 points that from a legal point of view require a new trial. The first point turns on the racist manipulation of the jury selection, the second on the role of the prosecutor, who illegally influenced the jury during the guilt phase of the trial when he told the jurors that it was OK to resolve any doubts they had in favor of the prosecution since after a conviction Mumia would still have “appeal after appeal.” The last point litigated in May was the fact that the original trial judge, apart from his obvious bias at the 1982 trial, displayed the same if not worse bias during 1995-97 hearings on a retrial over which he also presided. If Mumia wins on just one of these points, this would open the road for a new trial for Mumia. Mumia would again be presumed innocent, and the prosecution would have to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, which seems patently impossible from all we now know. Of course, the prosecution in Philadelphia is also well aware of this. At the May 17, 2007 hearing they demanded the reinstatement of the death sentence thrown out in December 2001. Furthermore, they employ all sorts of delaying tactics and try their very best to shift the litigation to a court they assume is more sympathetic to them. (Commentary by the Berlin Alliance on the legal update) Local politicians in Pennsylvania have also shown interest in the case. Should the death sentence against Mumia be reinstated, Governor Ed Rendell would be the person responsible for signing the execution order. He has long made clear that he can barely wait to do so. Small wonder, since as the superior of 1982 prosecutor McGill he might go down with McGill should the manipulations in Mumia’s trial be revealed in a new, and this time different, trial. We are still expecting the decision of the 3rd Federal Court of Appeals, which can come down any day. See (legal update) as well as (here) and (preparation for the decision) Worldwide Support The state wanted to execute Mumia in both 1995 and 1999. In legal terms, he was never given any real chance to turn the clear doubts and legal violations that riddled his original trial to his advantage. Hearings from 1995-97 quickly turned into a farce, presided as they were by the very same judge, Albert Sabo, who had already sentenced him to death in 1982 and who to this day has sentenced more people to death than any other judge in modern U.S. history. However, a strong international protest movement against this premeditated state murder had developed already since 1991. The signing of the first execution order in 1995 triggered mass demonstrations in all continents of the planet. The U.S. came under pressure even on the governmental level. Since that time, the human rights questions in general and the death penalty in particular have always remained part of the agenda. A second execution order against Mumia in 1999 generated the same reaction of worldwide protest. But since 2001, there has been a decline in support for Mumia, which was probably fostered by the polarizing stance of some of the support groups and parts of the 2001-2003 defense team. The fact that after this 26-year-old history of political repression and resistance, public support for Mumia continues to exist at all is extremely remarkable. But whereas the outrage over his politically and racially motivated conviction motivated hundreds of thousands all over the world to take to the streets in the 90s, today unfortunately we hear much less about Mumia’s struggle for freedom. As in so many social and political movements, the notorious apparently inevitable power struggles did indeed erupt and finally ended up in weakening the movement. Younger generations often even didn’t want to approach the movement because of that. But fortunately, in the decisive year 2007 we can see many new projects and initiatives to support Mumia’s struggle. Since Mumia’s legal case has always strongly been influenced by the general political situation, it remains to be seen at this point whether the present support movement will be able to generate the pressure necessary to win Mumia’s freedom. Because at present, death penalty proponents in the United States are in the defensive, and serious claims have been brought to and accepted for consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court about the death penalty (Supreme Court deals with BAZE case in January 2008), Mumia and the 3,550 or so other death row inmates are still in a position to win – but they certainly need our help from the outside to prevent the state from murdering them. Other Sources by and for Supporters: US website in English US website in English with original audios by Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row Website of the Mumia audio book project and the Berlin Mumia Alliance Website of the long-time Mumia supporter Michael Schiffmann, author of “Race Against Death,” Promedia 2006 Translated into English by Michael Schiffmann, December 7, 2007

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