Almost 30 years to the day of the fateful shooting incident that led
to his incarderation, the decision has finally been announced: There
will be no execution of African-American journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who
in 1982 was convicted and sentenced to death in a highly-controversial
and seriously corrupted trial before “hanging” Judge Albert Sabo of
killing white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner on December 9,
1981.
At a press conference this morning, current Philadelphia District
Attorney Seth Williams, with Faulkner’s widow Maureen Faulkner at his
side, announced that in the wake of a US Supreme Court decision in
October not to hear an appeal of a Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruling
that had upheld the lifting of Abu-Jamal’s death sentence, he would not
seek a new jury trial to try and win a new death sentence for
Abu-Jamal.
Abu-Jamal’s death sentence was originally overturned in December
2001 by Federal District Judge William Yohn, who ruled that a poorly
worded and constructed Jury polling form and confusing instructions from
the trial judge were unconstitutional and could well have left jurors
thinking, incorrectly, that none of them could consider a mitigating
circumstance that argued against imposing a death penalty unless all 12
of the jurors agree to it. In fact, any one juror can find any
mitigating circumstance and on that basis vote against death on their
own, and since a death sentence must be unanimous, can block imposition
of such a penalty.
A three-judge Third Circuit Court of Appeals panel twice
upheld Yohn’s ruling, but their decision was appealed by DA Williams to
the US Supreme Court, which finally decided on Oct. 11 to let the
decision stand. Williams had 180 days from that date to decide whether
to seek a new trial in state court on the penalty.
All of Abu-Jamal’s avenues for appealing his conviction have
been rejected by the courts, meaning that absent new evidence of his
innocence, he is doomed to spend the rest of his life in jail -- though
he must now be removed from the hellish death row in Greene, PA, where
he has spent most of his last 29 years confined in solitary confinement
in a windowless room the size of a small apartment bathroom. On death
row, Abu-Jamal and other condemned prisoners are not allowed to
physically touch visitors--even wives, siblings, children and
grandchildren. They are shackled when they “meet” visitors through a
plexiglass window, though escape is impossible under such circumstances.
The vindictiveness of the prosecutor, the officer’s widow, and of
former Gov. Ed Rendell, who was the district attorney in Philadelphia in
charge of the case when Abu-Jamal was tried, was palpable at Williams’
press conference.
Williams said the decision not to seek a new penalty trial was “not
an easy one to make.” He said, “There has never been a doubt in my mind
that Mumia Abu-Jamal shot and killed Officer Faulkner, and I believe
the appropriate sentence was handed down in 1982. While Abu-Jamal will
no longer be facing the death penalty, he will remain behind bars for
the rest of his life, and that is exactly where he belongs.”
Faulkner, saying she and her family had “anguished” over the
two “terrible options” they had, as to whether to ask the DA to seek a
new trial or to give up that fight, said she had decided against the
idea, adding, “After 30 years of waiting, the time remaining before
Abu-Jamal stands before his ultimate judge doesn’t seem quite so far off
as it once did when I was younger. I look forward to that day, so I
can finally close the book on this chapter of my life and live with the
gratification and assurance that Mumia Abu-Jamal has finally received
the punishment he deserves for all eternity.”
Rendell, whose office was proven by academic research to have
deliberately removed blacks from death penalty juries over the course of
his tenure as DA 58% of the time, compared to 22% for white jurors,
including from Abu-Jamal’s jury, where 10 and possibly 11 potential
black jurors who had agreed they could vote for death were excluded
“peremptorily,” meaning without cause, by assistant DA Joseph McGill
(only three whites were similarly removed by McGill), said simply, “I
agree with Maureen and the District Attorney’s decision.”
The reality is that Williams likely realized there were two risks
with seeking a new death penalty. First of all, it would have been hard
to win, because in today’s Philadelphia, unlike in 1982, blacks cannot
easily be kept off of juries and moreover, attitudes towards the death
penalty have shifted dramatically in the city, with far fewer people
supporting capital punishment. Secondly, at any such hearing, the
defense would have the opportunity, not available to it easily in any
other way, to bring in new witnesses, and to question old ones, possibly
introducing evidence that witnesses had committed perjury at the
original trial, thus possibly opening the door to a new trial on the
underlying conviction.
Meanwhile, the DA, in claiming that life in prison is “where he
belongs,” is cooly ignoring the reality that the original decision by
Judge Yohn lifting Abu-Jamal’s death sentence was a ruling that he had
based upon the determination that he had been unconstitutionally
sentenced from the beginning! Furthermore, after that decision was
rendered, the DA’s office, at the time headed by the bloodthirsty Lynne
Abraham, instead of transferring Abu-Jamal to a general population
prison, where he would have at least had human contact with other
inmates, and where he would have been able to physically connect with
his family on visits, out of pure vindictiveness asked for and received
an order from the courts to keep him locked away on death row despite
his no longer facing a death sentence.
It is for that reason that I argued recently here
that on humanitarian grounds alone, the DA should agree to let
Abu-Jamal go free. He has after all already spent over 30 years in jail,
all that time just waiting to die, and all on the basis of a
constitutionally flawed juror form and constitutionally flawed set of
jury instructions by the trial judge. And the last 10 of these years
were because of pure gratuitous vindictiveness on the part of first
Abraham and then Williams. That should be more than enough punishment
for anyone in a civilized society! Saying that Abu-Jamal deserves to
spend the rest of his life in jail after spending the first 30 wrongly
on death row is simply barbaric.
Moreover, as I wrote earlier, there is a mechanism, a so-called
Alford Plea, which would allow Abu-Jamal to go free without his being
able to claim innocence.
Under an Alford Plea, the conviction would remain standing, with the
inmate, while free to claim innocence, having to sign a statement
saying she or he concedes that the prosecutor “probably has the
evidence” needed to convict.
I have no idea whether or not Abu-Jamal, who has consistently
insisted that he is innocent of the charge of first-degree murder of
Officer Faulkner, would accept such a deal, but as a matter of basic
human decency, DA Williams should offer it.
As things stand now, at some future date yet to be announced, a
Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas will formally sentence Abu-Jamal to
life in prison without possibility of parole.
DAVE LINDORFF, a founding member of this publication, is the
author of "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of
Mumia Abu-Jamal," (Common Courage Press, 2003). A signed copy of the
book is available to anyone making a $50 contribution to support this
publication. The book can also be purchased directly from Common Courage Press.
