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Legal Update On the Case of MUMIAABU-JAMAL!Sisters and Brothers, We have been meaning to get this out to you so that you can have a picture of where the legal case stands now. We urge you to call Judge Massiah-Jackson ASAP as she still has the power to reject Judge Dembe's rulings, and that would be great news! Phone: (215) 686-2523 Fax: (215) 567 7328 THE MURDER OF FRANCES NEWTON SIGNALS DANGER FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL (to download this in a word file, please visit http://www.freemumia.com/legalupdateoct2005.doc The recent killing of Frances Newton is a reminder that the death penalty is still intact and with the appointment of a pro-death penalty Chief Justice of the Supreme Court a major threat to Mumia. In February of this year the Pennsylvania state courts continued their refusal to consider any evidence of Mumia's innocence, or the extensive documentation of police, prosecutorial, and judicial misconduct regarding what happened on December 9th 1981. Court of Common Pleas Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe ruled against hearing affidavits by Yvette Williams and Kenneth Pate. Williams had sworn that star prosecution witness Cynthia White had told her she had lied at Mumia's trial. Pate had sworn that his sister-in-law, Priscilla Durham, a hospital security guard, had told him that she also had lied at Mumia's trial when she corroborated the cops' two-months-delayed story about Mumia confessing while lying on the hospital floor. Dembe had previously excluded the affidavit of Terri Maurer-Carter from the legal record. Maurer-Carter, a long-time court reporter, had sworn that she had overheard trial judge Albert Sabo vow outside the courtroom that he was going to help the prosecution fry the nigger'. Dembe ruled that even if true, she found no evidence that such a sentiment had affected Sabo's trial rulings! Significantly, the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that it was he, and NOT Mumia, who had killed Officer Faulkner, along with several other affidavits including a former FBI agent who supported Beverly's version of what was behind this killing, were also excluded from the record. Besides Sabo's alleged stated determination to convict and execute Mumia, referring to him as a "nigger", he still holds the dubious distinction of having sentenced more people to death than any other judge in modern times, and of those 31 only two were of European ancestry. Though Sabo died four years ago, it is his extremely unfair and racist record, severely criticized by Amnesty International and dozens of legal bodies in this country and around the world that has been rubberstamped by Judge Dembe. Almost simultaneously with Dembe's last denial of a hearing, some major death penalty decisions in other courts provided hope as important precedents and decisions that were potentially applicable to Mumia's case came down. The hopes in Mumia's situation had been based on three cases. Two involved Thomas Miller-El, who was sentenced to death for a 1985 murder in Texas. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in these cases that: (1) Miller-El's constitutional rights had been violated when prosecutors used peremptory challenges to strike 10 of 11 prospective Black jurors; (2) that the courts--the federal Fifth Circuit in particular--have unreasonably interpreted the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996 to make it virtually impossible for a death row prisoner to pursue an appeal in the federal courts. Both of Miller-El's cases apply directly to Mumia's, in which the District Attorney's office used peremptory challenges to eliminate 11 of 14 prospective Black jurors in a city which at that time was 40% Black. Moreover, the federal judge who considered Mumia's habeas corpus appeal threw out 28 of 29 constitutional claims based on the now-discredited interpretations of the AEDPA. In the third case, House v. Bell, the Supreme Court agreed in June to reconsider its almost impossibly high standard for reopening death penalty cases based on claims of innocence. This was a major challenge to the Herrera decision which ruled out innocence as a justification for a new trial in cases where due process was supposedly adhered to. Only last week, in the Senate's hearings about his nomination to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, supported the Herrera decision as being a reasonable one. The decision also challenged the AEDPA which has been the law of the land on the limited right to appeal death penalty cases. There seemed to be a real opening for the possibility of a new trial for Mumia based on these decisions alone. But now with the recent, court-approved legal lynching of Frances Newton by the state of Texas a flood of ice-water has dashed these hopes, once again swinging the pendulum in the other direction. Despite compelling new evidence pointing to her innocence, despite appeals by a former U.S. Attorney General, the current president of the American Bar Association, the Texas Publishers Association and the principal newspaper in the state capital, among others, no court deemed it necessary to stay her execution. For us the lesson should be clear: it doesn't matter to the authorities what the truth is--they killed Frances Newton to assert their supposed right to execute whomever they want and, by extension, to terrorize all of us into accepting their control. Yet the truth is that they are far more vulnerable than they seem, and far less powerful too. Their catastrophic failures in both Gulfs have revealed their callousness, racism, and incompetence to millions around the world and in this country. Similarly, their inability for 23 years to execute Mumia, despite their absolute commitment to doing so and their repeated statements that they would succeed, all reveal that, in the end, they cannot ignore the will of the people. We refuse to accept this government's attempt to discourage, frighten, and intimidate us. We must watch every move they make in the courts, take advantage of every window of opportunity and, at the same time, build a movement still stronger to fight the US occupations, the injustice, AND TO FREE MUMIA AND ALL OUR POLITICAL PRISONERS! Written by the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), October 2005 JOIN THE STRUGGLE TO FREE MUMIA AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS! NEW YORK FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL COALITION (212) 330-8029 (Hotline) Website: www.freemumia.com INTERNATIONAL CONCERNED FAMILY AND FRIENDS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL (215) 476-8812 Website: www.mumia.org To make much needed contributions, please call these numbers or check the websites. Call Judge Frederica A. Massiah-Jackson, Pamela Dembe's supervisor, to let her know you are outraged by Judge Dembe's decisions. (215) 686-2523 OR FAX HER: (215) 567 7328 *************************************************** I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer~ ***************************************************
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