Supreme Court opens door to Mumia’s execution
Six months earlier, on April 6, the Supreme Court all but shut the door on Mumia’s 28-year fight for justice and freedom when it refused to grant a hearing (writ of certiorari) despite its own decision in the 1986 case of Batson v. Kentucky that the systematic and racist exclusion of Blacks from juries voids all guilty verdicts and mandates a new trial.
In Mumia’s 1982 trial, presided over by the infamous “hanging judge,” Albert Sabo, Philadelphia prosecutor Joseph McGill, in explicit violation of Batson, used 10 of his 15 peremptory challenges to exclude Blacks from the jury panel. But as with virtually all Mumia court decisions over the past decades, the “Mumia Exception,” a consistent and contorted interpretation of the “law,” or abject blindness to it, has been employed to reach a predetermined result. Mumia’s frame-up murder conviction was allowed to stand.
In contrast, on Jan. 19, 2010, Pennsylvania prosecutors, twice rejected in their efforts to impose the death penalty on Mumia (in 2001 and 2008), were given yet another opportunity to do so when the Supreme Court remanded the sentencing issue of life imprisonment versus execution to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The latter was instructed to take into consideration the High Court’s new ruling in the Ohio case of Smith v. Spisak.
Frank Spisak was a neo-Nazi who wore a Hitler mustache to his trial, denounced Jews and Blacks, and confessed in court to three hate-crime murders in Ohio. Spisak saw his jury-imposed death sentence reversed in the federal courts when his attorneys, like Mumia’s, successfully invoked a critical 1988 Supreme Court decision in the famous Mills v. Maryland case.
The Mills decision required, with regard to sentencing procedures, that both the judge’s instructions and the jury forms make clear that any juror who believes that one or more mitigating circumstance exists (sufficient to impose a sentence of life imprisonment as opposed to the death penalty) should have the right to have that issue(s) considered by the jury as a whole. Prior to Mills, Maryland jurors were effectively led to believe that they had to be unanimous on any possible mitigating circumstance for it to be considered in the deliberation process.
Mills explicitly rejected the idea of unanimity; it rejected the notion that a single juror could block from consideration the mitigating circumstances hypothetically found by another juror or even by 11 of the 12 jurors.
Before Mills, the “unanimity” requirement in the way it was presented to juries essentially eliminated the vast majority of mitigating circumstances, and therefore juries had little or no alternative but to impose the death penalty. Under Mills, once all mitigating circumstances were set before the jury, it was then their responsibility to determine whether they were sufficient to impose a sentence of life as opposed to death.
In both Spisak’s and Mumia’s cases the trial court judge violated the Mills principle and in essence instructed the juries that unanimity on each mitigating circumstance was required for consideration of the jury as a whole. As a consequence, Federal District Courts in both Ohio and in Pennsylvania (in the case of Mumia), later backed by decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, invoked Mills to overrule the jury-imposed death sentence verdicts. They ordered a new sentencing hearing and trial with the proper instructions to the jury and where new evidence of innocence could be presented. The jury remained bound, however, by the previous jury’s guilty finding.
Even so, the long-suppressed mountain of evidence proving Mumia’s innocence drives Mumia’s prosecutors to avoid a new trial at all costs. A new trial of any sort could only expose, with unpredictable consequences, the base corruption of a criminal “justice” system permeated by race and class bias. Executing innocent people does not sit well with the American people. In the courts of the elite, as in life itself, nothing is written in stone. The “law” has more than once been “adjusted” in the interests of the poor and oppressed when the price to pay by insisting on its immutability is too costly in terms of doing greater damage to the system as a whole.
The effect of the 1988 Mills decision was to make it harder for prosecutors to obtain death sentences in capital cases; the effect of Spisak is to make it easier. Armed with this new Supreme Court weapon and order to reconsider the application of Mills, Pennsylvania prosecutors will once again seek Mumia’s execution before the Third Circuit.
“States’ rights” logic of Spisak decision
Prior to this unexpected turn of events and for the past 22 years, the broad U.S. legal community appeared to agree that Mills applied to all states. That is, if a jury were orally mis-instructed and/or received faulty or unclear verdict forms that implied it needed to be unanimous with regard to mitigating circumstances that would be considered to weigh in against the death penalty, the death penalty would be set aside and a new sentencing hearing ordered.
That is what happened in Mumia’s case when Federal District Court Judge William H. Yohn in 2001 employed Mills to set aside the jury’s death penalty decision. Yohn gave the state of Pennsylvania 180 days to decide whether or not to retry Mumia or to accept a sentence of life imprisonment.
Since then, Pennsylvania officials have effectively stayed Yohn’s order by appealing to the higher federal courts. The Supreme Court gave them the victory they sought.
In deciding to hear Ohio prosecutors’ arguments in the Spisak case with regard to Mills the Supreme Court implied that a new interpretation of the concept of federalism was in the making. The political pendulum has swung back and forth on this issue. In past decades, a “states’ rights” interpretation was employed to justify racist state laws that denied Blacks access to public institutions and facilities. With the rise of the civil rights movement, federal power was used to compel the elimination of the same racist laws.
Justice is far from blind in America. It is applied to the advantage of the working class and the oppressed only to the extent that the relationship of forces—that is, the struggles of the masses—demand it.
Since Mills was decided based on the facts in the state of Maryland only, Ohio and Pennsylvania prosecutors argued, Mills cannot be automatically applied to other states where a different set of jury instructions and jury forms were involved. Indeed, Ohio prosecutors argued before the Supreme Court on Oct. 13 that Ohio and Pennsylvania were the exception and not the rule and that the norm in other states was to essentially reject a strict interpretation of Mills in favor of various state guidelines regarding jury instructions. It was not by accident that Mumia’s Pennsylvania prosecutors filed a friend of the court brief (amicus curiae) in support of the Ohio Spisak appeal.
Undoubtedly, the U.S. Supreme Court found some delight in rendering their Spisak decision. They changed the law in order to allow Ohio to execute a likely deranged Nazi and instructed Pennsylvania prosecutors to use this law to try to execute a revolutionary—that is, Mumia Abu-Jamal.
In every sense Mumia’s life is on the line as never before. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is pledged to sign what could be the third and final warrant for Mumia’s execution. Opinions vary as to the timeline for a final decision of the Third Circuit. Indeed, the Third Circuit could in turn remand the Mills issue back to Judge Yohn’s Federal District Court, and any decision made therein might well be appealed by either side back to the Court of Appeals and then to the U.S. Supreme Court. The process could take months or years, but the deliberations will be based on new turf that leads closer to the death penalty for Mumia than ever before.
Mumia's supporters around the world and Mumia himself have long noted that the battle for his life and freedom largely resides in our collective capacity to build a massive movement capable of making the political price of Mumia’s incarceration and execution too high to pay. Mumia is alive and fighting today because of that movement. Those dedicated to his freedom and who stand opposed to the death penalty more generally are urged get involved. Free Mumia!
Contact the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal in California, 001 510 268-9429, or the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal in Pennsylvania, 001 215 476-8812.
Jeff Mackler is the director of the Northern California-based Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
In Mumia’s 1982 trial, presided over by the infamous “hanging judge,” Albert Sabo, Philadelphia prosecutor Joseph McGill, in explicit violation of Batson, used 10 of his 15 peremptory challenges to exclude Blacks from the jury panel. But as with virtually all Mumia court decisions over the past decades, the “Mumia Exception,” a consistent and contorted interpretation of the “law,” or abject blindness to it, has been employed to reach a predetermined result. Mumia’s frame-up murder conviction was allowed to stand.
In contrast, on Jan. 19, 2010, Pennsylvania prosecutors, twice rejected in their efforts to impose the death penalty on Mumia (in 2001 and 2008), were given yet another opportunity to do so when the Supreme Court remanded the sentencing issue of life imprisonment versus execution to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The latter was instructed to take into consideration the High Court’s new ruling in the Ohio case of Smith v. Spisak.
Frank Spisak was a neo-Nazi who wore a Hitler mustache to his trial, denounced Jews and Blacks, and confessed in court to three hate-crime murders in Ohio. Spisak saw his jury-imposed death sentence reversed in the federal courts when his attorneys, like Mumia’s, successfully invoked a critical 1988 Supreme Court decision in the famous Mills v. Maryland case.
The Mills decision required, with regard to sentencing procedures, that both the judge’s instructions and the jury forms make clear that any juror who believes that one or more mitigating circumstance exists (sufficient to impose a sentence of life imprisonment as opposed to the death penalty) should have the right to have that issue(s) considered by the jury as a whole. Prior to Mills, Maryland jurors were effectively led to believe that they had to be unanimous on any possible mitigating circumstance for it to be considered in the deliberation process.
Mills explicitly rejected the idea of unanimity; it rejected the notion that a single juror could block from consideration the mitigating circumstances hypothetically found by another juror or even by 11 of the 12 jurors.
Before Mills, the “unanimity” requirement in the way it was presented to juries essentially eliminated the vast majority of mitigating circumstances, and therefore juries had little or no alternative but to impose the death penalty. Under Mills, once all mitigating circumstances were set before the jury, it was then their responsibility to determine whether they were sufficient to impose a sentence of life as opposed to death.
In both Spisak’s and Mumia’s cases the trial court judge violated the Mills principle and in essence instructed the juries that unanimity on each mitigating circumstance was required for consideration of the jury as a whole. As a consequence, Federal District Courts in both Ohio and in Pennsylvania (in the case of Mumia), later backed by decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, invoked Mills to overrule the jury-imposed death sentence verdicts. They ordered a new sentencing hearing and trial with the proper instructions to the jury and where new evidence of innocence could be presented. The jury remained bound, however, by the previous jury’s guilty finding.
Even so, the long-suppressed mountain of evidence proving Mumia’s innocence drives Mumia’s prosecutors to avoid a new trial at all costs. A new trial of any sort could only expose, with unpredictable consequences, the base corruption of a criminal “justice” system permeated by race and class bias. Executing innocent people does not sit well with the American people. In the courts of the elite, as in life itself, nothing is written in stone. The “law” has more than once been “adjusted” in the interests of the poor and oppressed when the price to pay by insisting on its immutability is too costly in terms of doing greater damage to the system as a whole.
The effect of the 1988 Mills decision was to make it harder for prosecutors to obtain death sentences in capital cases; the effect of Spisak is to make it easier. Armed with this new Supreme Court weapon and order to reconsider the application of Mills, Pennsylvania prosecutors will once again seek Mumia’s execution before the Third Circuit.
“States’ rights” logic of Spisak decision
Prior to this unexpected turn of events and for the past 22 years, the broad U.S. legal community appeared to agree that Mills applied to all states. That is, if a jury were orally mis-instructed and/or received faulty or unclear verdict forms that implied it needed to be unanimous with regard to mitigating circumstances that would be considered to weigh in against the death penalty, the death penalty would be set aside and a new sentencing hearing ordered.
That is what happened in Mumia’s case when Federal District Court Judge William H. Yohn in 2001 employed Mills to set aside the jury’s death penalty decision. Yohn gave the state of Pennsylvania 180 days to decide whether or not to retry Mumia or to accept a sentence of life imprisonment.
Since then, Pennsylvania officials have effectively stayed Yohn’s order by appealing to the higher federal courts. The Supreme Court gave them the victory they sought.
In deciding to hear Ohio prosecutors’ arguments in the Spisak case with regard to Mills the Supreme Court implied that a new interpretation of the concept of federalism was in the making. The political pendulum has swung back and forth on this issue. In past decades, a “states’ rights” interpretation was employed to justify racist state laws that denied Blacks access to public institutions and facilities. With the rise of the civil rights movement, federal power was used to compel the elimination of the same racist laws.
Justice is far from blind in America. It is applied to the advantage of the working class and the oppressed only to the extent that the relationship of forces—that is, the struggles of the masses—demand it.
Since Mills was decided based on the facts in the state of Maryland only, Ohio and Pennsylvania prosecutors argued, Mills cannot be automatically applied to other states where a different set of jury instructions and jury forms were involved. Indeed, Ohio prosecutors argued before the Supreme Court on Oct. 13 that Ohio and Pennsylvania were the exception and not the rule and that the norm in other states was to essentially reject a strict interpretation of Mills in favor of various state guidelines regarding jury instructions. It was not by accident that Mumia’s Pennsylvania prosecutors filed a friend of the court brief (amicus curiae) in support of the Ohio Spisak appeal.
Undoubtedly, the U.S. Supreme Court found some delight in rendering their Spisak decision. They changed the law in order to allow Ohio to execute a likely deranged Nazi and instructed Pennsylvania prosecutors to use this law to try to execute a revolutionary—that is, Mumia Abu-Jamal.
In every sense Mumia’s life is on the line as never before. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is pledged to sign what could be the third and final warrant for Mumia’s execution. Opinions vary as to the timeline for a final decision of the Third Circuit. Indeed, the Third Circuit could in turn remand the Mills issue back to Judge Yohn’s Federal District Court, and any decision made therein might well be appealed by either side back to the Court of Appeals and then to the U.S. Supreme Court. The process could take months or years, but the deliberations will be based on new turf that leads closer to the death penalty for Mumia than ever before.
Mumia's supporters around the world and Mumia himself have long noted that the battle for his life and freedom largely resides in our collective capacity to build a massive movement capable of making the political price of Mumia’s incarceration and execution too high to pay. Mumia is alive and fighting today because of that movement. Those dedicated to his freedom and who stand opposed to the death penalty more generally are urged get involved. Free Mumia!
Contact the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal in California, 001 510 268-9429, or the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal in Pennsylvania, 001 215 476-8812.
Jeff Mackler is the director of the Northern California-based Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
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Ergänzungen
Death Penalty: More News That Didn't Happen
Yesterday, we saw that the Supreme Court declined its own invitation to overrule (or at least weaken) Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts.
Those may have been the tip of the nothing happening iceberg.*
In other news that didn't happen, the Washington Post's Charles Lane reports that Martin O'Malley, the Governor of Maryland who "staunchly opposes the death penalty," has not granted, and apparently will not grant, clemency to the 5 men on death row there.
Maryland, we learn from the Maryland Manual On-Line, is known to a few as the "Old Line State," a nickname allegedly bestowed on it by George W (that's Washington, not Shrub) in honor of the Maryland Line troops who fought valiantly in the Revolutionary War. It's known to a few others as the "Free State" which seems to be a reference to freedom to get snockered, a result of Maryland's declining to provide active support for prohibition. My own suggestion is that we call Maryland the "Symmetrical State" since, as DPIC reports, it's got five guys on the row and has murdered five guys.
In any event, Lane questioned O'Malley about his failure to empty death row, allowing emptyness instead to remain firmly in the camp of his abolitionist rhetoric. O'Malley's explanations, Lane reports, ranged from the disingenuous to the dishonest.
O’Malley suggested that there might be some technical problem with a simultaneous commutation of all five sentences.
Well, then, what about one by one?
O’Malley hemmed and hawed again.
This is, of course, what politicians do. They toss principle aside if it means actually doing something that carries a political risk. (Say, advocating for a public option in health care - somethat that all the polls indicate most people favor.) So it is with O'Malley on commutations. Lane summarizes:
O’Malley’s inability to muster one plausible, principled reason not to commute the death sentences tells me that he’s playing politics. O’Malley’s liberal Democratic party base dislikes the death penalty. But, overall, voters in the state support it 53 percent to 41 percent -- and much of that support is concentrated in Baltimore County, a swing jurisdiction in statewide elections. Clearing death row might turn pro-death penalty voters against O’Malley and hurt his re-election chances this fall.
Meanwhile, back in the Lone Star State (which they talked once about re-nicknaming the "Bluebonnet State" after the state flower, but I digress), the Washington Post reports (via Scott Henson at Grits) that the Forensic Sciences Commission is meeting Friday. This is, of course, months after anti-abolitionist (but occasionally pro-secessionist-seeming because that's just how much he loves his country) Governor Rick Perry pulled the plug, as it were, on the meeting where the Commission was to examine the shoddy forensics that led the state to murder Cameron Todd Willingham.
Well, the Commission with its new chair is getting set to meet. But Willingham won't be on the agenda. Instead, according to the Post, Perry's figurehead Commission chair John Bradley said that
his top priority is bringing structure to the commission, which he said doesn't have policies in place that answer "simple questions, like 'What is the standard for accepting or rejecting a complaint?'"
Bradley says he still hopes to have the Willingham investigation done this summer. Grits doesn't buy it.
[G]iven that the commission could hardly "conclude" its business on arson science by this summer if they won't even address it at this meeting, part of me suspects from Mr. Bradley's statements that he hopes to establish procedures at the Harlingen hearing then dismiss the case on procedural grounds instead of evaluating the merits. I'd also expect him to "assign" the case (by some procedure, one assumes, he hopes to create on Friday) to one of the Governor's new appointees who likely share his apparent goal of delaying or sidetracking the investigation. Perhaps that's too cynical. We'll soon see.
Yeah.
So, let's sum up the recent news:
* Keller won't be sanctioned.
* The law won't change.
* Death Row won't empty.
* Texas won't reconsider.
What will happen. Karl Keys offers one answer.
Pending Executions
February
4 Mark Brown* (Ohio)
18 Robert Bryant Melson (Ala)
24 Hank Skinner* (Texas)
February
2 Robert Lee McConnell (Nev)
12 Dale Wayne Eaton (Wyo)
Karl notes that the asterisks mean the execution is likely.
appendix to News that didnt happen
February
4* Mark Brown Ohio
16* Martin Grossman Florida
18* Robert Melson Alabama
24* Hank Skinner Texas
March
2* Michael Sigala Texas
9* Lawrence Reynolds Ohio
11* Joshua Maxwell Texas
16* Jack Jones Jr. Arkansas
16 Angel Reyes Pennsylvania
18 R. Baumhammers Pennsylvania
30* Franklin Alix Texas
April
12* Don Davis Arkansas
20* Daryl Durr Ohio
20* Samuel Bustamante Texas
22* William Berkley Texas
May
13* Michael Beuke Ohio
June
10* Richard Nields Ohio
30* Jonathan Green Texas
July
1* Michael Perry Texas
here are more information about the situation --
It has recently been brought to our attention that inmates are suffering extreme abuse at the hands of corrections officers in Uinta Unit inside Utah State Prison in Draper, UT. There is proof that the abusive situation in this unit has been a long term problem that has yet to be corrected by the state of Utah in spite of multiple deaths and lawsuits.Former Utah DOC directors, Lane McCotter and Gary Deland both stepped down amid scandals of abuse and inmate deaths inside USP while under their direction and control. After leaving UTDOC both men went on to set up and manage Abu Ghraib where they created yet another torturous and abuse filled prison. This lends even more credibility to the claims that abuse in Utah prisons has been well documented and yet, ignored.http:../../..www...thepetitionsite.....com/..1/..end-..abuse-..at-..utah-..state-prison
Infos auf deutsch
Zwei Anmerkungen
Was jetzt aber nicht heißen soll, dass ich dagegen bin, dass Jamal freigelassen werden sollte.
2. Wer sich auch immer diese tolle Unterschriftenaktion gegen die Todesstrafe und für die Aufhebung des Todesurteils für Jamal ausgedacht hat, hat seine (oder ihre) völlige Unkenntnis über das föderale System der USA bewiesen. Kein US-Präsident kann ein Todesurteil verhindern, geschweige denn die Todesstrafe abschaffen. Das ist einzig und allein Sache der Bundesstaaten, die alleine ihr Strafrechtssystem ändern können. Und der richtige Adressat für ein Gnadengesuch wäre in diesem Fall der Gouverneur von Pennsylvania.
Mumia Is Innocent - Free Him Now!
Partisan Defense Committee Statement
24 January 2010
Mumia Is Innocent—Free Him Now!
Supreme Court of Death Rules Against Mumia Abu-Jamal
Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!
On January 19, the U.S. Supreme Court took a clear step toward the legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Court vacated a 2001 decision by federal district court judge William Yohn overturning Mumia’s death sentence. Yohn’s decision had been previously upheld by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The new ruling by the Supreme Court underscores our insistence that fighters for Mumia’s freedom must place no faith in the courts, which, at every level, have colluded with the police and prosecutors to see through the execution of this innocent man.
Mumia was targeted by the police and FBI in his teenage years as a Black Panther leader and later as a journalist and MOVE supporter renowned for his searing exposés of cop brutality and racist oppression. In a blatantly racist and political frame-up, Mumia was railroaded to death row in 1982 on false charges of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Without a shred of actual evidence against him, he was convicted on the basis of phony ballistics and other manufactured “evidence,” a “confession” concocted by cops and prosecutors, massive police intimidation of witnesses and racist jury rigging. His trial was overseen by “hanging judge” Albert Sabo, who was overheard saying he would help the prosecution “fry the n----r.” To secure the death sentence, prosecutors pointed to political statements issued by Mumia as a 16-year-old Panther.
Since his trial, the courts have repeatedly tossed aside massive evidence of Mumia’s innocence, not least the confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner. Yet Mumia remains unbowed, speaking out for the oppressed and the impoverished through his death row commentaries. The Partisan Defense Committee—a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League/U.S.—calls on trade unionists, death penalty abolitionists and all opponents of racist injustice to make their voices heard in demanding: Free Mumia now! Abolish the racist death penalty!
The Supreme Court moved against Mumia with cold calculation. Last April, it turned down Mumia’s petition to overturn his frame-up conviction. At the same time, the Court held in abeyance the arguments of Pennsylvania prosecutors to reinstate his death sentence, which had been overturned by Yohn on the grounds that Mumia’s trial jury had been given faulty sentencing instructions. The Supreme Court waited to rule against Mumia until after it reinstated the death sentence for Ohio neo-Nazi Frank Spisak, which had been overturned on similar grounds of faulty jury instructions. In effect, the high court gave the Third Circuit their marching orders to uphold Mumia’s death sentence. Alternatively, the Third Circuit could send the case back to Yohn for a hearing to consider other still-pending claims by Mumia or, less likely, reaffirm its prior decision.
The Supreme Court cynically tied together the Spisak and Mumia cases, not despite but because of their glaring differences. Spisak is a sociopath who admitted to killing his victims and made no secret of his admiration for Adolph Hitler. Mumia has always maintained his innocence and won acclaim as the “voice of the voiceless” for his powerful commentaries. The Court is consciously manipulating abhorrence of the fascist Spisak’s crimes to set a precedent for the legal murder of Mumia, a man whose “crime” was to stand up to the racist capitalist rulers. Noting how his case differed from Spisak’s, Mumia aptly told Free Speech Radio News, “The law is the tool of those in power, so how they use it doesn’t depend on the law; it depends on power.” The Supreme Court ruling will touch off new rounds of perhaps lengthy legal proceedings. But even if Mumia wins his battle against execution, the “alternative” offered by the courts is a life sentence with no possibility of parole, which, as Mumia noted in one of his prison writings, “is merely slow death.”
The court’s linking of the two cases highlights yet again how the fight for Mumia’s freedom is inseparable from the struggle to abolish the death penalty. The PDC opposes the death penalty on principle and everywhere—for the guilty as well as for the innocent. We do not accord any state the right to determine who lives and who dies.
Capital punishment is a barbaric relic of ancient codes of justice and, in the U.S., of chattel slavery. Where in medieval times those who ran afoul of Crown and Church were put to the rack or burned at the stake, today’s representatives of bourgeois “civilization” debate which combination of lethal drugs to administer to writhing prisoners strapped to death gurneys. In threatening such treatment for Mumia, the courts hark back to when black slaves could be tortured and put to death for hitting a white man in self-defense or for any other act deemed a challenge to the slaveholders. The hugely disproportionate number of black people on America’s death rows is a testament to the racist subjugation of the black population, which is fundamental to the maintenance of American capitalism. And while judges in their oak-paneled chambers decree the legal murder of the poor, minorities and working people, the police carry out the same sentence on a far greater scale as they gun down ghetto and barrio youth in the streets.
The death penalty stands at the apex of the machinery of state repression used by the tiny class of capitalist exploiters against the masses they exploit and oppress. The “justice” system threatens Mumia with the ultimate state sanction that it used against earlier militants deemed to be threats to capitalist “order”—the Haymarket Martyrs (1877), IWW militant Joe Hill (1915) and anarchist workers Sacco and Vanzetti (1927), to name a few. The state vendetta against Mumia began as part of the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign to wipe out the Black Panther Party, in which some 38 Panthers were killed and hundreds of others framed up and railroaded to prison. The government’s intent was made clear in 1968 by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who warned: “The Negro youth and moderate[s] must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will be dead revolutionaries.”
Mumia’s cause has been and must continue to be a focal point of the fight for abolition of the racist death penalty. Popular support for capital punishment has fallen steadily in recent years, due not least to the many cases where DNA evidence has exonerated death row prisoners. Even the conservative American Law Institute, whose death penalty guidelines were cited by the Supreme Court when it ended a brief moratorium on executions in 1976, has decided to get out of this gruesome business as ever more exposures of American injustice come to light. The Supreme Court, however, is not in the least deterred from its push to execute the innocent. Some six weeks before ruling against Mumia, the Court refused to consider the appeal of black California death row inmate Kevin Cooper despite evidence of his innocence and of a massive police frame-up. Free Kevin Cooper!
From the time we first took up Mumia’s cause more than 20 years ago, the PDC has supported the use of every possible legal avenue available to Mumia while having no illusions in the courts or any other agency of the capitalist state. Our fight has centered on the struggle to mobilize the multiracial working class in the U.S. and working people internationally, based on the fact that the proletariat is the one force in this society with the social power to effectively challenge the capitalist rulers. When Mumia faced a death warrant in the summer of 1995, worldwide protests that included trade unions representing hundreds of thousands of workers played a crucial role in staying the executioner’s hand.
Counterposed to this class-struggle strategy is the policy of many organizations--Socialist Action, the Workers World Party, the Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and others--which long centered their protests on the demand for a new, fair trial for Mumia. With the judicial appeals in which they put their faith nearly exhausted, their plea that the capitalist state deliver justice now comes in the form of petitions to Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct a civil rights investigation into Mumia’s frame-up trial and to President Barack Obama to “speak out against the death penalty for Mumia Abu-Jamal.”
These hat-in-hand appeals to America’s top cop and imperialist Commander-in-Chief are a savage indictment of the liberal belief in the “democracy” of capitalist class rule. Holder’s Justice Department recently threw leftist attorney Lynne Stewart in prison and threatened to extend her sentence by 28 more years for staunchly defending her client, who was accused of terrorist activities. Obama openly announced his support for the death penalty in his run for the White House, including in an interview with right-wing journalist Michael Smerconish, one of the voices calling loudest for Mumia’s execution.
After eight years of the despised Bush regime, Obama took office to give a facelift to bloodsoaked U.S. imperialism. Reinforcing illusions that Obama represents “change,” the reformist left tails after the trade-union bureaucracy, whose program of seeking “friends” in the parties and state agencies of the capitalist class enemy has gravely dissipated labor’s fighting capacity. Meanwhile, the U.S. military still rains death on Iraq and Afghanistan, inmates from America’s vast prison complex to the military’s Bagram and Guantánamo Bay dungeons continue to be brutalized and tortured, and bankers get billion-dollar bailouts while workers lose their jobs and homes.
The fight to free Mumia, as with all struggles against social oppression and deprivation, can go forward based only on a clear understanding of the class forces involved. Make no mistake: In baying for Mumia’s blood, the forces of bourgeois “law and order” are sending a message to all who would fight against exploitation, oppression and imperialist war that they, too, are in the sights of the state. Any real fight for Mumia’s freedom must be based on a class-struggle opposition to the capitalist rulers, who have entombed this innocent man for more than half his life. Free Mumia now!
-- 24 January 2010
Immortal Technique speaks out on Mumia
For more information visit:
Beiträge die keine inhaltliche Ergänzung darstellen
2 petitions going for Mumia — Howard