Death penalty dropped against Mumia Abu-Jamal RT

Prosecutors in Philadelphia announced Wednesday that they had halted the state's effort to execute Mumia Abu-Jamal, the death row inmate convicted of killing a police officer 30 years ago, whose subsequent legal case based on claims of innocence has received international attention.




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Mumia Abu-Jamal left Philadelphia's City Hall after a hearing in July 1995. Prosecutors have announced that they will no longer seek the death penalty for Mr. Abu-Jamal.


Timeline: Mumia Abu-Jamal

Unlike most other death-row inmates, Mumia Abu-Jamal has been a vocal spokesman for his own cause. He has attracted supporters around the world, who see him as a symbol of the racial inequities and other injustices of the American death-penalty system.




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Mr. Abu-Jamal will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole, said Seth Williams, the district attorney for Philadelphia.

"This has been a very, very difficult decision," Mr. Williams said at a news conference, adding that he believed Mr. Abu-Jamal was guilty of the murder and should be executed. "The sentence was appropriate. That would have been the just sentence for this defendant."

In April, a federal appeals court ordered a new sentencing hearing for Mr. Abu-Jamal because jurors had received potentially misleading instructions during his 1982 trial. In October, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Mr. Williams said Wednesday that the appeals court ruling — and others that have spared Mr. Abu-Jamal's life over the years — had led him to drop his pursuit of the death penalty, in part because witnesses are no longer available. He said he made the decision after discussing it with Maureen Faulkner, the widow of Daniel Faulkner, the slain police officer.

During his long stay on death row, Mr. Abu-Jamal, 57, a former Black Panther and radio reporter, became a vocal and — to some — convincing advocate of his own "Free Mumia" movement. That cause became particularly prominent around college campuses, where students collected donations for his legal defense fund and sold buttons and posters carrying images of his pensive face and long dreadlocks beneath that slogan. The Beastie Boys and Rage Against the Machine performed at a benefit concert on his behalf in 1999, and a suburb of Paris named a street after him in 2006.

The case has been played out repeatedly in court and the news media, and found a place in popular culture that has extended into the Internet age on blogs and Facebook pages. The trial was said to be either a miscarriage of justice based on racism, or a cut-and-dried murder of a law enforcement officer in which the issue of race prevented justice from being carried out. Mr. Abu-Jamal survived at least two execution dates — in August 1995 and December 1999.

On Wednesday, Ms. Faulkner, who appeared at the news conference with Mr. Williams and other city officials, said she had agreed to give up her advocacy for Mr. Abu-Jamal's execution because the case had dragged on for too long.

At times, she employed stinging language to express her vexation at Mr. Abu-Jamal's ability to avoid execution, calling the judges who overturned Mr. Abu-Jamal's death sentence "dishonest cowards."

"Rest assured I will now fight with every ounce of energy I have to see that Mumia Abu-Jamal receives absolutely no special treatment when he is removed from death row," she said. "I will not stand by and see him coddled as he had been in the past. And I am heartened by the thought that he will finally be taken from the protected cloister he has been living in all these years and begin living among his own kind — the thugs and common criminals that infest our prisons."

But Christina Swarns, director of the criminal justice practice at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which is representing Mr. Abu-Jamal, said that she was "delighted" by the decision — and that the Free Mumia movement had some influence.

"We're at a time in this country when support of the death penalty is at an all-time low, and that reflects some of the concerns expressed by Mumia's supporters in terms of the fairness of the process," she said.

Mr. Abu-Jamal, who is black, was convicted of fatally shooting Officer Faulkner, who was white, on Dec. 9, 1981, after the officer pulled over Mr. Abu-Jamal's brother for driving the wrong way on a one-way street. A jury found that Mr. Abu-Jamal had shot Officer Faulkner in the back and then, as the officer lay bleeding, shot him four more times. Mr. Abu-Jamal had been shot in the chest by the officer.

Mr. Abu-Jamal has said that

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[julioshawtylean76]

all this dislikes dont surprise me as well as the people's ignorance they had pleanty of reasons to get Mmia and he was in the wrong place at the worst time.

[PhillyCopsAreCorrupt]

THE DEAD PIG SCUMBAG, NOT MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, WAS A FELON. OFFICER DANIEL FAULKNER WAS A RACIST THUG WHO WAS THE RECIPIENT OF SEVERAL RACE-RELATED INTERNAL AFFAIRS COMPLAINTS, ALL OF WHICH WERE "WHITE" WASHED. HAD THE PHILLY PD DONE ITS JOB BY FIRING FAULKNER FOR HIS RACIST MISCONDUCT, HE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN FATALLY SHOT BY AN UNKNOWN HERO FOR HIS RACIALLY-MOTIVATED ASSAULT OF JAMAL'S BROTHER. ALSO, MANY JAMAL SUPPORTERS, INCLUDING ME, ARE WHITE CONSERVATIVES. BURN IN HELL, RACIST PIG!

[PhillyCopsAreCorrupt]

AL SABO, MUMIA ABU-JAMAL'S TRIAL JUDGE, WAS AN EX-COP AND CONTEMPORARY FOP MEMBER WHO, LIKE OFFICER DANIEL FAULKNER, WAS THE RECIPIENT OF MYRIAD RACE-RELATED INTERNAL AFFAIRS COMPLAINTS, ALL OF WHICH WERE "WHITE" WASHED. SABO REGULARLY CONVICTED BLACk DEFENDANTS DUE TO THEIR RACE-- AND MANIPULATED JURIES TO DO SO. SABO SAW TO IT THAT TEN OF JAMAL'S JURORS WERE ADMITTEDLY-RACIST WHITES WHO SUPPORTED CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. ONLY ONE JUROR WAS BLACK. JUST 8% OF THE JURY POOL WERE BLACKS.

[jpc812]

Get your fact straight. The man was found guilty and the conviction was upheld several times. There are cases of Police misconduct and racial injustice out there, but this is not the one. Mumia has duped his followers to believe it is something more that it truly is. Read the court transcripts for yourself, stop letting the Mumia machine tell you what happened. Look it up for yourself. You'll see you are doing nothing more than supporting a cold blooded murderer.

[scarp32]

he should have been shot in the court room

[irish2197]

Official ballistics tests done on the fatal bullet verify that Officer Faulkner was killed by a .38 caliber bullet, not a .44 caliber bullet. The fatal .38 slug was a Federal brand Special +P bullet with a hollow base (the hollow base in a +P bullet was distinctive to Federal ammunition at that time). It is the exact type (+P with a hollow base), brand (Federal), and caliber (.38) of bullet found in Jamal's gun.

[joeschmo1215]

@joeschmo1215 Cynthia White, a supposed witness and also prostitute, later recanted..Priscilla Durham "remembered" statements made months later. Chobert recanted his statement, his taxi was supposedly at the scene, but wasn't in any crime scene photos. There is a plethora of evidence in support of Mumia, at least doubt in the case, and definitely doesn't warrant the death penalty.

[joeschmo1215]

@joeschmo1215 Within minutes of the shooting, four witnesses, each unknown to the others, told police that someone other than Mumia - who had been shot and severely wounded by Faulkner - had fled the scene. Police never investigated this suspect. There are 1200 cases of police misconduct under review in Philly. There was a racist website shut down. Do we really trust them? No DNA evidence, no death sentence. The man's in jail for life, what more do you people want?

[joeschmo1215]

@irish2197 get your facts right. "4 people saw him" Eye witness testimony is not reliable. DNA has been clearing more and more innocent people every day who were convicted based on eye-witness testimony. "5 rounds recovered by HIS gun" Actually, they concluded the opposite: Mumia's gun was a .38, while Faulkner was killed by a .44 caliber. The jury denied 11 qualified African Americans.

[irish2197]

Lets talk about facts; 4 people saw him and identified him as the shooter. 5 rounds recovered, 5 rounds spent from HIS gun. He was shot by the police officer. His own brother was the only other person at the scene, and his only statement was "I ain't got nothin to do with this" If Mumia didn't do it why would his brother never offer an account of what happened. Bottom line, no matter how you try and spin the concrete facts, Mumia is 100% Guilty of cold blodded murder.