[1347] in peace2
Abu-Jamal Death Sentence Thrown Out
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Saurabh Asthana)
Tue Dec 18 14:37:30 2001
Message-Id: <200112181937.fBIJbfT24061@chaos11.bwh.harvard.edu>
To: peace-list@mit.edu
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 14:37:40 -0500
From: Saurabh Asthana <angrymob@chaos11.bwh.harvard.edu>
Abu-Jamal Death Sentence Thrown Out
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A federal judge threw out Mumia Abu-Jamal's
death sentence on Tuesday, ruling that the former journalist and Black
Panther is entitled to a new sentencing hearing for killing a
Philadelphia police officer in 1981.
U.S. District Judge William Yohn ordered the state to conduct the
hearing within 180 days.
``Should the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania not have conducted a new
sentencing hearing ... the Commonwealth shall sentence petitioner to
life imprisonment,'' the judge said in his 272-page ruling.
Abu-Jamal is America's most famous death-row inmate - revered by a
worldwide ``Free Mumia'' movement as a crusader against racial
injustice, and reviled by the officers's supporters as an unrepentant
cop-killer who deserves to die.
The judge refused Abu-Jamal's request for a new trial, upholding his
1982 conviction on first-degree murder charges.
The ruling could be appealed to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.
Abu-Jamal was convicted of shooting officer Daniel Faulkner, 25,
during the early-morning hours of Dec. 9, 1981, after the officer
pulled over Abu-Jamal's brother in a downtown traffic stop.
Celebrities, death-penalty opponents and foreign politicians have
since rallied to Abu-Jamal's cause, calling him a political prisoner
and saying he was railroaded by a racist justice system.
Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe ruled Nov. 21 that she
did not have jurisdiction over Abu-Jamal's petition for a new trial,
scuttling his hopes for another round of state-court appeals.
Abu-Jamal exhausted the state appeals process two years ago, but a
petition filed in September argued that the defense had new evidence
to clear him, including a confession by a man named Arnold Beverly.
In a 1999 affidavit, Beverly claimed he was hired by the mob to kill
Faulkner because the officer had interfered with mob payoffs to
police.
Abu-Jamal's former lawyers, Leonard Weinglass and Daniel R. Williams,
said they thought the confession was not credible and Yohn refused to
order Beverly to testify on Abu-Jamal's behalf.
