[Ppnews] Mumia - Legal Update re US Supreme Court
Political Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Tue Jan 19 17:35:28 EST 2010
Dear All:
This morning the U.S. Supreme Court issued the
long-awaited ruling in the case of my client,
Mumia Abu-Jamal, which we have been litigating
for 15 months. The decision was as we
expected. Mumia's case has been sent back to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit,
Philadelphia, for further proceedings consistent
with the decision last weak in another case:
"The petition for a writ of certiorari is
granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is
remanded to the United States Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit for further consideration
in light of Smith v. Spisak, 558 U.S. ___ (2010)."
The decision is not bad and was unavoidable in
view of the Spisak case ruling. Now we must
resume litigating the issue of the death penalty
in the lower federal court. It previous ruled
that the trial judge misled the jury and thus
Mumia was entitled to a new jury trial on the
issue of death or life. That is still the issue.
What occurred in Mumia's case is different both
procedurally and factually from the jury
instructions in Spisak. The prosecution disagrees.
Soon I will be posting more information on our
website:
<http://www.MumiaLegalDefense.org/>http://www.MumiaLegalDefense.org.
That may be checked regularly for updated information.
Petition for President Barack Obama It is
crucial for people to sign the petition for
President Barack Obama regarding Mumia, which is
in 10 languages ("Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Global
Abolition of the Death Penalty"). Please
circulate the petition as widely as possible and,
of course, sign. The link is:
<http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html>http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html.
Over 8,000 people, mostly from Germany, have
signed in the few days since we launched the
petition. These include: Günter Grass, Germany
(Nobel Prize in Literature); Bishop Desmond Tutu,
South Africa (Nobel Peace Prize); Danielle
Mitterrand, Paris (former First Lady of France);
Fatima Bhutto, Pakistan (writer); Noam Chomsky,
MIT (philosopher & author); Ed Asner (actor; Mike
Farrell (actor); and Michael Radford (director of
the Oscar winning film Il Postino).
There is also a Facebook page for Mumia and our
work to save him:
<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=407654295516&ref=mf>http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=407654295516&ref=mf
Tax-deductible Donations for Mumia's Legal
Defense The only way to guarantee that donations
in the U.S. go only to the legal defense, is to
make checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild
Foundation (indicate Mumia on the bottom left),
or contact my office
(<mailto:MumiaLegalDefense at gmail.com>MumiaLegalDefense at gmail.com).
The contributions are tax deductible under the
Internal Revenue Code Code, section 501(c)(3), and should be mailed to:
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
Conclusion Mumia remains on death row under a
death judgment. He is in greater danger than at
any time since his arrest over 28 years ago. The
prosecution has said it will continue pursuing
his execution. I win cases, and will not let them kill Mumia.
Yours very truly,
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20100119/a49c54e1/attachment.htm>
More information about the PPnews
mailing list