[Ppnews] 3rd Circuit Appeal Ruling Favoring Abu-Jamal Smacks Down US Supreme Court

[Political Prisoner News]

3rd Circuit Appeal Ruling Favoring Abu-Jamal Smacks Down US Supreme Court

Tue, 04/26/2011
Linn Washington Jr.
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/579


The federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 
Philadelphia, in a stunning smack at the U.S. 
Supreme Court, has issued a ruling upholding its 
earlier decision backing a new sentencing hearing 
in the controversial case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the 
convicted killer of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

The latest ruling, issued on Tuesday April 26, 
2011, upholds a ruling the Third Circuit issued 
over two years ago siding with a federal district 
court judge who, back in 2001, had set aside 
Abu-Jamal’s death penalty after determining that 
death penalty instructions provided to the jury, 
and a flawed jury ballot document used during 
Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial, had been unclear.

The U.S. Supreme Court had ordered the Third 
Circuit to re-examine its 2009 ruling upholding 
the lifting of Abu-Jamal’s death sentence.

The nation’s top court had cited a new legal 
precedent in that directive to the Third Circuit, 
a strange order given the fact that the Supreme 
Court had earlier consistently declined to apply 
its own precedents to Abu-Jamal’s case.

The Associated Press was the first to report the 
Third Circuit’s latest dramatic ruling and in 
fact, as of the morning of the ruling’s release, 
the decision had still not been posted on the appeals court’s website.

Abu-Jamal’s current lead attorney, Prof Judith 
Ritter of the Widener Law School, could not be reached for comment.

The Third Circuit’s ruling, if left standing, 
requires Philadelphia prosecutors to call for a 
whole new sentencing hearing if they want to try 
and reinstate the death penalty. That would 
require the impaneling of a whole new jury, to 
hear and consider evidence regarding mitigating 
circumstances and aggravating circumstances in 
the case, and then to decide for either execution 
of life-without-possibility of parole--the only 
two options legally available. Abu-Jamal has 
exhausted his avenues of appeal of his 
conviction, absent new evidence in the case.

If prosecutors opted against holding new hearing 
then Abu-Jamal’s sentence would be converted 
automatically to a life sentence, which in 
Pennsylvania means no chance of parole. Abu-Jamal 
would have to spending the remainder of his life 
behind bars, though not on death row.

Experts contend a new sentencing hearing would be 
problematic for prosecutors. Although the issue 
of guilt or innocence would not be on trial, the 
defense could bring in witnesses to explain 
exactly what they saw happen the night of the 
shooting--witnesses whose testimony could 
ultimately raise new questions about the validity of the underlying conviction.

It is almost a certainty that prosecutors will 
appeal the Third Circuit’s latest ruling back up 
to the Supreme Court. Furthermore, prosecutors 
concede that current and yet unresolved legal 
issues in this case, which continues to attract 
unprecedented international scrutiny, will keep 
it in courts for years. For example, there are 
several avenues of appeal of Abu-Jamal's death 
sentence which were never adjudicated by the 
Federal District court, which mooted them after 
the Judge, William Yohn, found in favor of one 
argument and tossed out the death sentence.

In early April 2011 the NAACP Legal Defense Fund 
publicly announced it was joining the Abu-Jamal 
defense team and working with Professor Ritter. 
NAACP lawyers had joined Ritter last fall during 
the hearing where she argued the legal point just 
upheld by the Third Circuit in its latest ruling.

Recently Abu-Jamal recorded yet another birthday 
(4/24) inside a death row isolation cell. 
Abu-Jamal and the 222 other Pennsylvania death 
row inmates spend 23-hours per day every day isolated inside minimalist cells.

Since 1983 Abu-Jamal has languished in the 
confinement of death row, following his 
controversial July 1982 conviction for the murder of Officerl Faulkner.

Now 57, Abu-Jamal has spent nearly 29 years of 
his life in prison for a crime he has 
consistently denied committing--a crime that 
ample evidence conclusively proves could not have 
occurred as police and prosecutors have proclaimed.

Authorities, for example, claim Abu-Jamal fired 
four shots at the policeman, while straddling the 
officer as he lay defenseless on a sidewalk, 
striking him only once with a fatal shot in the face.

However, police crime scene photos and police 
reports make no reference of any bullet marks in 
that sidewalk around the fallen officer--marks 
that should have been clearly visible if 
Abu-Jamal fired three shots at almost point-blank 
range into the sidewalk as witnesses and the prosecutor claimed.

As detailed in an thorough investigative 
ballistic test released in September 2010 by This 
Can’t Be Happening! (See our film at the bottom 
of the home page), it is impossible to fire 
high-velocity bullets into a sidewalk without 
leaving any marks. TCBH! test-fired each kind of 
.38-caliber bullets referenced in police reports 
about the 1981 crime scene into a slab of old 
city sidewalk, and each of those bullets left 
easily visible marks
marks totally contradicting 
claims by authorities that Abu-Jamal wildly fired 
into the sidewalk without leaving bullet marks.

Rulings by federal and state courts denying 
Abu-Jamal the legal relief routinely granted 
other inmates who had raised the same appeals 
claims are the least-examined element of this 
internationally-condemned injustice.

The same Philadelphia and Pennsylvania courts 
that found major flaws by either defense 
attorneys, police, prosecutors and/or trial 
judges in 86 Philadelphia death penalty 
convictions during a 28-year period after 
Abu-Jamal’s December 1981 arrest declare no 
errors exist anywhere in the Abu-Jamal case – an 
assertion critics call statistically improbable.

The federal Third Circuit, for example, declined 
to grant Abu-Jamal a new trial based on solid 
legal issues from racial discrimination by 
prosecutors in jury selection to documented 
errors by trial judge Albert Sabo, the late 
jurist who relished his infamous reputation for pro-prosecution bias.

The Third Circuit’s 2008 ruling faulting Sabo for 
his inability to provide the jury with simple 
death penalty deliberation instructions included 
the contradictory conclusion that Sabo had 
adequately provided the jury with instructions 
about a highly complicated legal issue involving 
misconduct by the trial prosecutor.

Faulting Sabo for that flawed instruction on 
prosecutorial misconduct would have required the 
Third Circuit to give Abu-Jamal a whole new 
trial. Unwilling to do that, the court 
sidestepped its duty to ensure justice, by 
deciding to just eliminate Abu-Jamal’s death sentence, instead.

Pennsylvania state courts have released three 
Philadelphians from death row (half of Pa’s death 
row exonerations to date) citing misconduct by 
police and prosecutors
misconduct that was less 
egregious than that documented in the Abu-Jamal 
case. One of those Philadelphia exonerations 
involved a man framed by police for a mob-related 
killing, who was arrested six months before Abu-Jamal.

While many people in Philadelphia may feel 
Abu-Jamal is guilty as charged, millions around 
the world question every aspect of this 
conviction, citing facts that proponents of 
Abu-Jamal’s conviction deliberately dismiss as irrelevant.

This widespread questioning of Abu-Jamal’s guilt 
is the reason why pro-Abu-Jamal activities 
occurred around the world commemorating 
Abu-Jamal’s 4/24 birthday, including people in 
San Francisco attending a screening of the 
“Justice on Trial” movie examining ignored 
aspects in the case, and people marching for 
Abu-Jamal’s freedom in the Brixton section of London.

Officials in the French city of Saint-Denis will 
stage a ceremony rededicating a street they named 
for Abu-Jamal during the last weekend in April.

The ire erupting over Abu-Jamal’s prominence on 
the part of advocates of his execution contains 
contradictions that are as clear as the proverbial black-&-white.

The U.S. Congress engaged in color-coded 
contradiction approving a May 2006 resolution 
condemning far off Saint-Denis for its honoring 
Abu-Jamal by placing his name on a small one block long street.

Over a decade before that anti-Saint-Denis 
outrage, over 100 members of Congress had battled 
to block the U.S. government from deporting a 
white fugitive convicted of killing a British 
Army officer in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

That officer’s killing had occurred during an 
investigation into the murder of another Belfast policeman.

Incidentally, the U.S. Congress did not erupt 
angrily when the City Council of New York City 
voted to place the name of that fugitive – Joseph 
Doherty – on the street corner outside the 
federal detention center then housing him.

In 1988 – six years after Abu-Jamal’s conviction 
– more than 3,000 Philadelphians signed petitions 
asking federal authorities to grant Doherty 
special permission to leave his federal detention 
cell for one day to allow Doherty to serve as 
Grand Marshall of Philadelphia’s St Patrick’s Day Parade.

One Philly supporter of suspected convicted cop 
killer Doherty was the then-President Judge of 
Philadelphia’s trial courts, Edward J. Bradley.

Judge Bradley told a reporter in 1988 that he had 
no problems as a jurist reconciling his support 
for a convicted felon because he questioned the 
“fair treatment” Irish nationals received in English courts.

Judge Bradley’s concern about fairness for IRA 
fighters in English courts is not paralleled by 
any concern about fairness in Philadelphia courts 
with regard to the case of former Black Panther 
Party member Abu-Jamal. Judge Bradley's double 
standard highlights the gross unfairness of 
Philadelphia and Pennsylvania state court judges.

Critics who castigate those who contribute to 
Abu-Jamal’s defense fund, especially by Hollywood 
stars, did not object to fund-raising on behalf 
of one of the white Los Angeles policemen 
convicted in federal court for the 1991 beating 
of Rodney King. That criminal cop was allowed to 
keep nearly $10-million in sales from his book 
and from a fund-raising campaign on his behalf – 
monies generated mainly after that the former 
police sergeant's imprisonment following a civil rights violation conviction.

One reason the decades-old Abu-Jamal case 
continues to generate support and rage is Abu-Jamal himself.

A charismatic figure who is articulate, with a 
level of education and intelligence atypical of 
the mainly illiterate denizens of death row, 
Abu-Jamal is able to explain his case, as well as 
to expose the horrors of the nation's prison system and its death rows.

While on death row Abu-Jamal has written six 
critically acclaimed books (including one on 
jailhouse lawyers), produced thousands of 
commentaries, learned two foreign languages, 
earned two college degrees, including a masters, 
and developed a loyal support network comprising millions worldwide.

Even the prosecutor at Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial – 
Joseph McGill – described him during that trial 
as the most “intelligent” defendant he'd ever faced.

And another prosecutor, during Abu-Jamal’s 
tainted 1995 appeals hearing, said he didn’t 
think “the shooting of Officer Faulkner is 
characteristic of this defendant.” (Abu-Jamal had 
no record of violence or criminal acts before his 1981 arrest.)

Supporters applaud Abu-Jamal’s defense of the 
downtrodden, particularly his poignant criticisms 
of America’s prison-industrial complex, that 
incarcerates more people per capita than any other country on earth.

Abu-Jamal’s stance highlighting the deprivations 
of the have-nots, predated his arrest, and had 
earned him the title of “Voice of the Voiceless” 
during his professional broadcast reporting 
career, which ran from 1975 till his December 1981 arrest.

Abu-Jamal rarely uses his world-wide platform to 
speak about his own plight, preferring to focus 
instead on the injustices endured by others.




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