[Pnews] Report on Mumia Abu Jamal's Post-Conviction Appeal Act Hearing

Prisoner News ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Wed Apr 26 10:38:55 EDT 2017


Report on Mumia’s PCRA Hearing on Challenge to Appeals based on Bias of 
former prosecutor, then Supreme Court judge Ronald Castille, April 24, 2017

Rachel Wolkenstein, April 25, 2017

Yesterday, April 24, 2017, Mumia Abu-Jamal’s 63^rd birthday was the 
first court hearing on the PCRA (Post-Conviction Appeal Act) petitition 
that was filed on August 7, 2016 by attorneys Judith Ritter and 
Christina Swarns. Last June the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 
precedent-setting decision, /Williams v. Pennsylvania/, 136 S.Ct. 1989 
(2016), holding it is/a violation of the due process right to an 
impartial tribunal free of judicial bias if a judge participating in a 
criminal appeal had “a significant personal involvement as a prosecutor 
in a critical decision” in a defendant’s case.
/
Castille was the elected District Attorney during the preparation, 
argument and appeal of the 1982 conviction of Mumia for murder and the 
death sentence to the PA Supreme Court in 1988 and to the U.S. Supreme 
Court in 2000. The legal remedy for this due process violation is to 
vacate all the denials of the Mumia’s appeals from 1998-2008, and allow 
Mumia a new appeal of all his legal claims of innocence, the frame-up 
conviction and denials of his right to trial judge who is not a 
self-declared racist, an unbiased jury, his right to representation of 
his choice and his right to self-representation and all other violations 
of his right to a fair trial.

On April 24 there was legal argument before Judge Leon W. Tucker, who is 
the supervising judge of the Philadelphia PCRA part of the Court of 
Common Pleas. He has been a judge since 2005; his wife, Petrese Tucker 
is the Chief US District Court Judge of the federal district court for 
the Eastern District of PA. Ronald Eisenberg, who is now a Deputy 
District Attorney argued for the DA’s office. He was first promoted in 
the DA’s office to Chief of the Appeals Division in 1986 by newly 
elected DA Castille. Eisenberg has been the supervising DA on all of 
Mumia’s cases since then. He argued the Williams case before the U.S. 
Supreme Court.

Christina Swarns made the legal argument for Mumia, making the essential 
point that Williams held that due process is violated if a judge had 
previously had a significant personal involvement in a critical 
prosecutorial decision. She stated the Williams holding applied directly 
to Mumia’s case, that Castille’s name as District Attorney appears on 
all of the DA’s appeal filings in Mumia’s case. Judge Tucker asked 
whether the fact that Castille signed off on the DA’s briefs was his 
significant personal involvement. Swarns said that there is currently no 
document in Mumia’s case like the one in the Williams case. (Castille 
authorization of seeking the death penalty against Williams.) But 
discovery was requested so that the DA’s memos can be check for evidence 
of Castille’s involvement in Mumia’s case. Tucker asked a second time 
about whether there is currently a document showing Castille’s personal 
involvement in Mumia’s case and Swarns repeated the need for discovery.

Additionally, Swarns stated that given the high profile nature of 
Mumia’s case and that Castille bragged about the number of people he put 
on death row (a number that included Mumia), Castille would have been 
directly involved in Mumia’s appeal. Tucker again asked whether to 
Swarns knowledge, without discovery, was there knowledge of Castille’s 
direct involvement. Swarns said that there is not, but that was the 
situation in Williams’ case --- the document with Castille’s signature 
was found only after the court ordered discovery from the prosecution.

The issue of whether or not there is “jurisdiction” for Mumia’s PCRA 
petition to be considered was raised by Tucker.  This has to do with 
whether the Williams case is “retroactive,” applying to cases decided 
before the Williams decision. Swarns explained that it did apply because 
the issue in Williams was a fundamental component of due process and 
legal authority supported those cases as being applied to cases 
initially decided beforehand. Also argued was the reason Mumia’s filing 
was an exception to the PA law that required post-conviction challenges 
to be filed within one year (!) of a conviction becoming final. (In 
Mumia’s case that was 1991, after the U.S. Supreme Court denied to 
consider his appeal.) Swarns laid out the reasons Mumia case met the 
statutory exceptions that made his filing “timely.”

Tucker asked what the remedy would be if this petition were granted – 
was it the restoration of Mumia’s appellate rights. Swarns stated that 
this was what the Williams case required.

Eisenberg argued for the DA. Most of his argument was the position that 
the PCRA court couldn’t/shouldn’t consider Mumia’s petition, because the 
Williams case wasn’t retroactive and his case didn’t meet the 
“exceptions” to the timeliness provisions. Therefore, he argued, the 
PCRA court had no jurisidiction to consider the case. And if there is no 
jurisidiction, there is no discovery and no case. (There are appeals, of 
course.)

In the course of his argument, Eisenberg stated the timeliness 
restrictions came from the PA legislature concerns about the costs and 
work involved in re-litigating these cases. And that in Mumia’s case 
there were a number of appeals and many legal claims, that re-litigating 
them would have a huge impact on the court workload, which is why there 
are these restrictions. Then Eisenberg said that why, “sometime you just 
have to draw the line.”

Christina Swarns responded, that the standard for due process violations 
is that they have retroactive application. And that Mumia is entitled to 
the full protections and relief provided under due process. She invoked 
Supreme Court Justice Breyer dissenting when the death penalty was 
upheld in the McClesky case (where it was proven that the death penalty 
was imposed against African Americans 4x greater than against whites), 
saying this was “fear of too much justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal.)

Swarns said that this could all be resolved by the judge granting 
discovery of the DA’s files on Castille’s involvement in Mumia’s 
appeals. If there are documents showing Castille’s involvement or not, 
would answer this case.

Judge Tucker ended by saying that he was taking this “under advisement” 
and he would give his decision at a later time.

Summary comment – Judge Tucker could go any number of ways on this. He 
could argue fully with the DA and dismiss Mumia’s PCRA for “lack of 
jurisdiction.” He find jurisdiction, implicitly or explicitly, and 
require the DA to open its files for discovery of its preparation, 
argument etc. of Mumia’s appeal from1986-90 to see if there are 
documents indicating Castille’s involvement. Or Judge Tucker could ask 
from more legal arguments on any of those issues. Judge Tucker is not 
required to rule on any of this in any specific time period.


-- 
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/20170426/586ba65d/attachment.htm>


More information about the PPnews mailing list