SAMPLE LETTER TO REQUEST SUPPORT FROM A CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE AND TO REQUEST A MEETING. 

 
DATE

Dear  Congressman(woman)  ______________________,

           I am writing you to ask for your support in obtaining a civil rights investigation into the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, still under threat of execution and now on death row for 27 years. 

           Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award-winning death row journalist who has received worldwide recognition for his books and commentaries and for his powerful commitment to justice, has yet to receive justice in the United States courts and now faces execution or life in prison with no chance of parole. Abu-Jamal has spent nearly three decades on death row and in the U.S. court system even though there has been an international denunciation of his trial and a call for his release, or at least a new trial, from individuals and institutions such as President Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Japanese Diet, the European Parliament, dozens of Nobel laureates, Amnesty International, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, governments, international law associations, national and municipal elected officials from across the globe, and millions of ordinary justice-loving people, especially young people. He has also been recognized with honorary citizenships and street namings.

There has been widespread agreement about the outrageous violations of Abu-Jamal’s rights at his trial and in the appeals process (see Amnesty International’s A Life in the Balance: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal), both presided over by the same judge, Albert Sabo, who was denounced even by the unsympathetic Philadelphia media for his irrational, grossly pro-prosecution, and racist rulings. But there was always the faith and the promise that the federal courts would never uphold such judicial misconduct. Well, the promise was not fulfilled: the federal courts did uphold these outrageous rulings made by Court of Common Pleas Judge Albert Sabo and, after his death, Judge Pamela Dembe. Federal Judge Albert Yohn, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court all ignored evidence of flagrant misconduct on the part of Judge Sabo and Judge Dembe, even supporting the latter’s ruling that the affidavit signed by court stenographer Terry Maurer-Carter alleging that Sabo commented that he was “going to help them fry the nigger” was not relevant to the issue of racial bias in his rulings! 

Some of you, particularly members of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, and the Progressive Caucus, have signed on to call for justice in this case before. But we need to hear your voices raised again NOW, BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

Since his arrest on December 9, 1981, for the murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner and his conviction and sentencing six months later, Abu-Jamal and his supporters have waged an intense campaign to bring to light evidence of his innocence as well as the police, prosecutorial, and judicial misconduct that has kept that evidence off the legal record. The court denied Abu-Jamal’s right to represent himself, denied him adequate resources to prepare a defense, suppressed evidence that could have led to his acquittal (the basis of Eric Holder’s vacating the guilty verdict for Senator Ted Stevens), and did not adequately examine perjury committed by the prosecution’s key witnesses.   Another example of this misconduct was the obviously racist selection of jurors at Abu-Jamal’s trial, an issue that was determined by the US Supreme Court as warranting a new trial (Batson v. Kentucky).  This was the issue on which the federal Third Circuit in Philadelphia reversed its precedents and established a new higher standard for determining “racial bias in jury selection” for Mumia than had existed for previous defendants to whom this same court had granted a new trial.  On April 6, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider Abu-Jamal’s appeal of that decision, letting stand what are now 27 years of violations of Abu-Jamal’s constitutional and human rights.

Having exhausted the court process for now, we are launching a campaign to demand that Attorney General Eric Holder conduct a civil rights investigation of the Abu-Jamal case. As mentioned above, Holder recently voided a conviction in the case of former senator Ted Stevens because of precisely the kind of prosecutorial misconduct that existed in Abu-Jamal’s case. We believe that in a capital case, with considerable evidence of gross prosecutorial and judicial misconduct not as yet part of the court record, the defendant Abu-Jamal deserves no less consideration than Ted Stevens received. A civil rights investigation would offer an important opportunity to air critical evidence that we are convinced would point to Abu-Jamal’s innocence.

Meanwhile, prosecutors are appealing to the Supreme Court an earlier federal appeals court ruling that ordered the state to conduct a new sentencing hearing in which the only choices were death or life in prison without parole. Abu-Jamal remains on death row to this day, but neither execution nor life without parole would in any way serve justice.

The organizations sponsoring this campaign call on our elected officials to step up to the plate in defense of a man wrongly arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced, isolated, and caged since 1981. We ask you to support this initiative for a civil rights investigation.  You can go to www.freemumia.com and sign a petition online, write your own letter as former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Congressman Charles Rangel did to Attorney General Eric Holder, or simply meet with us when we will be in Washington, DC on Wednesday, July 22nd.  Hard copies of the letter can be sent to:  Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, Box 16, College Station, New York, NY 10030.   You may also call our hotline, 212-330-8029 and leave a message or you can e-mail us at freemumia@freemumia.com. 

Cordially,

(Your name and organizational affiliation if you have one)

For the Campaign for a Civil Rights Investigation of the Case of Mumia        
Abu-Jamal