www.freemumia.com

A new Fact Sheet, produced March 2018, gives a background on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Intended for new audiences.

• an internationally celebrated black writer and radio journalist
• author of six books and hundreds of columns and articles
• organizer and inspiration for the prison lawyers movement
• former member of the Black Panther Party and supporter of Philadelphia’s radical MOVE organization

who has spent the last 30 years in prison, almost all of it in solitary confinement on Pennsylvania’s Death Row.

His demand for a new trial and freedom is supported by:

• heads of state and prominent politicians worldwide (France, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and elsewhere)
• Nobel laureates Nelson Mandela, Toni Morrison, Desmond Tutu
• the European and Japanese Parliaments
• city governments from San Francisco to Detroit to Paris and its suburbs
• distinguished human rights organizations such as Amnesty International
• the Congressional Black Caucus and other members of the U.S. Congress
• prominent civil rights groups such as the NAACP
• numerous labor unions such as

and by scholars, religious leaders, artists, scientists and countless others who cherish democracy, human rights and justice.

Mumia remains in prison under a sentence of life without parole.

At the trial, the presence of Freeman was known to the prosecution, but carefully concealed from the jury. Patrick O’Connor, in his book, ‘The Framing of Mumia’, offers the most reasoned account for this version of events.

On the morning after the MOVE bombing, Kenneth Freeman’s dead body was found naked and handcuffed. Many of Mumia’s supporters believe that he was killed ‘execution-style’ by police who knew he, rather than Mumia, was the guilty party.

Other defenders of Mumia have no unified theory of events but, nevertheless, unite in viewing his 1982 trial as a mockery of justice and affirm Amnesty International’s conclusion ‘that justice would best be served by a new trial’.

• the evidence shows that Mumia’s conviction is an open-and-shut case which later appeals have confirmed
• supporters of Mumia – from Amnesty International to the European Parliament, and including countless others – are simply uninformed about the case
• Mumia, as a former Black Panther and revolutionary journalist was just waiting for a chance to kill a cop
• Mumia’s writings and notoriety are a mode of torture for the slain officer’s widow, Maureen Faulkner, who is being denied ‘closure’
• all the arguments made by Mumia’s attorneys and supporters are based on ‘myths’

However, the critics’ visceral campaign to kill Mumia is often not extended to others who have been convicted of killing police officers.

What seems to set Mumia apart from similar cases has been his writing and oral commentaries, as well as his ongoing activism.

It often seems as though these forces are far more afraid of Mumia’s political analyses getting any hearing than of getting to the truth of what really happened to Officer Faulkner.

• the original trial judge’s racial bias
• the failure of police to do minimal forensic tests
• racial bias in jury selection
• providing Mumia with only ineffective and under-resourced defense counsel
• rushed trial proceedings
• denying Mumia the right to self-defense
• giving inadequate instructions to the jury about mitigating circumstances, and
• prosecutors’ venomous closing arguments to the jury

Since 1999, Mumia’s attorneys have been allowed by the federal courts to focus largely on only four areas:

• in relation to sentencing, whether the jury verdict form, along with the judge’s instruction to the jury, mislead the jury in violation of Supreme Court case law
• in relation to conviction and sentencing, whether racial bias in juror selection existed to such an extent that it tended to produce an inherently biased jury and therefore an unfair trail
• in relation to conviction, whether the prosecutor improperly attempted to reduce jurors’ sense of responsibility by telling them that a guilty verdict would be subsequently vetted and subject to repeated appeals, but that a not guilty verdict could not be reviewed, and
• in relation to the post-conviction review hearings in 1995-1996, whether the presiding Judge Sabo, who had also presided at the trial, demonstrated unacceptable bias in his conduct

Also in the years following 1999, Mumia’s attorneys have tried to get judicial review of:

• an affidavit by a court stenographer that Judge Sabo said in a court anteroom about his role in the case, “Yeah, and I’m going to help them fry the nigger”
• witnesses who have recanted their testimony given at trial, who now say they were pressured by police to deny the presence of a fourth fleeing person at the scene and into naming Mumia as the shooter
• a confession by another man who claimed to have been the actual shooter, and
• the failure of both defense attorneys and prosecutors to present for review to any jury or judge the first photos taken at the crime scene (the Polakoff photos)

Only police photos taken slightly later, and with significant differences from the Polakoff photos, were used at trial.

• Procedurally and legally, no one should be denied innocence until a constitutional and fair trail has been provided. With the long list of distinguished jurists and human rights analyses that decry the many violations at trial, Mumia’s guilt remains unestablished.
• Those who know Mumia – his personal history, character, beliefs, principles, career development and convictions – argue that it is inconceivable that Mumia could be guilty of the cold-blooded murder of Officer Faulkner.
• The fourth person at the crime scene, Kenneth Freeman, who was riding in the car with Mumia’s brother and who fled the crime scene (a fact never heard or considered by the jury). Freeman has been alleged by acquaintences to have been harboring rancor, grievances and a temper under conditions of widespread and frequent police violence suffered by him and other citizens in 1970s and 1980s Philadelphia. Freeman as the shooter has not been even considered by the courts, but that he was the shooter is more plausible than believing Mumia to be. In 1985, Philadelphia police dropped a military explosive on MOVE headquarters, letting a fire burn out of control, and destroying over 50 blocks of West Philadelphia. The next morning, Freeman was found dead in a Northeast Philadelphia lot, reportedly hand-cuffed, naked and gagged, with a drug needle jabbed in his arm.
• During and after the time of Mumia’s arrest, trial, and conviction, police were often convicted of corrupt procedures and of fabricating the guilt of defendants. This makes it considerably more plausible that Mumia, too, was “framed,” especially since he had for so long been routinely singled out by police and authorities for his reporting on police violence in Philadelphia. It is well known, for example, that in 1981, police and prosecutors framed four men: two were acquitted in trials, one in 1982, and the second after spending 1,375 days on death row; the other two men spent nearly 20 years in prison for murder before released on DNA evidence and confessions by the real killers.