Socialist Action /May 2000
All out May 7 and May 13!
BY JEFF MACKLER
Organizers across the country and worldwide will mobilize on May 13 for
the largest demonstrations in support of a U.S. political prisoner in perhaps
the past half century. They will focus on two central demands: "Stop
the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal!" and "For a new trial now!"
In the United States, major demonstrations are slated for San Francisco,
Philadelphia, and Chicago.
These coordinated protests and a mass rally on May 7 in New York City's
Madison Square Garden Theater are being organized on the eve of Jamal's
expected court appearance in Philadelphia in late May or in June. At that
time, Jamal's legal team will present oral arguments before Federal District
Court Judge William H. Yohn that will support his demand for a full evidentiary
hearing and a new trial.
Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award-winning journalist and America's most well
known political prisoner, was framed up and falsely convicted in 1982 of
murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He has been on Pennsylvania's
death row for 18 years.
Jamal's case has focused national and international attention on the
racist and corrupt nature of the U.S. criminal "justice" system
and its associated prison-industrial complex.
Court decisions may affect case
On April 18, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two decisions in relation
to the 1996 Effective Death Penalty Act, a law that all but eliminates the
right of death row inmates to habeas corpus, or federal court review.
According to Leonard Weinglass, chief legal counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal,
these decisions may effect the outcome of Jamal's federal appeal. Weinglass
told Socialist Action that the Court's rulings directly relate to the arguments
contained in the legal briefs submitted on Mumia's behalf to the federal
district a few weeks ago.
Jamal's attorneys had asked Judge Yohn to postpone scheduling oral arguments
until the Supreme Court had ruled in these separate cases, both coincidentally
called Williams v. Taylor. In both instances, the Court overturned state
court murder convictions based on rigid federal court interpretations of
the1996 Clinton-signed law, officially called the Anti-Terrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act.
Prior to 1996, 40 percent of state court convictions in death penalty
cases were overturned in the federal courts. The new law was designed by
the U.S. ruling class to make state court decisions to impose the death
penalty "effective," that is, to execute the defendants before
they could gather additional evidence proving their innocence.
The law requires that a "presumption of correctness" be accorded
to the facts found by state courts. Prior to this racist and anti-democratic
legislation, federal courts routinely reviewed state court findings of every
sort. The historic presumption of "innocent until proven guilty"
was the operative principle, with federal judges free to challenge any factual
or legal findings of state courts.
In part, federal review was a product of the mass civil rights movement
of the 1960s and '70s that demanded federal legislation and intervention
when racist courts routinely enforced racial segregation and failed to convict
white racist killers who engaged in Klan-style bombings and murder of African
Americans. The Clinton-signed law returns federal courts to the pre-civil
rights era of "states rights," a euphemism for the federal government
turning a blind eye to racist practices.
The Supreme Court's decisions in the Williams cases, while modifying
in part an extremely rigid federal court interpretation of the Effective
Death Penalty Act, were far from an affirmation of fundamental democratic
rights.
To win a new trial, Mumia is still legally restricted to the language
of the Effective Death Penalty Act. That is, he must still demonstrate not
only that the state court's judges were legally "incorrect" in
regard to either the facts of the case or the law itself, but that their
action was "unreasonable."
Thus, the Supreme Court affirmed the provisions of the Effective Death
Penalty Act that federal courts must defer to a state court decision that
they believe to be "incorrect" or wrong-as long as the decision
is not "unreasonable."
A minority of the Court rejected this absurd view and held that when
state courts act incorrectly, federal courts should have the full right
to review and reverse their decisions.
The Supreme Court majority did not bother to state when it considered
an "incorrect" decision to be "unreasonable." Nor did
it provide a definition of the term "unreasonable."
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that while it was "no doubt difficult
to define," it was "a common term in the legal world and, accordingly,
federal judges are familiar with its meaning." O'Connor neglected to
explain why the federal judges in the cases under review arrived at "unreasonable"
decisions that would have sent two inmates to their death.
Despite the legal maneuvers, however, the first Williams case under review
was reversed because the performance of Williams's lawyer was considered
to have fallen below constitutionally minimum standards of competence.
In Mumia's case, the issue of the competence of his original counsel
is an important part of the defense arguments. Mumia's original trial court
lawyer admitted that he did no investigation and talked to none of the more
than 100 potential witnesses available prior to Jamal's trial.
The second Supreme Court decision (also titled Williams v. Taylor) upheld
the right to an evidentiary hearing for a petitioner, who, like Mumia, was
precluded from introducing evidence by actions of the state court.
In this case as well, there was no fundamental break with the restrictive
provisions of the Effective Death Penalty Act. But there are direct parallels
to Mumia's case, in which Judge Sabo's rulings precluded the introduction
of critical evidence and the hearing of critical eyewitness testimony that
pointed to Mumia's innocence.
Need for mass action
Neither Mumia, his legal team, nor the growing mass movement that has
mobilized in the tens and hundreds of thousands worldwide have illusions
that Mumia's fate will be determined by legal technicalities or juridical
interpretations of the "law." To the contrary, it is obvious
to virtually everyone familiar with the facts of the case that any of the
scores of illegal actions taken to deny Jamal his democratic rights could
be used to grant a new trial, not to mention his outright freedom.
The case will in truth be decided in the streets, in the fight to make
the price of Mumia's "legal" murder too high to pay in regard
to a loss of credibility in the criminal "justice" system itself.
The mass actions set for May 13 in cities worldwide -including San Francisco,
Chicago, and Philadelphia-will weigh in heavily on Mumia's behalf. They
will register the growing understanding in the United States that the criminal
justice system is designed to punish the poor and oppressed while the real
perpetrators of injustice, murder, poverty, war-the tiny few who rule in
the name of profit-are left to plunder and kill with the blessings of the
"legal" system.
Jamal, who has already beaten back two lower court orders for his execution,
has gained support from groups as diverse as the European Parliament, the
Japanese Diet, the presidents of France and South Africa, Amnesty International,
hundreds of U.S. trade unions, and labor groups, religious organizations,
elected officials and city governments.
The NAACP and the ACLU branches in Philadelphia recently submitted amicus
briefs in support of Jamal's demand for a new trial.
In recent weeks six of the seven San Francisco Bay Area AFL-CIO Central
Labor Councils have declared their support for the May 13 mass actions and
have joined to endorse a May 12 day-long conference on Mumia's case set
for Oakland, Calif. Resolutions of support for this event have been approved
by Teamster Local 315; Plumbers Union 393; ILWU Locals 6 and 10; United
Farmworkers Union; HERE Local 2850; California Nurses Association; UTU Local
1741; CWA Locals 9415, 9423, and 9586; UE; Labor Council for Latin American
Advancement, and many others..
The 35,000-member Chicago Federation of Teachers has endorsed the May
13 actions, as have the 50,000-member California Federation of Teachers.
Some 750 educators across the country have signed a full-page ad and
raised $35,000 for its publication in The New York Times in early May.
Jamal's supporters will assemble in Philadelphia from every corner of
the globe on the first day of the federal court hearings, expected in late
May or in June. Philadelphia's Federal Court House at Market and 6th Streets,
as well as the surrounding streets, will be filled with thousands of human
and democratic rights activists who will "stand with Mumia" on
this critical day.
Socialist Action /May 2000 |