Socialist Action /September 2001
FREE MUMIA NOW! STOP THE EXECUTION!
By JEFF MACKLER
The U.S. criminal injustice system continues to
grind out one absurdity after another in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. As
the hollow formalities of capitalist law are observed, the judicial machine
presses on to drive Mumia, an innocent political prisoner and award-winning
journalist, to the death chamber.
On Aug. 17 Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas Judge
Pamela Pryor Dembe gave Mumia's attorneys, Marlene Kamish and Elliot Grossman,
three weeks and a maximum of 15 pages to argue why she should not reject
Mumia's request for a new Post Conviction Relief Act hearing.
Dembe openly revealed her inclination to support
the prosecution argument that the confession of Arnold Beverly (that he,
and not Mumia Abu-Jamal, killed police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981)
should be barred from court on the grounds that it was submitted after state
statutory time limits had run out.
While the Aug. 17 hearing was taking place, 2000
people rallied outside the Philadelphia courthouse to support Mumia's struggle
for justice and for a hearing where the real killer could testify in order
to exonerate Mumia. Jesse Jackson, Ossie Davis, and Sonia Sanchez were joined
at the rally by defenders of democratic rights from across Europe, Latin
America, and Canada as well as from cities throughout the United States.
Another 750 rallied in solidarity in San Francisco
on Aug. 18 in a march and rally organized by the Northern California-based
Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Mumia banned from Aug. 17 hearing
Dembe refused repeated defense team requests to
allow Mumia to be present in court while his fate was being decided. She
also rejected setting any future court dates, implying that her decision
could be rendered in a written opinion without allowing defense attorneys
to formally argue their case in court before her.
Mumia's presence, Dembe stated, would "only
create additional collateral damage." Clearly, in Dembe's view, the
"collateral damage" would be a product of additional tens of thousands
of Mumia's supporters mobilizing in Philadelphia to stand in solidarity
with Mumia as he challenged a judicial system that is increasingly discredited
in the eyes of millions.
While Dembe had originally ordered that Mumia be
brought to court for the Aug. 17 proceeding, her order was apparently unilaterally
countermanded by a court administrator on the spurious grounds that the
court lacked sufficient security and that there was no available jail space
for an overnight stay.
A few days before the hearing, Jamal's attorneys
asked Dembe to enforce her own order to bring Mumia to court and to hold
the administrator in contempt for his actions. But Dembe refused and Jamal
was once again barred from proceedings that may determine whether he lives
or dies.
Pam Africa, spokesperson for the International
Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, was present in Dembe's
courtroom along with 100 others as Dembe refused to set any date where oral
arguments could be presented. Africa later expressed an idea to Mumia supporters
that captured the essence of the unfolding judicial farce. "If there
is no statute of limitations on murder," she noted, "why should
there be a statute of limitations on a confession to murder?"
The sheer absurdity of arguing that Arnold Beverly's
confession is inadmissible in regard to Mumia's case on the grounds that
it is too late, although the same Beverly could be convicted of murder himself,
has not registered on Mumia's would-be executioners.
Africa's observation is no mere abstraction. The
defense seeks to bring Arnold Beverly into court to testify that he was
one of the two killers of Daniel Faulkner. The prosecution refuses to even
take a deposition from Beverly. Facts do not concern them.
In the same vein, last month Federal District Judge
William H. Yohn Jr., when asked to order the deposition of Beverly, refused
on the grounds that "even if his confession were credible" it
had no relevance in his court since only state courts can deal with matters
of fact. And since Judge Albert Sabo's state court trial had found Mumia
guilty, there was nothing further that the federal courts, limited as they
were by U.S. laws and the Supreme Court Herrera ruling, could do.
The tightly constructed package of reactionary
laws developed in recent years to railroad the poor and oppressed to their
death with minimal legal provisions for federal appeal is today applied
with a vengeance against Mumia.
The 1993 Supreme Court Herrera ruling that "innocence
in federal court proceedings is no defense," coupled with the requirement
stipulated by the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act-signed
by President Clinton in 1996-that racist judges like Albert Sabo be granted
the presumption of having been honest fact-finders, are cited with impunity
to prevent the truth from seeing the light of day.
New witness exposes Sabo
But the image of legal civility was dealt a major
blow on Aug. 28, at a press conference at Philadelphia Mayor John Street's
City Hall office, when Mumia's attorneys made public new and critical information
exposing the fundamental corruption and racism of Sabo himself.
The defense team submitted a legal affidavit by
Terri Maurer-Carter, who was employed as an official court stenographer
in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas during the time that Judge Sabo
was presiding over the Jamal case.
In 1978 Maurer-Carter became a Federally Certified
Court Reporter with "grand jury clearance." She received awards
of excellence from the states of Virginia and Maryland, and in 1982 started
working at the Court of Common Pleas.
Maurer-Carter's Aug. 21, 2001, sworn affidavit
states: "I was sent to a courtroom different than that I usually worked
in because the judge I was assigned to was going to be doing "VOP"
(Violation of Probation) and post-verdict motion hearings there that day.
I went through the anteroom on my way to that courtroom, where Judge Sabo
and another person were engaged in conversation.
"Judge Sabo was discussing the case of Mumia
Abu-Jamal. During the course of that conversation, I heard Judge Sabo say,
'Yeah, and I'm going to help them fry the nigger.' There were three people
present when Judge Sabo made that remark, including myself."
Sabo, as expected, is reported to have denied the
remark. But Terri Maurer-Carter affirms that "hanging" judge Albert
Sabo (whose racist record includes sentencing more people to death row,
the vast majority Black, than any other sitting judge in the country) was
anything but unbiased in his 1982 court proceeding.
"Fry the nigger," indeed, was Sabo's
racist intention as he ruled against more than 100 defense motions during
Mumia's frame-up trial while approving virtually all prosecution interventions.
Sabo removed Mumia from the courtroom for more than half of his trial and
made no provisions for Mumia to even hear the proceedings against him.
Sabo presided over the exclusion of 11 Black jurors.
He orchestrated the removal of the sole approved Black juror that Mumia
himself had selected during the short period he was allowed to conduct the
jury selection process.
Sabo rejected Mumia's right to serve as his own
counsel. He presided over a trial in which key eyewitnesses had been previously
intimidated and pressured to change their original testimony that "the
shooter ran away," in exchange for prosecution favors. Sabo accepted
as good coin a trial where critical forensic and ballistic evidence was
never presented to the jury and where an incompetent defense attorney failed
to interview a single one of the 100-plus witnesses who should have been
questioned before trial.
By all standards, Sabo, the man before whose court
numerous attorneys had stated that no one could receive a fair trial, rendered
Mumia's trial a farce and a fraud.
Federal judge hedges on amendments
In late August Federal Judge Yohn added to the
farce. He ruled that a 700-page brief submitted by Mumia's defense for the
purpose of amending Mumia's original 29-point habeas corpus (appeal) brief
was to be "stricken pending a determination by this court as to whether
the brief could be amended in whole or in part."
Yohn, who may now seek to deny Mumia the right
to supplement his original habeas brief, had previously advised Dembe to
ignore the Beverly confession. He explained that the originally jury would
not likely have changed their minds, since there were four other witnesses
who had testified that Mumia was the killer.
The fact that only two of these witnesses had actually
identified Mumia, and another had originally stated that the killer ran
away, did not seem to enter into Yohn's considerations.
The remaining "eyewitness" was Cynthia
White. Affidavits filed on May 5 by the defense reveal that White had received
special favors from the police, including the "right" to pursue
her trade as a prostitute unimpeded by police-provided only that she pay
the obliging officers money in return.
Yohn's judicious selection of "facts"
to justify his refusal to depose the real killer, Arnold Beverly, indicates
that his own protestations that federal courts cannot consider the facts
determined by state courts is a fraud. Yohn's brief does select "facts"
that are in accord with Sabo's findings, while ignoring the mountain of
evidence indicating that Sabo acted with total disregard for the truth.
Once again the truth behind the frame-up of Mumia
Abu-Jamal has broken through the mass of lies that the state power seeks
to employ to end the life of this courageous fighter for human and democratic
rights. And once again his supporters will mobilize from all corners of
the country and internationally to demand his freedom.
A mass protest is set at City Hall, across the
street from the state courthouse in Philadelphia, Saturday, Sept. 15, at
12 noon. Mumia's supporters and all who cherish justice and fair play should
be there to demand that Judge Dembe allow the real killer to present his
testimony in court.
Stand in solidarity with Mumia to demand a new
Post Conviction Relief Act hearing, where the truth can be told. Stop the
Execution! Overturn the Conviction! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
For further information contact, Philadelphia,
(215) 476-8812; San Francisco, (415) 695-7745.
Socialist Action /September 2001 |