Mumia faces legal setback
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PHILADELPHIA--Political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal faced another setback July 22, when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his legal team's petition asking the full court to reconsider the issue of racism in his trial.
Abu-Jamal's petition for an en banc hearing--a special procedure in which all the judges of the court agree to hear a case, reserved for issues deemed especially controversial or significant--had always been a long shot, but the new decision was nevertheless a bitter blow.
On the face of it, there was more than enough reason for the court to consider the petition. In a 2-1 decision earlier this year, a three-judge panel rejected a previous petition from Abu-Jamal, which had centered on the well-documented racism of his original 1982 trial.
In his scathing dissent, Judge Thomas Ambro singled out the exclusion of African American jury candidates in Abu-Jamal's original trial--a practice for which the Philadelphia DA was notorious, even creating a "how-to" training video about striking potential Black jurors--as meriting a new hearing.
Judge Ambro went so far as to state that the court was inventing "a newly created contemporaneous objection rule" to deny Abu-Jamal's petition, thereby undermining its credibility. The merit of Abu-Jamal's petition for an en banc hearing would seem to be straightforward, given such controversy. Instead, the Third Circuit judges voted overwhelmingly to reject the petition, with only Judge Ambro voting to hear it.
Abu-Jamal's legal team's next step is to submit an appeal to the Supreme Court--though even his lawyers admit that the chances of being accepted are one in a million. In the meantime, Abu-Jamal continues to languish on death row, despite having had his death sentence replaced by a sentence of life without parole.
Philadelphia prosecutors continue to threaten to file their own petition to reinstate capital punishment in his case. At an emergency meeting about the latest development held on July 25 by the Free Mumia Coalition in New York, Abu-Jamal's lawyer Soffiyah Elija vowed to continue the fight on the legal front. However, the coalition also stressed the importance of protest in pushing back against the racism and right-wing pressure that continues to keep Abu-Jamal locked up for a crime he did not commit.
A town hall meeting is planned for August 9 at noon in Philadelphia at AFSCME 1199 Hall to continue to organize. The coalition hopes to use the occasion to bring together African American leaders who have actively supported Mumia in the past, calling on them to once again take a stand, given the dire situation in the case and its tremendous importance in the fight against racism.
