« STEVE JOBS EPITAPH / STAY HUNGRY, STAY FOOLISH AND FOLLOW YOUR HEARTFighting for the Soul of the American Dream »

New SCOTUS decision in Abu-Jamal case is good, but not enough

October 12th, 2011

Mary Shaw

The drama continues in the case of America's most famous living death row prisoner.

On October 11, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request from the Philadelphia District Attorney to overturn a federal appeals court decision declaring Mumia Abu-Jamal's death sentence unconstitutional. Abu-Jamal had been convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

Now, according to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), "Mr. Abu-Jamal will be automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole unless the District Attorney elects to seek another death sentence from a new jury."

This development is good, but it's not enough.

For years, rights groups have been speaking out against Abu-Jamal's death sentence. A 2000 report by Amnesty International noted that "numerous aspects of this case clearly failed to meet minimum international standards safeguarding the fairness of legal proceedings." Amnesty expressed concerns about judicial bias and hostility, police misconduct, and the apparent withholding of evidence from the jury. Amnesty called for a new trial "in a neutral venue, where the case has not polarized the public as it has in Philadelphia."

Abu-Jamal's supporters insist that he is innocent, that he was set up, and that racial bias and witness coercion had played a big part in an unfair trial. They also point out that Faulkner was killed with a .44 caliber gun, while the gun found on Abu-Jamal was a .38 caliber.

This most recent court decision, however, concerns only the penalty, not the question of guilt or innocence. At this stage, the death penalty was challenged because of flawed jury instructions in the sentencing phase of Abu-Jamal's original trial. The issue involves how jurors were to weigh various mitigating factors that may have resulted in a sentence other than the death penalty.

Professor Judith Ritter of Widener Law School, who, along with the LDF, represented Abu-Jamal in this phase of his case, weighed in on the new decision: "Like all Americans, Mr. Abu-Jamal was entitled to a proper proceeding that takes into account the many substantial reasons why death was an inappropriate sentence. Our system should never condone an execution that stems from a trial in which the jury was improperly instructed on the law."

Indeed.

Again, this latest development is good, but it's not enough.

Unless Abu-Jamal is granted a new - and fair - trial to address his guilt or innocence, I will not believe that justice has truly been served.

I shall not hold my breath.

Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views on politics, human rights, and social justice issues have appeared in numerous online forums and in newspapers and magazines worldwide. Note that the ideas expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty International or any other organization with which she may be associated. E-mail: mary@maryshawonline.com

No feedback yet

Voices

Voices

  • By Fred Gransville Where the Rich Raped, the Justice System Genuflected The Girls Were Not Collateral Damage. They Were Targets. They were people’s daughters, sisters, granddaughters. Before the girls were trafficked to an island, misused and scrap…
  • By World BEYOND War A new report by the global peace group World BEYOND War finds that military bases used by foreign militaries are growing in number, as are public protests and advocacy against those bases. Of 1,247 foreign military bases in the…
  • By Sally Dugman I like the citizen arrest process, although never tried it out. It means that you go up to a wrongdoer and cart him or her off to jail if you don’t fear that your head will be blown off with a gun by the perpetrator in the process … Who…
  • By World BEYOND War The global peace organization World BEYOND War has announced the awardees for its fifth annual War Abolisher Awards: Ralph Nader, Roger Waters, and Francesca Albanese. The awardees will accept their awards in an online event on July…
  • By Mark Powell They bomb children, rob the treasury, cover up Epstein's client list, and term it democracy—what they're running is a pathocracy, and it's happening today. American Pathocracy/Kleptocracy history and current news, untainted by Google,…
  • By Mark Aurelius “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another… “ It’s that time again, actually way past due, as the lists of grievances are even fatter…
  • Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic The 2018 Skripal Attack Case The current orchestrated Western policy of total Russophobia, directed by Collective West, can be recorded to start by the British Cabinet of Theresa May – the focal servant-dog to US global…
  • By Sally Dugman This proactive Palestinian Pulverizers of humans, D. Trump who is indirectly responsible for the deaths of many thousands of Palestinian people of all ages, has no standing to say something like this utterly stupid statement about Putin:…
  • Tracy Turner When the Republic Betrays, the Body Must Answer Protest is not a right—it is a judgment passed upon power. A corrupt state standing above law and beyond justice forfeits its legitimacy, and we, the people, are compelled to answer—not with…
  • Tracy Turner The Reclamation of the Republic When, in the Course of human events, it shall become absolutely necessary for the People to dissolve the political ties which have united them to a government that has betrayed its trust to obtain their…
Censorship is not safety. It is authoritarianism in disguise. Bing is not just a search engine—it is an information gatekeeper. Click the red button to email MSN and Bing.com executives. This message challenges their censorship of ThePeoplesVoice.org and demands transparency, algorithmic fairness, and an end to suppression of free expression.
July 2025
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
 << <   > >>
    1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31    

  XML Feeds

CMS
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted articles and information about environmental, political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. This news and information is displayed without profit for educational purposes, in accordance with, Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. Thepeoplesvoice.org is a non-advocacy internet web site, edited by non-affiliated U.S. citizens. editor
ozlu Sozler GereksizGercek Hava Durumu Firma Rehberi Hava Durumu Firma Rehberi E-okul Veli Firma Rehberi