Mumia Abu-Jamal Wins Major Court Victory
By Jeff Mackler | CounterPunch | January 3, 2019
On December 27, Philadelphia Superior Court Judge Leon Tucker ruled in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal, holding that the actions of former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Judge Ronald Castille demonstrated a “lack of impartiality” and “the appearance of bias.”
Tucker’s decision represents a major victory for Abu-Jamal that opens the door to a new trial–or dismissal of the murder charges against him–after an appeal to the Pennsylvania courts.
Incarcerated in 1981 in a racist frame-up murder trial of police officer Daniel Faulkner and on death row for most of the past 37 years, Mumia was a prize-winning journalist and today the author of 10 books on various aspects of the freedom struggle. His latest book, Murder Incorporated: Empire, Genocide, Manifest Destiny, 2017, co-authored by filmmaker Stephen Victoria (Long Distance Revolutionary, 2014) with a forward by Chris Hedges, is invaluable reading for revolutionary activists who seek the truth about capitalist imperialism’s centuries of horrors and the historic resistance against them.
Mumia’s freedom struggle has been supported by scores of trade unions across the U.S. and in Europe as well as by Amnesty International, the NAACP and numerous city council resolutions from San Francisco to Detroit.
Tucker’s 27-page ruling was in two parts. He held in Part Two that with regard to all of Mumia’s numerous denied Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) appeals between 1998 and 2014, Supreme Court Judge Ronald Castille’s actions in campaigning for the Pennsylvania governor to sign death penalty warrants for all “convicted cop killers” and other biased acts, violated Mumia’s fundamental constitutional rights.
Castille had participated in PA Supreme Court decisions that denied all of Mumia’s appeals, including a request from Mumia’s attorneys that he recuse himself from deciding the case he had helped to prosecute and another decision where the same Castille court refused to consider documented evidence submitted by court stenographer Terri Maurer Carter that Mumia’s trial judge Albert “the hanging judge” Sabo had stated in his antechambers before entering the courtroom to adjudicate Mumia’s case, “Yeah, I’m going to help ‘em fry the nigger.” Mumia’s decades long sojourn through the racist U.S. “criminal justice system” is replete with what has become infamously known as “the Mumia exception,” that is, contorted applications of the “law” aimed at denying its applicability to the facts in Mumia’s case. These include systematic exclusion of eyewitness testimony proving his innocence, intimidation of witnesses, falsification of exonerating ballistics findings, fabrication of testimony that Mumia admitted to the killing of police officer Daniel Faulkner and Mumia’s physical exclusion from a majority of his trial proceedings – to name a few of the legal atrocities attendant to his trial and subsequent proceedings.
Judge Tucker’s ruling opens the door for Mumia to appeal all of Castille’s decisions over a 17-years period. Tucker denied Part One of Mumia’s appeal that pertained to whether or not Castille had been significantly or personally involved in Mumia’s prosecution in order to qualify under the provisions of the 2016 Supreme Court William’s case. Mumia’s attorneys may appeal this decision in order to fight on both legal fronts.
While the present Philadelphia District Attorney, Larry Krasner may well appeal Tucker’s amazing and unexpected decision, the door is nevertheless wide open to a lengthy legal battle along with renewed national and international campaigns to win massive and united support in the streets to demand Mumia’s freedom.
Jeff Mackler is a staffwriter for Socialist Action. He can be reached at jmackler@lmi.net socialist action.org
Mumia Abu Jamal to Begin Receiving Hepatitis C Treatment
Mumia Abu Jamal | Photo: Campaign to Bring Mumia Home
teleSUR | March 31, 2017
U.S. revolutionary activist Mumia Abu Jamal will begin receiving treatment for hepatitis C next week, Philly Voice reports, citing recently-released court papers.
Jamal, who is serving a life sentence at the Mahanoy State Correctional Institution in Philadelphia, has been demanding treatment since 2015, when he suffered from a renal failure.
Now, he will receive antiviral medication that consists of one pill per day for 12 to 24 weeks, Philly Voice adds. The medication has an estimated 90-percent cure rate.
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, DOC, was ordered on Monday to begin providing medication after it lost its appeal to withhold treatment in the state’s Third Circuit court.
“For the last 53 days, the DOC, prison medical staff, and Legal Department have stood in contempt of court following the order to treat Mumia,” Jamal’s legal representatives wrote in a statement.
“The DOC in defiance of the Injunction filed a stay, hoping the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals would bail them out and block Mumia’s treatment.”
The ruling marks a major victory for Mumia and others in similar circumstances. Now, thousands of prisoners who suffer from hepatitis C will be able to receive treatment because the federal court order sets a precedent, Prison Radio reports.
The treatment, however, will not solve all of his medical problems. Mumia, who suffers from cirrhosis of the liver, is now at greater risk for other health complications and potential liver cancer. This is a direct consequence of being denied treatment for two years, according to his legal representatives.
“We must stay vigilant,” they wrote in a statement.
“We must insist that the treatment be given and completed in full, and we need to support the lawsuits Abu-Jamal vs. Kerestes and Abu-Jamal vs. Wetzel as they continue to hold the Pennsylvania DOC accountable.”
Jamal, a former member of the Black Panther Party, was arrested and charged with killing white police Officer Daniel Faulkner in Philadelphia in December 1981. One year later, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.
In 2011, the United States Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional in his case, and he was re-sentenced to life in prison without parole. He and many activists have maintained that he is innocent.
Mumia Abu-Jamal denied life-saving hepatitis C treatment
RT | September 1, 2016
The world’s most famous prisoner, former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, has been denied vital treatment for hepatitis C by a federal judge.
The journalist was sentenced to death for killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981, but the sentence was overturned on constitutional grounds five years ago.
However, this new ruling could become a new death sentence if he does not survive the disease naturally.
After decades in prison, Abu-Jamal’s health has deteriorated – and after he was hospitalized in critical condition last year, he filed a lawsuit against the state of Pennsylvania for the right to get anti-viral medication, the Guardian reports.
Despite having a 90 to 95 percent success rate, officials told Abu-Jamal he was not ill enough to be eligible for the 12-week treatment.
District court judge Robert Mariani on Wednesday claimed the lawsuit was wrongly aimed at the warden and the prison system’s medical chief, but should have been targeted towards four members of Pennsylvania’s hepatitis C committee instead.
His lawyers, however, said such a committee did not exist when the lawsuit was filed.
Mariani implied that Abu-Jamal was a “lower priority” health case despite his serious condition by using the testimony of one member of the committee, Dr Paul Noel, who was later added as a defendant to the case.
Judge Mariani cited Noel’s testimony to validate the state’s argument that procedures are designed “to identify those with the most serious liver disease and to treat them first, and then… move down the list to the lower priorities.”
Noel also said that prisoners with esophageal varices, or enlarged veins in their throats that started to bleed, would then “move onto immediate treatment,” but if they did not have varices, “they can wait.”
A lawyer on behalf of the state’s prison system also said “there simply is not enough money to treat every individual” with chronic hepatitis C and treating all prisoners with the disease “would cost approximately $600 million” which would “effectively cripple the department.”
But, while Abu-Jamal’s request for treatment was denied, the judge still found that the hepatitis C protocol used for prisoners fails to meet constitutional standards.
Evidence provided to the court revealed that Pennsylvania treats a mere handful of 6,000 prisoners who have hepatitis C.
The conditions of the prison infirmaries have been condemned by supporters of Abu-Jamal, such as Noelle Hanrahan, who said inmates were “dying in isolation, often chained to their beds,” the Guardian reports.
Up to 3.9 million people in the US have chronic hepatitis C and if the disease remains untreated, it can result in death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In response to the outcome, Abu-Jamal’s lawyers said they were “frustrated” he won’t get the treatment he needs.
Amnesty International has repeatedly condemned the treatment of Abu-Jamal during his time in prison – as well as his original trial which it deems “unfair.”
The human rights group has called his case “contradictory” and “incomplete,” expressing concern over the role the government played in a counterintelligence program called COINTELPRO that appeared to have Abu-Jamal among its targets.
COINTELPRO targeted many political activists including Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X.
Fred Hampton, a spokesperson for the Black Panther Party, was assassinated by members of the Chicago Police Department during a COINTELPRO operation in 1969. Relatives of Hampton then sued the government and received a settlement of $1.85 million 12 years later.
Abu-Jamal’s case is said to be one of the most debated in modern legal history.
Pennsylvania Court strikes down law aimed at keeping convicts out of public eye
RT | May 5, 2015
A federal court in Pennsylvania overturned the Revictimization Relief Act, which aimed to ban convicted criminals from speaking publicly.
The federal district court on Monday said the statute introduced by lawmakers violated the first amendment rights of one-time death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal and other prisoners. The law was introduced in response to Abu-Jamal’s [recorded] appearance at a Goddard College commencement address in Vermont in October 2014.
“The fact that certain plaintiffs have been convicted of infamous or violent crimes is largely irrelevant to our first amendment analysis. A past criminal offense does not extinguish the offender’s constitutional right to free expression,” Judge Christopher Conner wrote. “The First Amendment does not evanesce at the prison gate.”
Judge Conner wrote the law was unconstitutionally vague and over-broad. He worried that it would deter not only the speech of convicted criminals, but also people who redistribute speech such as producers quoting criminals in radio programs or newspapers publishing interviews with criminals. Conner said a law restricting expression based on content was “inherently suspect.”
Attorney Eli Segal and the American Civil Liberties Union, who brought suit against the law, told the Associated Press that the decision “says loud and clear that all of us in this commonwealth have the right to freedom of speech.”
Steve Miskin, the spokesman for the Pennsylvania House GOP leadership told AP that Conner’s ruling “is woefully short of the fact. It begs the question: Did he even read the law?”
“The point of the law was to look out for victims,” he added.
The Revictimization Relief Act, passed by Pennsylvania lawmakers in October 2014, said a victim of a personal injury crime may bring a civil action against an offender to restrict them from conduct that could perpetuate the continuing effect of the crime on the victim, including conduct causing a temporary or permanent state of mental anguish.
Mumia Abu-Jamal, an American activist and journalist, was convicted in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Pennsylvania Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. He was on death row for 30 years before appeals converted his death penalty to life without parole. Abu-Jamal claims he is a victim of a racist justice system. The Faulkner family, public authorities, police organizations and self-described conservative groups have maintained that Abu-Jamal’s trial was fair, his guilt undeniable, and his death sentence appropriate.
Earlier this year, Tom Wolf, the Governor of Pennsylvania, offered the state’s 186 death row inmates temporary reprieves from execution, calling the system “error prone, expensive and anything but useful.”
Wolf said that if the state is going to “take the irrevocable step of executing a human being, its capital sentencing system must be infallible.” He said the system was riddled with flaws and studies had called into question the accuracy and fundamental fairness of Pennsylvania’s capital sentencing system. The studies suggested there were inherent biases indicating that a person is more likely to be charged with a capital offense and sentenced to death row if he is poor or part of a minority racial group; especially so if the victim of the crime was white.
Famed political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal in critical condition
By Herb Boyd | Amsterdam News | March 31, 2015
Mumia Abu-Jamal, one of the world’s most prominent and celebrated political prisoners, is reportedly in a diabetic coma and in intensive care at the Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville, PA.
According to emails from his contingent of supporters, Abu-Jamal was taken to the hospital facility on Monday “Shackled to the bed, alone, and prevented from knowing that his family is close by he remains in intensive care. Prison officials and hospital officials when not spreading misinformation are denying Mumia’s family access to visits, while also denying the family and his lawyers any information or records about his condition.”
His brother, Keith Cook stated “The rules that the prisons have are very arcane. They don’t give out any information about prisoners to their families or anyone else. It’s like you have your hands tied because you don’t know how the prisoner is and you have no way of talking to him. I remember a month ago— Phil Africa exercising in the prison, next thing they know they moved him to a hospital and didn’t tell his family where he was, and three days later he was dead.”
As of Tuesday morning, the family has been given access to see Abu-Jamal who has been incarcerated since 1982 for the murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Long the subject of countless rallies and demonstrations with protesters, like him, proclaiming his innocence, he spent years on death row before being removed three years ago and now serving a life sentence.
Veteran activist and a close associate of Abu-Jamal, Pam Africa was outraged by the treatment and conditions he was enduring. “Prison officials are lying,” she said. “Mumia is going through torture at the hands of the Department of Corrections through medical neglect. It is clear to people that they want to kill Mumia. They gave him the wrong medication which made his condition worse.
“Inmates on the inside who questioned what was happening have been subjected to direct retaliation by the superintendent,” Africa continued. “They have been moving concerned inmates out of Mumia’s unit in an effort to both bury and keep this critical information from the public.”
Ms. Africa was unable to talk extensively when called since she was at the hospital and at a press conference with an aim toward dealing with prison officials.
And dealing with officials of the state, those directly linked to repression and oppression is something Abu-Jamal has a long acquaintance and a relentless resistance. “Armed resistance to slavery, repression, and the racist delusion of white supremacy runs deep in African American experience and history,” he wrote in his book We Want Freedom—A Life in the Black Panther Party. “When it emerged in the mid-1960s from the Black Panther Party and other nationalist or revolutionary organizations, it was perceived and popularly projected as aberrant. This could only be professed by those who know little about the long and protracted history of armed resistance by Africans and their truest allies. The Black Panther Party emerged from the deepest traditions of Africans in America—resistance to negative, negrophobia, dangerous threats to Black life, by any means necessary.”
Another stalwart in the liberation fight for Abu-Jamal is Professor Johanna Fernandez who cited that “Mumia has been complaining about being ill since January. If he had gotten the proper care he needed originally, he would not be in this situation. This crisis illustrates the problem of health care in American prisons as a basic human rights violation. I am personally concerned because Phil Africa of the MOVE organization was rushed to the hospital not long ago in good health and a few days later he was dead. We need to fight to defend Mumia’s life, and that of all prisoners.”
The Black Panthers, Black History Month and “Domestic Terrorism”
By RON JACOBS | CounterPunch | February 8, 2013
Once again, it’s Black History Month in the United States. Since the inception of this celebration, its meaning has unfortunately been diminished as the myth of postracialism becomes gospel, even though it shares none of a gospel’s truths. In schools and libraries, well-meaning teachers and library workers create displays, bring in speakers, and teach lessons on the history of African-Americans. All too often, this means a look at the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., a discussion of the Emancipation Proclamation and maybe a lesson about Rosa Parks.
Only rarely, do students and library patrons get a look beyond these conventional topics that are usually taught in a manner that highlights white America’s tolerance and sense of fair play. This is why books like the recently released Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party are so important. They remove the pretense that the Black liberation movement in the United States was something everyone except the KKK and its allies supported. Books like this tell the truth. Blacks Against Empire does so concisely, engagingly and honestly.
Blacks Against Empire is a political history that is simultaneously objective and radical. Despite the efforts of historians to obfuscate and obliterate the party from history, describing it as a hate group and gun-obsessed when mentioning it at all, the fact is the Panthers legacy is unique and important to not only the history of Black America, but to the history of the entire United States. It is best described in the words of Mumia Abu Jamal: “we didn’t preach to the people, we worked with them. “The relationship between the primarily white New Left and Panthers is explored in a fair-minded and realistic manner, as is the relationship between the Panthers and other Third World revolutionary organizations both in the United States and around the world. The authors expand the narrative of the movement against the US war in Vietnam, showing clearly the early involvement of black organizations, especially that of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). It was this organization that actually began resisting the draft, months before the predominantly white antiwar movement. Furthermore, as the authors make clear, opposition to the US war in Vietnam was one of the Black Panthers’ fundamental positions.
Like most revolutionary organizations the Panthers struggled with issues of gender and sexuality. While the participation of men in the breakfast programs sensitized them to the realities of child-rearing and associated aspects of human life (think of the film Salt of the Earth, when the women replace men on the picket lines and the men take over household tasks forcing them to see the relationship of domestic tasks to the capitalist dynamic), the living situations of many Panthers reinforced traditional gender roles.
Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin Jr., the authors of Black Against Empire, have written a comprehensive and compelling history of the Black Panther Party. As close to complete as one text can possibly be, it is the book I would recommend to anyone wanting to read just one book about the Black Panthers. The book concludes with a chapter speculating as to why the Black Panthers developed when they did, why they commanded the support they did, and why their influence waned so quickly. Of course, the role of the government counterinsurgency program called COINTELPRO is discussed; the frameups, misinformation, jacketing and murders. In light of current concerns about domestic “terrorists”, one wonders if the Panthers would be considered drone assassination targets under the current Justice Department guidelines if they were around today? Other reasons provided by the authors for the Panthers’ demise borrow from the Italian Antonio Gramsci’s thoughts on revolutionary movements and end up asking more questions than they answer.
Back to Mumia Abu Jamal. One of the youngest Panthers in the nation, he continued his revolutionary activism and reportage long after the Black Panthers had become history. Indeed, his post-Panther trajectory could serve as a microcosm of many leftist revolutionaries who came of age during the Panthers’ heyday. He didn’t give up his radicalism while pursuing a career after the Party. Because of this, he ended up paying for his history and his refusal to compromise. He continues paying even today. For those who have forgotten (or never paid attention), Mumia has been on Pennsylvania’s death row for more than two decades. Accused and convicted of killing a Philadelphia policeman in a prosecution involving the sketchiest of evidence and numerous prosecutorial and judicial missteps, Mumia’s life and situation is the subject of a new feature film titled Long Distance Revolutionary.
When I was helping organize antiwar activities in the late 1990s and the 2000s, I learned that many of the younger radicals I was working with came to their politics after learning of Mumia’s case. Thanks in no small part to his eloquence and the support of popular musicians like Rage Against the Machine, these young people saw through the intense desire of the State to keep Jamal in prison and kill him. This understanding opened their eyes to the realities of the system and made them radical. As the film shows, this trajectory is similar to Jamal’s. Mumia is a political prisoner. The Panthers were a political organization. The story of both is a story that needs to be heard. The film is part biography, part commentary from supporters and Jamal himself, and part drama. The sum of these parts is a film that provokes and entertains.
The Black Panthers were bold. The Black Panthers were smart. The Black Panthers were anti-imperialists. The Black Panthers were revolutionaries. This book and this film remind us of that. They also remind us that this world, this nation, could use something with the Panthers appeal and power now.
Read this book, ask your library to buy it; watch this film. Black history isn’t just for black people. It’s for everyone who wants to understand the history of the United States.
Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way the Wind Blew: a History of the Weather Underground and Short Order Frame Up. Jacobs’ essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch’s collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His collection of essays and other musings titled Tripping Through the American Night is now available and his new novel is The Co-Conspirator’s Tale. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com.
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Climate Science: Is it Currently Designed to Answer Questions?
By Prof. Richard S. Lindzen | Global Research | September 22, 2014
Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Global Research 30 November 2009
Abstract
For a variety of inter-related cultural, organizational, and political reasons, progress in climate science and the actual solution of scientific problems in this field have moved at a much slower rate than would normally be possible.
Not all these factors are unique to climate science, but the heavy influence of politics has served to amplify the role of the other factors. By cultural factors, I primarily refer to the change in the scientific paradigm from a dialectic opposition between theory and observation to an emphasis on simulation and observational programs. The latter serves to almost eliminate the dialectical focus of the former.
Whereas the former had the potential for convergence, the latter is much less effective. The institutional factor has many components. One is the inordinate growth of administration in universities and the consequent increase in importance of grant overhead. This leads to an emphasis on large programs that never end. Another is the hierarchical nature of formal scientific organizations whereby a small executive council can speak on behalf of thousands of scientists as well as govern the distribution of ‘carrots and sticks’ whereby reputations are made and broken. The above factors are all amplified by the need for government funding.
When an issue becomes a vital part of a political agenda, as is the case with climate, then the politically desired position becomes a goal rather than a consequence of scientific research. This paper will deal with the origin of the cultural changes and with specific examples of the operation and interaction of these factors. In particular, we will show how political bodies act to control scientific institutions, how scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions, and how opposition to these positions is disposed of. … continue
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