Mumia--background info part 1 (fwd)

[Bill Koehnlein <nyms1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following was found in soc.rights.human. It appeared in two sections,
and might contain some answers to questions posed by Henwood and Levy in
recent exchanges on this list.

--Bill Koehnlein <nyms1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
New York Marxist School

Forwarded message:
> From nyms1 Sun Jun  4 15:20:40 1995
> Date: Sun, 4 Jun 95 15:20:39 EST
> From: Bill Koehnlein <nyms1>
> X-Full-Name: Bill Koehnlein
> To: nyt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, nyms1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Mumia--background info part 1
>
>
> >Path: nyxfer!uunet!biosci!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netnews
> >From: lucumi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Kenneth Ritchards)
> >Newsgroups: soc.rights.human
> >Subject: Background info on Mumia Abu-Jamal (part 1 of 2)
> >Date: 4 Jun 1995 07:29:07 GMT
> >Organization: Netcom
> >Lines: 222
> >Distribution: world
> >Message-ID: <3qrnc3$ril@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >NNTP-Posting-Host: ix-sac1-05.ix.netcom.com
>
>
> THE TRIAL OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL #1
>
>
> Source: nattyreb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Marpessa Kupendua)
>
> FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL! Mumia Abu-Jamal
>
>
>
> Trial - 5/11/95
>
> Last week, Pennsylvania executed its first man since 1962. Bloodthirsty
> Governor Tom Ridge has now signed FIVE death warrants and two other
> executions have already been scheduled. Our demand, one that we need YOUR
> assistance to make, is for Bro. Mumia Abu-Jamal to receive a new trial.
>
> "There is a quickening upon the nation's Death Rows of late, a picking up
> of the pace of the march towards death ... States that have not slain in a
> generation now ready their machinery: generators whine, poison liquids are
> mixed and gases are measured and readied, silent chambers await the order
> to smother life." - Mumia Abu-Jamal
>
> Since I haven't posted anything regarding Mumia's sham of a trial and I
> know many of you who have been following this don't have very much
> information relating to that, I am submitting what's known as "The
> Weinglass Report" so you can see what actually happened to our Brother.
> I'll do this in "parts" cuz it is pretty long.
>
>
> THE TRIAL OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
>
> by Leonard I. Weinglass
>
> Attorney for Mumia Abu-Jamal
>
> "Live From Death Row"
>
> In one of the most extraordinary trials in recent history, Mumia Abu-Jamal,
> a leading African-American broadcast journalist in Philadelphia, aptly
> dubbed, "the voice of the voiceless," was put on trial in June 1982 and
> sentenced to death for the murder of a white police officer. The case was
> tried before the Honorable Albert Sabo, notorious for having put more
> people on death row than any other sitting judge in the United States.
>
> Before ascending to the bench, he served as the undersheriff in
> Philadelphia for sixteen years. No less distinguished was the tough and
> experienced prosecutor who had previously obtained the murder conviction of
> an innocent man (Commonwealth v. Connor). After the defendant in that case
> had served twelve years for a crime he didn't commit, the district
> attorney's office successfully petitioned the court for his release based
> on evidence that indicated that the defendant had not committed the crime,
> and following an investigation into the original trial evidence and
> testimony.
>
> The only inexperienced actor in Mumia's case was the court-appointed
> attorney, who was thrust into the role of defense counsel after Mumia was
> stripped of his right to represent himself midway through jury selection.
> The attorney repeatedly sought to be relieved as assisting counsel to Mumia
> during pretrial hearings.
>
> It would have been impossible for counsel to defend Mumia effectively no
> matter what his skill and dedication. The court allocated only $150
> pretrial to the defense for the investigation of the case despite the fact
> that the police investigators had conducted more than 125 witness
> interviews. By trial time, the defense had succeeded in locating just two
> eyewitnesses, although aware that there were many more. In a desperate
> last-minute move, Mumia's attorney frantically tried to convince a key
> eyewitness to come to court by calling on the judge's telephone while the
> jury sat waiting in the courtroom. The effort failed. While the prosecution
> presented experts on ballistics and pathology, the defense was prevented
> from doing so due to the paltry sums allocated by the court for that
> purpose.
>
>
> On the third day of jury selection, the court barred Mumia from further
> questioning of prospective jurors. Reluctantly, and obviously unprepared,
> his court-appointed attorney was compelled to take over. Although
> seventy-seven of the first eighty jurors had heard or read of the case,
> necessitating a probing inquiry into what opinions, if any, they had
> formed, the court became impatient with the process, claiming that Mumia's
> questions intimidated jurors. Some court observers believed that the
> court's action might more plausibly be attributed to the fact that Mumia's
> professional training in broadcast journalism was creating too favorable an
> impression.
>
> Under pressure from the court to expedite the selection process, which at
> one point included threatening Mumia's lawyer with contempt, a jury was
> selected that included a man whose best friend was a former Philadelphia
> police officer on disability after being shot while on duty, as well as an
> alternate juror whose husband was a Philadelphia police officer. Counsel
> inexplicably failed to object or even make note of the prosecution's
> racially skewed use of eleven of fifteen peremptory challenges to remove
> African-American jurors. He even consented to the judge's summary
> dismissal, in Mumia's absence, of an African-American juror who had already
> been selected, replacing her with an older white male, who refused to
> answer whether he could keep an open mind, saying he didn't think he "could
> be fair to both sides."
>
> The prosecution presented its case in less than seven days. Mumia was not
> present during most of it, having been removed from the courtroom for
> insisting on his right to self-representation, as well as the assistance of
> John Africa at counsel table. With his life on the line, he argued that he
> was being defended by a lawyer who was not only unqualified but unwilling
> to represent him. Nothing was done to assist Mumia in following the
> proceedings, such as transmission into his holding cell or the provision of
> a transcript. Not only was this a departure from common practice, but it
> was particularly damaging since it was Mumia, and not his attorney, who had
> prepared the case. Without Mumia's presence or assistance, his attorney
> could only feebly attempt to cross- examine the prosecution's witnesses.
>
> That the police officer had been shot on a public street at 4 a.m. on
> December 9, 1981, after having stopped Mumia's brother's car was
> undisputed. That Mumia arrived at the scene moments after the officer had
> pummeled his brother with his flashlight was also undisputed. Mumia was
> shot, presumably by the same officer, since the bullet taken from his body
> matched that of the officer's gun. Mumia remained in critical condition for
> a period of time following emergency surgery. Nonetheless, his case was
> rushed to trial within six months without a continuance. After announcing
> that he would defend himself, Mumia was given just three weeks to prepare
> his case for trial.
>
> The prosecution's case relied mainly on the testimony of four witnesses who
> claimed to be at or near the scene of the shootings. The court had refused
> all requests to have these witnesses attempt an identification of Mumia in
> a lineup, instead allowing him to be identified as he sat at counsel table
> or through photographs in his absence. The most damaging witness was a
> female prostitute who had a record of over thirty-five arrests and was
> serving a sentence in Massachusetts. She testified that she saw Mumia shoot
> the officer by running up behind him, shooting him once, and then firing
> again after he fell to the sidewalk. Previously, she had given a number of
> differing accounts, most of them contradicted by the other three witnesses.
> Another prostitute who was working the same area that night testified she
> was offered the same same deal as the prosecution's witness: immunity from
> arrest by the police in return for her testimony against Mumia.
>
> Of the three remaining witnesses, all male, two said they saw Mumia run to
> the scene where the police officer was beating Mumia's brother. Both
> testified that gunfire erupted shortly after Mumia arrived, but neither one
> saw Mumia shoot the officer. The third witness, a cabdriver who had pulled
> up behind the police car, was closest to the shooting. He told police that
> the shooter fled the scene, before more police arrived, by running to where
> an alleyway intersects the sidewalk some thirty yards away. The shooter was
> a large, heavy man, over six feet two and weighing more than 225 pounds.
> Mumia is six feet one and weighed a scant 170 pounds. At trial this witness
> denied that the shooter ran away, insisting instead that he took just a few
> steps and then sat down on the curb at the precise point where the police
> found Mumia, slumped over and bleeding profusely from his wound. The judge
> kept from the jury the fact that this witness had previously been convicted
> of throwing a Molotov cocktail into a public school for pay and was then on
> parole. He might have altered his testimony to curry favor with the
> prosection or even out of fear. Another witness, a nearby resident, also
> reported seeing a man flee the scene in the same direction. She was the
> witness that defense counsel couldn't produce after contacting her on the
> judge's telephone midway through trial. A third witness, a prostitute, told
> the authorities that she also observed one or two men running from the
> scene, but recanted her story after lengthy questioning by the police. In
> all, four witnesses situated in four separate locations on the street -
> none of whom knew each other or Mumia - reported seeing the shooter flee,
> and all had him going in precisely the same direction. It's simply
> impossible that all four were hallucinating about the very same thing.
> Nonetheless, no investigation was made to locate or identify the fleeing
> suspect.
>
> The prosecution's theory was that Mumia first shot the officer, wounding
> him slightly. When the officer returned fire and hit him, Mumia, angered,
> stood over the officer, who had since fallen to the sidewalk, and shot him
> in the face, killing him instantly. None of the witnesses, however, saw it
> that way. None even saw Mumia get shot. That theory was constructed out of
> the simple fact that the police found both Mumia and the officer lying
> within several feet of each other on the sidewalk, both wounded from
> gunshots. Although Mumia's gun was found at the scene (he had a permit to
> carry a weapon because he had been robbed as a cabdriver), the
> prosecution's expert claimed he could not match the bullet recovered from
> the officer's body to Mumia's gun due to the fragmented nature of the
> bullet.
>
> To add weight to its somewhat shaky thesis, unconfirmed by the incredible
> prosecution witnesses, the prosecution produced a security guard who worked
> at the hospital where Mumia was taken for treatment. She testified that
> Mumia, an experienced journalist who had covered scores of court cases,
> openly confessed to everyone within earshot that he had shot the policeman,
> adding for emphasis, "I hope the motherfucker dies." But the officer who
> took Mumia into custody and stayed with him stated in his written report
> that Mumia remained silent through the entire time he was with him. His
> testimony, however, like that of the missing eyewitnesses, was not produced
> at trial. The officer who reported these events was "on vacation" when he
> should have been available to be called by the defense. A defense request
> to continue the case a few days until his return was denied.
>
> Not able to produce the witnesses it needed to rebut the prosecution's
> case, the defense relied instead on the testimony of sixteen character
> witnesses. All testified that Mumia could not possibly have committed such
> a crime because he was known both professionally and socially as a gentle
> and decent man. When one character witness, the noted author and poet Sonia
> Sanchez, took the stand, the prosecutor questioned her, over objection,
> about the irrelevant fact that she had written the foreword to Assata
> Shakur's (Joanne Chesimard's) book, "Assata Speaks." Then, with the court's
> blessing, he launched into a highly prejudicial and improper line of
> questioning about Assata's conviction for killing two police officers in
> New Jersey; inquiring, further, whether Sanchez also politically supported
> three New York men who had been convicted of killing police. Thus the
> prosecutor insinuated that Sanchez made a habit of supporting police
> killers, and that, by implication, Mumia must be one. In so doing, the
> prosecutor not only committed prosecutorial misconduct but set the stage
> for what later became an all-out attack on Mumia's politics.
>
>
> To Be Continued ....
>
>
>
>
> CONTACT:
> International Concerned Friends & Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal
> P.O. Box 19709
> Philadelphia, PA 19143
> 215-476-8812 phone & fax
>
> Submitted by Sis. Marpessa.
>
>



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