Mumia Legal Update

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
Subject: [107disc] Mumia Legal Update


> A new legal update from the New York Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition.
>
> From: "Steve Bloom" <sblm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Legal Update: Check out the Critical Developments regarding the role of
> Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille in excluding African-Americans from
> Mumia's jury and then covering up that outrageous story.
>
> Judge Ronald Castille and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court
> vs. Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal
>
> June 30, 2002
>
> 1. We are still waiting for a response in the US Court of Appeals to both
> sides' appeals of federal Judge William Yohn's December 2001 ruling, in
> which he set aside Mumia's death sentence -- though he gave the state of
> Pennsylvania the option of conducting a new hearing at which Mumia could
be
> sentenced to death again. If that hearing is not held, and Yohn's decision
> is upheld, then Mumia would serve life in prison without parole.
>
> Mumia's status is unchanged given these appeals. He remains on Death Row,
> locked up 23 hours a day as before, with Plexiglas barriers between him
and
> all visitors and all the other deadly restrictions. The Court of Appeals
> can respond in numerous ways to the appeals by both sides, ranging from
> overturning Yohn and reimposing the original death sentence to upholding
> Yohn and leaving the question of a new sentencing hearing up to the state,
> to setting aside the guilty verdict in Mumia's original trial.
>
> 2. Mumia's current attorneys filed for a reopening of the Post Conviction
> Relief Appeal (PCRA) hearings -- held initially in 1995-'96 -- claiming
> that Mumia's former attorneys failed to represent him properly by never
> arguing for his innocence and by never presenting key evidence pointing to
> Mumia's innocence. They filed this petition both in Pennsylvania Supreme
> Court and in the Third Circuit of the US Court of Appeals. On June 11, the
> Third Circuit stated that it would take no action in the case pending the
> Pennsylvania Supreme Court's final decision. This appears to be primarily
a
> procedural ruling, without major significance, but points to a potentially
> long process before us.
>
> 3. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania State Supreme Court a very important
> challenge is being waged by Mumia's attorneys to expose the true story of
> systematic bias in excluding African-Americans from Mumia's jury. The
> attorneys have asked to depose (take sworn testimony from) Supreme Court
> Justice Ronald Castille, about whom there have been recurrent charges of
> conflict of interest since at least 1987. And now there are additional
> charges, flowing from a ruling by the US Supreme Court (in the 1986
> "Batson" case) which states that the exclusion of jurors based on race is
> grounds for the reversal of a conviction.
>
> The Pennsylvania Supreme Court based its rejection of Mumia's motion to
> depose Castille on three of its prior decisions. But a closer examination
> of all three actually support the legitimacy of deposing Castille. In one
> (Commonwealth v Basemore, 2000) -- the only decision in which Castille did
> not participate -- the court actually granted Basemore a new hearing.
>
> Here's the story: Before he was elected to the Supreme Court, Castille was
> a District Attorney in the County of Philadelphia. During an initial
appeal
> of Mumia's original conviction, Castille, as District Attorney, signed the
> papers filed for the prosecution, arguing against Mumia's appeal. Clearly
> this raises a serious question about his ability to rule impartially
> regarding Mumia's case whenever it comes up before the State Supreme
Court.
>
> In 1996, when Mumia's appeal of Albert Sabo's denial of post-conviction
> relief reached the Court, Mumia's attorneys asked Castille to recuse
> himself -- that is, recognize that he had a conflict of interest and
choose
> not to participate in the deliberations or in the decision. Castille --
the
> only one who has the power to take such action -- rejected this request.
> Now, new and more damning evidence of Castille's conflict of interest and
> his active participation in the dissemination of a videotape aimed at
> teaching Assistant DA's in Philadelphia how to exclude African-Americans
> from juries, has emerged.
>
> One of the key issues in all of Mumia's legal proceedings has been the
> racist character of the jury selection at his original trial. In a city
> that is overwhelmingly Black, only two Blacks were selected to participate
> in his jury. Judge Sabo consistently allowed the prosecution to challenge
> Blacks and remove them during the jury-selection process. In his ruling
> last December on Mumia's federal Habeas Corpus petition, Federal District
> Court Judge William Yohn identified the question of racist jury selection
> and the instructions given to the jury as the two issues that he (that is,
> Judge Yohn) considered worthy of review by the Federal Court of Appeals.
> (Mumia's attorneys are asking the higher court to consider a wide range of
> questions.)
>
> Since 1998, one of the items of evidence which Mumia and his attorneys
have
> been trying to enter into the record is a videotape prepared by one Jack
> MacMahon. It is a training tape, used to educate Assistant District
> Attorneys in Philadelphia on how to exclude Black jurors without making it
> obvious that the basis of exclusion was racial in nature. This tape was
> produced in 1986, several years after Mumia's trial, but also the same
year
> that the U.S. Supreme Court issued its "Batson" ruling (see above). The
> court declared that a demonstrable pattern of racial discrimination in
jury
> selection was grounds for overturning a conviction.
>
> This is precisely what the MacMahon tape does demonstrate a pattern of
> racial discrimination adding to the weight of overwhelming statistical
> evidence that Black jurors were consciously excluded during Mumia's 1982
> trial. The videotape is clear evidence of an attempt to maintain the
> traditional racist practices of the Philadelphia DA's office, while
> camouflaging those practices in order to circumvent the protections newly
> offered to defendants by the Batson decision. Specifically, with regard to
> Mumia, the MacMahon tape takes the evidence that there was a racist
> exclusion of jurors out of the realm of mere statistics and demonstrates
> that a conscious plan lay behind those statistics.
>
> The Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied Mumia's request to allow this
> videotape into the record. Justice Castille participated in that denial.
> The court justified its rejection of Mumia's motion on the grounds that
the
> tape could not be shown to reflect general practices of the Philadelphia
> DA's office, since it was only a presentation by a single individual,
> MacMahon. It now comes to light, however, that the tape has the official
> insignia of the city of Philadelphia on it -- along with the name of
Ronald
> Castille as District Attorney.
>
> And so we have evidence of still another conflict of interest by Justice
> Castille. Not only did he participate in a court decision on a matter in
> which he had been personally involved, he actually knew for certain that
> the basis cited by the court for denying Mumia's motion was completely
> false. The videotape was an official document of the District Attorneys
> office, not some random production by a lone individual. And Castille's
> failure to reveal his personal participation in the production and
> dissemination of this videotape, when the issue came up before the Supreme
> Court where he was sitting as a judge, constitutes a serious violation of
> professional ethics.
>
> The Supreme Court as a whole rejected Mumia's motion to take a deposition
> on these questions from Justice Castille. But Mumia's attorneys are
> attempting to reargue the point before the court, partly based on the fact
> that Judge Castille should not have participated in that discussion and
> decision.
>
> This issue of systematic racial bias in jury selection, and the court
> exchanges surrounding it, are potentially explosive if they become widely
> known. The facts here reveal in a particularly stark way the racist,
> frame-up nature of the original prosecution and death-sentence imposed on
> Mumia. The issue of racial bias was also recently highlighted when Terri
> Maurer-Carter, a court stenographer during the time of Mumia's original
> trial, stated in an affidavit that she overhead trial Judge Albert Sabo
> say, referring to Mumia: "I'm going to help them fry the nigger."
>
> Implications For Activists
>
> 1. We should be waging a campaign to have Castille recuse himself, and to
> force the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to grant Mumia's motion to depose
> Castille on the use of the MacMahon tape, thus entering the MacMahon video
> into the record. This could make a tremendous difference, as racial bias
in
> jury selection constitutes a basis for overturning Mumia's conviction, and
> could then be reviewed by the federal courts. Additionally, given the
> current climate in the courts of vulnerability on this issue, we could put
> a lot of pressure on various officials and the courts themselves to
address
> the racial bias in the selection of Mumia's jury.
>
> 2. We must point to the contradiction between Federal Judge Yohn's ruling
> that Mumia may appeal on the issue of racial bias in the selection of his
> jury, and the Castille/Pennsylvania Supreme Court suppressing the
> investigation of this issue.
>
> 3. We must popularize the fact that in the case of Basemore, the use of
the
> MacMahon videotape was considered a "highly flagrant violation of the US
> Constitution." Basemore was granted the right to appeal. There was (unlike
> in Mumia's case) considerable evidence of his guilt. He nonetheless won
the
> right to an evidentiary hearing on a claim he had not raised at all before
> -- something Mumia has been fighting for in the federal courts.
>
> 4. We need to circulate and get signatures on the petition to current
> Pennsylvania governor Schweiker. (For information contact the NY Free
Mumia
> Coalition, see below.)
>
> 5. We must force the candidates in the present election for Pennsylvania
> Governor -- and particularly the likely winner, Democratic Party leader,
Ed
> Rendell, who was the DA for Philadelphia during the early '80s when Mumia
> was prosecuted, found guilty, and sentenced to death -- to take
> responsibility for "their" Supreme Court's "irregularities." Rendell is
> campaigning on a pro-death penalty platform and specifically in support of
> Mumia's execution, with a totally fabricated version of what happened on
> the night of December 9th 1981. Rendell and Castille share a long history
> of involvement in the effort to frame-up and murder Mumia Abu-Jamal.
>
> This information brought to you by the New York Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
> Coalition:
> P.O. Box 650, New York, NY 10009; 212-330-8029 (phone and "hot-line")
>
>
>
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