Showing newest 10 of 51 posts from September 2008. Show older posts
Showing newest 10 of 51 posts from September 2008. Show older posts

Monday, September 29, 2008

FRAMING MUMIA: author J. Patrick O'Connor's Bay Area Book Tour

The SF Bay Area Mobilization to Free Mumia is organizing an exciting book tour with author J. Patrick O'Connor, from October 3-8. Please see the schedule below and learn more about this explosive book

Included in this post announcing the Bay Area tour, is the full text of O'Connor's speech, given at Baruch College, June 23, 2008, during his East Coast book tour.
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Please Click here to see Journalists for Mumia's special page about O'Connor, including our exclusive interview at Philly City Hall:

http://www.abu-jamal-news.com/article.php?name=vidframe

Here is the schedule (from freemumia.org):

Sponsor: The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
freemumia.org, jmackler [at] lmi.net, 510-268-9429, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610

The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal - Northern California Tour

October 3 - 8 - The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal is organizing a Northern California tour by J. Patrick O'Connor, Crime Magazine on-line editor, author of the recently published book, "The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal." Meetings and media work is planned for San Francisco, the East Bay, Palo Alto, Santa Rosa, and many other locations. This amazing book presents new evidence detailing the frame-up of Mumia and proving, once again, that he is innocent!

(J. Patrick O'Connor is the editor & publisher of Crime Magazine. He was a reporter and Bureau Manager for United Press International, editor of Cincinnati Magazine, associate editor of TV Guide & editor/publisher of the Kansas City New Times.)

San Francisco: Friday, Oct. 3
5:30 - 7:15 pm, Golden Gate Law School, 536 Mission St.
(between 1st and 2nd Street), San Francisco, Room 3214, $10.

Oakland: Saturday, October 4,
2-5 pm. Special reception/luncheon at the home of Jeff Mackler with Patrick O'Connor and friends, Lynne Stewart, Barbara Lubin and KPFA's Walter Turner, Kris Welsh & Nora Barrows Friedman. Call: 510-268-9429 to attend. $15.00

Patrick O'Conner's new book, "The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal" is based on a meticulous review of 12,000 pages of court transcripts, legal briefs, police records and an exhaustive examination of the constitutional violations perpetrated by America's criminal 'justice' system. His evidence makes a powerful case that Mumia Abu-Jamal should be granted a new trial, and having been cruelly kept on death row for 26 years, he should be immediately freed.
-- Howard Zinn, author, People's History of the United States

Patrick O'Connor Bay Area Tour Schedule

* Fri., Oct. 3, 5:30 pm - Golden Gate Law School, SF (See above)

* Fri., Oct. 3, 7:30 pm - Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave, Oak. (bet. Alcatraz & 66th St.)
Sponsor: Labor Action Comm. to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

* Sat., Oct. 4, 2-5 pm - Special reception/luncheon at the home of Jeff Mackler and Carol Kummer, (See above)

* Sun., Oct. 5, 4-6 pm -College of Marin/Kentfield: Patrick O'Connor with Lynne Stewart: Call 510-268-9429 for room & details.

* Mon., Oct. 6, 1pm - Stanford University Radio; Noon, Stanford Law School (tentative)

* Tues., Oct. 7, 12 Noon - Golden Gate Law School, 536 Mission, SF (bet. 1st & 2nd Sts., Rm. 3216

* Tues., Oct. 7, 7 pm SHARP - Community Media Center, 900 San Antonio Rd (near Charleston), Palo Alto. This will be a live TV program followed by Q&A & reception sponsored by the Peninsula & Justice Center

* Wed., Oct. 8, 7:30 pm - Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County, 467 Sebastopol Ave, Santa Rosa

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J. Patrick O’Connor’s presentation at Baruch College, NYC
June 23, 2008

Good evening and thank you for coming.

Tonight I’m going to cover five areas of the Mumia Abu-Jamal case, beginning with my reasons for writing The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal. I’ll next discuss how the arrest set the framing in motion. Then look at how the physical evidence and early eyewitness statements pointed to a shooter other than Mumia. In Part 4 I’ll show how the prosecutor used perjured, coerced, and bribed testimony to get the death verdict. I’ll finish with an analysis of Mumia’s various legal appeals and where he stands now. At the conclusion, I’ll be happy to try to answers your questions about the case.

1. Why I wrote this book:

When Mumia was sentenced to death on July 3, 1982, for the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, I was an associate editor for TV Guide at its headquarters in nearby Radnor, Pennsylvania.

I had often heard Mumia giving reports on the local public radio station during the 20 months he was employed there. I was impressed with his ability to make listeners feel what he was describing – and with the compassion in his distinctive voice. He was, in a very real sense, the “voice of the voiceless.” I had great admiration for him.

In 1996 I watched the BBC documentary: Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Case for Reasonable Doubt on HBO and I began to develop some doubts about the fairness of his trial and its verdict.

When Amnesty International published an 84-page pamphlet in 2000 stating that it had determined that numerous aspects of Mumia’s case “clearly failed to meet minimum standards safeguarding the fairness of legal proceedings,” I began to research the case. By this time I was editor of the Internet site Crime Magazine (http://www.crimemagazine.com), and my intention was to write an article about the case for it.

Running throughout much of Mumia’s support is a subtext that his trial was unfair but that he probably killed Officer Faulkner in self-defense. As I read and re-read the available material on the case – transcripts from both his trial and Post-Conviction Relief Act hearings, newspaper accounts, and several books written about the case – I could see that his trial was a monumental miscarriage of justice, representing an extreme case of prosecutorial abuse and judicial bias.

What I could not tell until I was several years into my research was whether Mumia had actually killed Officer Faulkner. The officer had been in the process of violently arresting Mumia’s younger brother – Billy Cook – shortly before 4 a.m. in a “red-light” section of Center City Philadelphia when Mumia – moonlighting as a taxi driver – happened to be nearby and ran from a parking lot to assist his brother. When I was able to determine that the passenger in Billy Cook’s car had killed Officer Faulkner, I then set out to show what no other book about this case had ever attempted to reveal: Why and how Mumia was framed for Officer Faulkner’s killing.

What makes getting to the truth of this case so difficult for so many people who continue to believe that Mumia is guilty of murdering Officer Faulkner is that the prosecution built its case on perjured, bribed, and coerced testimony with a calculated disregard for what the actual evidence established.

2. How the arrest set the framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal in motion:

The framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal was set in place at the very outset when Inspector Alfonzo Giordano arrived within minutes to take control of the crime scene. Giordano formerly reported directly to George Fencl, the chief inspector of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Civil Defense Bureau – a special intelligence unit that had monitored Mumia since he joined the Philly chapter of the Black Panther Party at age 15. The civil defense bureau was also at the heart of the police department’s harassment of MOVE, the small, radical back-to-nature group that became the focal point of police brutality in the 1970s and 1980s. The civil defense bureau’s interest in Mumia intensified as his radio career took wing. At the local public radio station, Mumia became an outspoken critic of the Mayor Rizzo-dominated police department and one of the city’s few reporters to dare empathize with MOVE in its ongoing and epic-like battle with Rizzo and the police department.

Normal police procedure would have been for a homicide detective to assume control of the crime scene, but there would be nothing normal about this arrest. Giordano seized control, confronting Mumia in the paddy wagon by striking him in the forehead with a hard object – most likely his walkie-talkie – and cursing him with repeated racial epithets. It would be Giordano who claimed that Mumia told him that he dropped his gun in the street after he shot Faulkner. It would be Giordano who arranged at the scene for 21-year-old prostitute Cynthia White and a 23-year-old, white, felon by the name of Robert Chobert to identify Mumia as the shooter. Giordano and White would be the D.A. Office’s only witnesses at the preliminary hearing to hold Mumia over for trial where Giordano repeated this so-called “confession.” Although the police released this confession to the news media the day of Faulkner’s shooting, no jury would ever hear Giordano testify to it. In one of the most sinister aspects of Mumia’s case, the police department waited until the first working day after Mumia’s sentencing to “relieve” Giordano of his duties on what would prove to be well founded “suspicions of corruption.”

Giordano was as corrupt a police officer as one can imagine, even by Philadelphia standards. For years he had been extorting kickbacks – personally averaging $3,000 per month – from Center City prostitutes, pimps, and bar owners, which explains his early arrival at the crime scene. Four years after Mumia’s trial, Giordano pled guilty to tax evasion in connection with those payouts. His penalty: four years probation. In the wide-ranging FBI probe that nailed Giordano, numerous other high-ranking police officers also were convicted, including Deputy Police Commissioner James Martin, and John DeBenedetto, head of the Central Division, to which Faulkner was assigned. Martin, the acknowledged head of the Philadelphia Police Department’s elaborate extortion apparatus, was in charge of all major investigations, including Faulkner’s death.

Giordano didn’t even bother to have White go through the pretense of identifying Mumia in the paddy wagon as he did several other eyewitnesses. Instead, he coerced or enticed her at the scene to concoct an eyewitness account of Faulkner’s shooting and packed her off in a patrol car to give her statement to police detectives at the Roundhouse. White would be the only witness the D.A. had to claim to see Mumia holding a gun over a prone Faulkner.

3. How the physical evidence and early eyewitness statements pointed to a shooter other than Mumia:

From the outset, the investigation into the shooting death of Officer Faulkner was conducted with one goal in mind: to hang the crime on Mumia Abu-Jamal. There was no search for the truth, no attempt at providing the slain officer with the justice he deserved. The physical evidence at the crime scene and the initial witness statements – other than White’s – pointed to a shooter other than Mumia.

• Four eyewitnesses told police that they saw one or more black men running from the scene after hearing gunshots.

• The prosecution’s entire account of how Mumia himself came to be shot – that Officer Faulkner, after Mumia cowardly shot him in the back, was able somehow to whirl around, and while falling down backwards get off the shot that struck Mumia – was a flagrant misrepresentation of the actual evidence. The prosecution’s scenario was completely discredited at trial when the surgeon who operated on Mumia testified that the bullet struck him in the chest and traveled straight downward, lodging in his liver. What the evidence actually showed was that Faulkner – while standing on the sidewalk – shot Mumia as he approached from the street.

• Even Robert Chobert, the felon on probation Giordano had I.D. Mumia in the paddy wagon, said in his first statement that the shooter was in his mid-30s, was heavy-set, weighing 200 to 225 pounds, was 6 feet tall, and wore a gray colored dress shirt that had a green picture on the back. (Mumia was 27. He was 6 feet tall, but weighed a lean 170 pounds then. That night he wore a waist-length, red-quilted ski jacket with a vertical blue stripe crossing the front. There was no picture on it, front or back.

• Cab driver Robert Harkins is the only eyewitness who saw what actually happened to Faulkner. He was driving by the police car and Cook’s VW when he saw an officer grab a man. The man then spun the officer around and the officer went to the ground on his hands and knees, his back now facing the assailant. The assailant then shot the officer in the back, causing the officer to roll over on his back, and then the assailant – according to Harkins – fired two more shots point blank at the officer, one hitting him between the eyes, killing him instantly. When Harkins saw the officer go flat to the ground, he began fearing for his own life and sped away. Within a block he spotted a police paddy wagon and alerted the officers in it that a police officer had been shot.

Harkins’s account of the officer being thrown down on his hands and knees was borne out by the slit in Faulkner’s trousers at the knee and the denuding of his knee.

Harkins – like Chobert – described the assailant as being a little taller and heavier than the officer. Faulkner was 6 feet and weighed 200 pounds. Harkins said the assailant’s clothing was “not too dark and it wasn’t light.” His description fit Billy Cook’s burly street vendor associate, Kenneth Freeman, who was about 6 foot, but weighed over 200 pounds. Freeman that night wore a green army jacket – not too dark and it wasn’t light.

Mumia’s jury did not get to hear from Harkins because the prosecution did not want his testimony to put to rout the perjured testimony of Cynthia White and Robert Chobert.

• In Faulkner’s shirt pocket was a driver’s application bearing the name Arnold Howard. (When the prosecution turned over evidence to the defense, it concealed that the driver’s application had been found in Faulkner’s clothing, claiming it had been recovered from inside Cook’s VW.) Police rousted Howard from his house pre-dawn that morning and brought him in for questioning. He informed them that he had loaned his driver’s application to his friend, Kenneth Freeman. Police then brought Freeman in for questioning. Here, delivered to them, was Faulkner’s assailant. But the police did not want Freeman for this crime even after star prosecution witness Cynthia White twice picked him out of lineups that morning. Freeman was released without having to even bother to contact an attorney.

Five days later, in what the Philadelphia Inquirer reported as a probable police arson, Freeman’s vending stand was burnt to the ground at 3 a.m., effectively bankrupting him. Less than four years later, on the night the police firebombed the MOVE home on Osage Avenue – killing 11 MOVE members, including five children and burning down 60 other row houses in the process – Freeman’s dead body was found nude, gagged and bound – his hands cuffed behind his back – in an empty lot on Roosevelt Boulevard. Coincidence? The coroner listed the 31-year-old’s death as a heart attack and no investigation of his obvious murder was undertaken.

• Perhaps the most absurd claim – absurd as in unbelievable – that the crime-scene police made was that they didn’t conduct even the most elementary tests of Mumia’s gun to determine if it had been recently fired, by either feeling it for heat or smelling it. Neither, they claimed, did they run the most basic trace-metal test on Mumia’s hands to determine if he had fired his gun. What is probable is that they did conduct all three of these tests and each was negative.

• The 26-crime scene photos taken by freelance photographer Pedro Polakoff at the scene of Officer Faulkner’s killing represent another major indication of the Philadelphia Police Department and Philadelphia D.A.’s Office total disregard for what the actual crime-scene evidence revealed. Polakoff arrived at the crime scene 12 minutes after hearing of the shooting on his police scanner. When Polakoff offered the photos to the police and the D.A.’s Office in early 1982, neither wanted them. And for good reason. The photos, taken in total, tell a story neither the police nor the prosecution wanted anyone to know about.

For one thing, the photos depict a stunning nonchalance on the part of the police at the crime scene, particularly the crime scene of a felled fellow officer. Normal police protocol for securing a crime scene – instead of heightened – was abandoned. Polakoff would tell German author Michael Schiffmann 25 years later that it was the “most messed up crime scene I’ve ever seen,” because it was never secured and he, and many others, had free access to it.

The photos also show a disturbing pattern of evidence manipulation and mishandling of crucial forensic evidence within minutes of the police arriving at the scene.

In an interview after his photos were released in 2007, Polakoff said that when he first arrived at the scene the working theory of the police was that the shooter had fled. He said police were interviewing people to get information about the shooter’s description.

4. How the prosecutor used perjured and coerced testimony to get the death verdict:

It wasn’t enough for Prosecutor Joe McGill to try Abu-Jamal on the facts and evidence of the case. Time and again, from his pre-trial dealings through his summations at both the guilt and sentencing phases of the trial, he would go over the top in his effort to send Abu-Jamal to the electric chair.

• McGill knew there was another person in Billy Cook’s VW. He knew that another man – Arnold Howard – had loaned his driver’s application to Cook’s street-vendor partner, Kenneth Freeman, and that application was in Faulkner’s shirt pocket when the officer was killed. He most likely knew that Cynthia White had twice picked Freeman out of lineups hours after Faulkner’s death.

• At Billy Cook’s assault trial – held three months prior to Mumia’s trial – Cynthia White had testified – under questioning from McGill – about both the driver and a passenger in Cook’s VW getting out of the car as Faulkner approached. One of McGill’s first orders of business when White took the stand at Mumia’s trial was to get on record the exact opposite testimony. McGill began by asking her if anyone else was there besides the defendant, the police officer, and Billy Cook. Her answer was, “No.” Getting White to limit the people at the crime scene to only those three was an essential deception McGill needed to establish to counter any other eyewitness testimony regarding one or more black men fleeing the scene.

• McGill, apparently, had no ethical misgivings about using Cynthia White’s obviously perjured testimony. He knew that not one eyewitness had seen her at the scene. He also knew that in her original statement to police – given within an hour of Faulkner’s shooting – that she had Mumia running from the parking lot and from as far as 10 yards away firing four or five shots at Faulkner. After police arrested her again for prostitution three days after Faulkner’s death, she expanded her statement only to say that she saw Billy Cook strike Faulkner. Arrested again five days later, she finally got the message. She was now willing to alter her first two statements to comport with the actual evidence that Faulkner was shot at close range. He reward was to ply her trade with impunity for the six months leading up to Mumia’s trial. She admitted at Billy Cook’s assault trial that she had not been arrested since providing her third statement to police on December 17. Another perk the D.A.’s Office threw her way was to allow her live-in pimp to sign his own bail on a felony theft charge the month before Mumia came to trial.

• The same lack of ethical concern can be said of McGill’s use of Robert Chobert as a witness. Chobert had made the absurd claim in his statement that his taxi was parked directly behind Faulkner’s patrol car and that he saw it all from just feet away. Polakoff’s photos, by the way, belie this claim as did all other eyewitness testimony except for that of Cynthia White. At the time, Chobert was on felony probation and violating that parole by driving a taxi with a revoked driver’s license – revoked for two DUIs. McGill knew that it was nonsense for Chobert to claim that he would park directly behind any police car, but he needed him to bolster White’s less than credible standing as the key prosecution witness. So he used Chobert, simple as that. It didn’t seem to faze McGill that in Chobert’s original statement to police he had said the shooter had run 30 feet or so before collapsing. Mumia, of course, was found passed out just feet from Faulkner. In a subsequent statement to police, Chobert reduced the feet that Mumia ran to 10, still 10 feet more than was true.

• How desperate was the D.A.’s Office and the police to frame Mumia? One of the four witnesses who told police they saw one or more black men fleeing the scene immediately after the shooting was prostitute Veronica Jones. She would recant her original statement at trial after detectives visited her in her jail cell shortly before she was to testify at Mumia’s trial. At the time the 21-year-old Jones faced major felony charges for armed robbery, assault, and possession of an instrument of crime. She was looking at up to 15 years in prison. Her reward for cooperating turned out to be a sentence of five years’ probation on the felony charges against her. At Mumia’s Post-Conviction Relief Act hearing continuation in 1996, Jones bravely testified – under a threat of perjury charge from Judge Sabo – that Philadelphia detectives had coerced her into disavowing her claim about seeing two black men flee the crime scene. Sabo, of course, found her testimony not credible.

• The most credible witness the jury would hear from was a young accounting student – Dessie Hightower, whom the defense called to testify. Just as White had at Cook’s assault trial – Hightower would testify that Faulkner had approached the passenger side of the VW. A few minutes later, after hearing gunshots, Hightower observed someone running from the scene. The police, and presumably the prosecution, were so concerned with the exculpatory contents of his original statement that detectives re-interviewed him in the weeks to come for five hours on one occasion and then a week later came to his workplace and picked him for more questioning, some of it conducted with Hightower wired to a polygraph machine. Hightower would be the only witness the police polygraphed even though White and Chobert had so obviously altered their original statements. In addition, no polygraphs were administered to Officer Garry Bell and hospital security guard Priscilla Durham who concocted the damning “hospital confession” from Mumia.

• There was ample reason to polygraph both of them. For one thing, neither reported the so-called confession to the prosecution until over two months later when McGill himself interviewed them. More pointedly, the two officers who accompanied Mumia from the time he was placed in the paddy wagon until he went into surgery – and who never left his side during that interim – were Officers Gary Wakshul and Stephen Trombetta. In separate, signed statements given to detectives shortly after Mumia went into surgery, both Wakshul and Trombetta reported that Mumia had made no comments. Wakshul’s statement read, “During this time, the Negro male made no comments.”

When Mumia’s court-appointed attorney, Anthony Jackson, made an 11th hour attempt at Mumia’s trial to call Wakshul as a rebuttal witness to debunk Mumia’s alleged hospital confession, prosecutor McGill said he did not know where he was, although McGill knew that Wakshul was at home awaiting the possibility of being called to court to testify. The jury never got to hear from Wakshul or Trombetta – only from Bell and Durham. At trial, Bell testified he had no recall of even seeing Durham at the hospital.



5. Mumia’s failed appeals – “the Mumia exception” and his legal status now:

Mumia’s legal odyssey has been beset by the same sort of machinations as his arrest and trial. In 1989, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court turned down his first appeal even though one of his claims was almost the exact same claim that had persuaded the same court to grant Lawrence Baker a new trial in 1986. In that case, Commonwealth v. Baker, the court overturned Baker’s death sentence for first-degree murder on the grounds that the prosecutor improperly referenced the lengthy appeal process afforded those sentenced to death. That prosecutor – Joseph McGill – was the same prosecutor who used similar – almost identical – language in his summation during both the guilt and sentencing phases of Mumia’s trial. The judge who failed to strike the language in the Baker case was the same judge who presided at Mumia’s trial, Common Pleas Court Judge Albert F. Sabo.

The State Supreme Court ruled in Baker that the use of such language “minimize[ed] the jury’s sense of responsibility for a verdict of death.” When Mumia’s appeal included the very same issue, the court reversed its own precedent in the matter, denying the claim in a shocking unanimous decision.

A year later, in Commonwealth v. Beasley, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence of Leslie Beasley, but exerted its supervisory power to adopt a “per se rule precluding all remarks about the appellate process in all future trials.” This rule not only reinstated the Baker precedent but it ordered all prosecutors in the state to refrain once and for all from referencing the appellate process in summations to the jury. The court could have made this new rule retroactive to Mumia’s case, but did not.

As Amnesty International declared in its pamphlet published in 2000 about Mumia’s case, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s judicial scheming leave “the disturbing impression that the court invented a new standard of procedure to apply to one case only: that of Mumia Abu-Jamal,” Temple University journalism professor Linn Washington aptly dubs this and subsequent court decisions denying Mumia a new trial “the Mumia exception.”

Mumia’s Post-Conviction Relief Act hearing in 1995 was doomed from the beginning when Judge Sabo – Mumia’s original trial judge – would not recuse himself from the case and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would not remove him for bias.

Mumia’s federal habeas corpus appeal – decided by Federal District Judge William Yohn in 2001 – should have resulted in at least an evidentiary hearing on Mumia’s Batson claim that the prosecutor unconstitutionally purged blacks from Mumia’s jury by using peremptory strikes to exclude 10 or 11 otherwise qualified black jurors from the jury pool. Judge Yohn’s error was egregious and could have been easily avoided if he had held one evidentiary hearing on that defense claim. But during the two years that Judge Yohn considered Mumia’s habeas appeal, he held no hearings.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit should have corrected that district court mistake by remanding Mumia’s case back to Judge Yohn to hold the evidentiary hearing on the Batson claim, but in another example of the “Mumia exception,” the court instead continued the long and tortured denial of Mumia’s right to a fair trail. In a 2 to 1 decision released on March 27 that reeks of politics and racism, the court ruled that Abu-Jamal had failed to meet his burden in providing a prima facie case. He failed, the majority wrote, because his attorneys at his Post-Conviction Relief Act hearing in 1995 neglected to elicit the prosecutor’s reasons for peremptorily removing 10 otherwise qualified blacks during jury selection.

In the decision written by Chief Judge Anthony Sirica, the court stated that] “Abu-Jamal had the opportunity to develop this evidence at the PCRA evidentiary hearing, but failed to do so. There may be instances where a prima facie case can be made without evidence of the strike rate and exclusion rate. But, in this case [i.e., “the Mumia exception” is in play], we cannot find the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling [denying Mumia’s Batson claim] unreasonable based on this incomplete record.”

In a nutshell, the majority denied Mumia’s Batson claim on a technicality of its own invention, not on its merits. It also broke with the sacrosanct stare decisis doctrine – the principle that the precedent decisions are to be followed by the courts – by ignoring its own previous opposite ruling in the Holloway v. Horn case of 2004 and the Brinson v. Vaughn case of 2005. It is a general maxim that when a point has been settled by decision, it forms a precedent which is not afterwards to be departed from. In a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 1989 in a case entitled United States v. Washington, the decision stated that an appeal court’s panel is “bound by decisions of prior panels unless an en banc decision, Supreme Court decision, or subsequent legislation undermines those decisions.” None of those variables were in play when the Third Circuit Court majority ruled against Mumia’s Batson claim.

Judge Thomas Ambro’s dissent was sharp: “…I do not agree with them [the majority] that Mumia Abu-Jamal fails to meet the low bar for making a prima facie case under Batson. In holding otherwise, they raise the standard necessary to make out a prima facie case beyond what Batson calls for.”

In other words, the majority, in this case alone, has upped the ante required for making a Batson claim beyond what the U.S. Supreme Court stipulated. When ruling in Batson in 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court did not require that the racial composition of the entire jury pool be known before a Batson claim may be raised. The high court ruled that a defendant must show only “an inference” of prosecutorial discrimination in purging potential jurors. Prosecutor McGill’s using 10 or 11 of the 15 peremptory strikes he deployed is just such an inference – and an extremely strong one. McGill’s strike rate of over 66 percent against potential black jurors is in itself prima facie evidence of race discrimination. Prima facie is a Latin term meaning “at first view,” meaning the evidence being presented is presumed to be true unless disproved.

In commenting on Holloway v. Horn, a Batson-type case with striking similarities to Mumia’s claim, Judge Ambro – the lone Democrat-appointed judge on the three judge panel – demonstrated just how disingenuous the panel’s ruling against Mumia’s Batson claim was. “In Holloway, Judge Ambro wrote in his dissent, “we emphasized that ‘requiring the presentation of [a record detailing the race of the venire] simply to move past the first state – the prima facie stage – in the Batson analysis places an undue burden upon the defendant.’ There we found the strike rate – 11 of 12 peremptory strikes against black persons – satisfied the prima facie burden.” In Holloway, the Third Circuit ruled that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision denying Holloway’s Batson claim was “contrary to” and an “unreasonable application” of the Batson standard.

In fact, in rendering both its Holloway and Brinson decision, the Third Circuit specifically rejected the requirement that a petitioner develop a complete record of the jury pool. In making its ruling in Mumia’s appeal, it reversed itself to make the pretext of an incomplete jury record his fatal misstep. Basing its ruling against Abu-Jamal’s Batson claim on this invented pretext demonstrated how desperate the majority was to block Abu-Jamal’s Batson claim. What the majority was implying was that Abu-Jamal’s jury pool may well have consisted of 60 or 70 percent black people and that therefore the prosecutor’s using 66 percent of his strikes to oust potential black jurors was statistically normal and did not create a prima facie case of discrimination. This hypothesis is, of course, absurd on its face. Blacks have been underrepresented on Philadelphia juries for years – and remain so today. What was likely was that the jury pool at Abu-Jamal’s trial was at least 70 percent white.

The Third Circuit – if it had followed its own precedent – would have found the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling denying Abu-Jamal’s Batson claim “contrary to” and an “unreasonable application” of the Batson standard and remanded the case back to Federal District Court Judge Yohn to hold an evidentiary hearing to determine the prosecutor’s reasons for excluding the 10 potential black jurors he struck. If that hearing satisfied Judge Yohn that all of the prosecutor’s reasons for striking potential black jurors were race neutral, Mumia’s Batson claim would fail. If, conversely, that hearing revealed racial discrimination on the part of the prosecutor during jury selection – even if only concerning one potential juror – Judge Yohn would be compelled to order a new trial for Abu-Jamal.

Mumia is left with only two remedies to correct the flawed Third Circuit ruling. His first option is to request the Third Circuit to review its decision en banc where the entire panel of active judges sitting on the Third Circuit would conduct oral arguments anew. On April 9, the Third Circuit granted Abu-Jamal’s petition for Extension of Time to File for Rehearing En Banc, which allowed Mumia’s lead attorney, Robert Bryan of San Francisco, until May 27 to file.

According to Bryan, the basis of the petition he filed is that the Third Circuit’s “decision conflicts with a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court or of the court” – in this case the Third Circuit – “to which petition is addressed and consideration of the full court is therefore necessary to secure uniformity of the court’s decisions,” and “the proceeding involves one or more questions of exceptional importance.”

There is some likelihood that the Third Circuit might agree to meet en banc because the three-judge panel’s decision to deny Abu-Jamal’s Batson claim went against that court’s own well-established precedents in granting similar Batson claims in the past. However, the barrier to en banc deliberations is a high one: the majority of the active judges must vote to sit. In the case of the Third Circuit, there are 12 active judges eligible to vote, but three have already recused themselves from this particular politically charged case, meaning five of the remaining nine remaining judges would be needed to vote to go forward en banc. Considering that the decision denying Mumia’s Batson claim was written by the court’s chief judge and that the majority of active judges are Republican appointees – four of them by George W. Bush – Mumia has most probably had his one day before the Third Circuit. I can only hope I’m wrong about that.

Barring an en banc hearing by the Third Circuit, Mumia’s final option is to appeal the Third Circuit’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has on three previous occasions denied to take up his case. This time, though, there is a remote possibility that the high court might intervene in the case because the Third Circuit’s ruling created new law by placing new restrictions on a defendant’s ability to file a Batson claim. The Third Circuit, in effect, tampered with and undermined a long-established Supreme Court ruling. One clean, simple option for the Supreme Court would be to remand the case to federal district court for the Batson hearing the Third Circuit should have ordered.

Such a hearing would, in all probability except for “the Mumia exception,” lead to a new trial for Mumia. I pray that day will come.

Thank you.




Flyer
by Abu-Jamal-News.com Saturday Sep 27th, 2008 11:51 PM

Marie Mason sentencing set

From:    freemarie@riseup.net
Date: Sat, September 27, 2008

Marie Mason's sentencing has been set for February 5, 2009 at the Federal
Building 315 W. Allegan St.Lansing, MI. Courtroom #128.

One of the things Marie told us after her initial arrest back in March was
how cold and depressing all the faces were at her arrangement as almost no
family/supporters were able to attend. Lets make sure that that doesn't
happen again and that Marie is surrounded by supporters, friends and
Family throughout this difficult time.

We are encouraging people to attend these dates and support Marie. Be sure
to arrive early, dress well for court and please behave during the
proceedings.

Its all about the Struggle,
Got Your Back Collective
www.freemarie.org

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Political Prisoner Birthday List for October

Listed below are the birthdays for the month of October.

JAMIL ABDULLAH AL-AMIN
#99974-555
USP Florence ADMAX
P.O. Box 8500
Florence, CO 81226
October 4, 1943

DAVID GILBERT
83A6158 / Clinton Corr. Facility
P.O. Box 2001
Dannemora, NY 12929
October 6, 1944

MICHAEL DAVIS AFRICA
#AM4973
Box 244
Graterford, PA 19426
October 6, 1955

HERMAN WALLACE
#76759
Camp D, Eagle 1
Louisiana State Penitentiary
Angola, LA 70712
October 13, 1941

ROBERT SETH HAYES
#74-A-2280
Wende Corr. Facility
P.O. Box 1187
Alden, NY 14004-1187
October 15, 1948

ANTONIO GUERRERO
#58741-004
U.S.P. Florence
P.O. Box 7500
Florence CO 81226
October 18, 1958

JALIL MUNTAQIM
{Anthony Bottom} 2311826
850 Bryant St
San Francisco, CA 94103
October 18, 1951

EDWARD GOODMAN AFRICA
AM4974 / SCI Mahoney
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
October 21, 1949

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Brooklyn Man TASERed to Death by NYPD

"What do we want?-JUSTICE!"
"When do we want it?-NOW!"

For Immediate Release:
Contact: Lisa Ortega 646.260.6575
Mary Dougherty 845.598.4186

Who: Rights for Imprisoned People with Psychiatric Disabilities

Why: We are outraged over the death of another person with mental illness who was tasered by the NYPD

The blood lies in the hands of the NYPD!

They must be held accountable!

The NYPD needs a change in policy and procedure
NOW IS THE TIME FOR CRISIS INTERVENTION TEAMS!

What: Joins members of RIPPD, Make the Road New York, People's Justice, Justice Committee, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, Urban Justice Center/Mental Health Project for a Press Conference/Rally

When: Wednesday, October 1, 2008
1:00 PM

Where: 489 Tompkins Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11216
C train to Kingston Throop

Read the following article to get more details of the incident:
NYP: http://www.nypost.com/seven/09252008/news/regionalnews/nypd_investigate_stun_gun_death_130718.htm
NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/nyregion/26taser.html?hp
This is how the media puts it.
Stigmatization, like Criminalization towards those overwhelmed with Mental Illness must Stop
POST STAFF REPORT
Last updated: 5:58 pm
September 24, 2008
Posted: 5:03 pm
September 24, 2008
A deranged Brooklyn man ranting in his birthday suit from a fire escape stairway was shot by cops with a taser gun fell to his death, this shocking video shows.
The crazy rager fell about 10 feet to the street below 491 Tompkins Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant around 2 p.m. and was rushed to Woodhull Hospital with a serious head injury, cops said. He later died at the hospital.
The nudist first appears on the video standing on a fire escape stairway between the second and third floors, screaming inaudibly to a crowd below.
With police shouting for him to get down, the man climbed down to a ledge above a metal roll-down storefront cover.
He then picked up what appears to be a six-foot metal rod and waved it in the air.
"Walk down now! Move down!" the police can be heard shouting to him.
He refused the order and continued his incoherent tirade, the video shows.
Finally, one of the cops can be seen shooting him with the taser, sending the mad man head first to the street 10 feet below. It was unclear what set off his seemingly psychotic episode.

Peoples' Justice for Community Control and Police Accountability
Statement on the NYPD Killing of Iman Morales
Sept. 26, 2008

Peoples' Justice for Community Control and Police Accountability condemns the killing of Iman Morales by the NYPD last Wednesday afternoon in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Like the shooting deaths of Sean Bell and Jayson Tirado by NYPD officers, Mr. Morales death sends yet another message that the lives of people of color in New York City are expendable. Furthermore, it is another example of the NYPD's disregard and disrespect of people with disabilities.

Incidents such as the killings of Eleanor Bumpers, Gideon Busch, Khiel Coppin, and now Iman Morales are evidence of the NYPD's blatant dehumanization of people with mental disabilities. Peoples' Justice supports the call of Rights for Imprisoned People with Psychiatric Disabilities' (RIPPD) for the NYPD to make use of crisis intervention teams. Such teams, which exist in other parts of the country and have been used with great success, are well trained in non-lethal de-escalation techniques and are prepared to deal with similar situations without the use of TASERs or any other weapons. These teams also always have mental health clinicians on-site, who are prepared to offer treatment, not abuse, to emotionally disturbed individuals.

Peoples' Justice thanks the New York residents that videotaped and publicized Mr. Morales' killing. The ability to document and publicize police misconduct increases accountability and prevents the police from misrepresenting or covering up their actions as they have done many times in the past. We call on all New Yorkers to arm themselves with cameras, observe all law enforcement activity and document any incidents of misconduct. All documentation of questionable law enforcement behavior should be made available to the public.

Sean Bell's killing – in which the cops were acquitted of all charges – and that of Jayson Tirado – a killing that never even went to trial – show that the District Attorney's Office is not capable of overcoming its marriage with the police department in pursuit of justice. Therefore, we can only expect the same in this case and once again reiterate the call for the assignment of an independent prosecutor to investigate the killing of Mr. Morales and all cases of police violence, past and future.
Amnesty International's website states, "Since June 2001, more than 290 individuals in the United States have died after being struck by police TASERs. Amnesty International is concerned that TASERs are being used as tools of routine force, rather than as weapons of last resort." (http://www.amnestyusa.org/us-human-rights/taser-abuse/page.do?id=1021202&n1=3&n2=850&n3=220). This quote speaks not only to the deadly potential of TASERs, but to the fact that the police, no matter their weapon of choice, routinely act with unnecessary violence. The killing of Mr. Morales was not an isolated incident of poor judgment on the part of individual officers. The killings of all those mentioned in this statement, on top of many others, reveal the pattern – and policy – of the NYPD to kill in communities of color as an initial response, regardless of whether the circumstances call for the use of deadly force.
Peoples' Justice is a coalition of NYC-based grassroots organizations that have joined forces to win community control and police accountability.

Filiberto Ojeda Film Festival November

The Filiberto Ojeda Rios Film Festival 2008 is an initiative of the ProLibertad Freedom Campaign to showcase films that speak to our experience as a colonized people fighting for independence and self-determination!

We have named the film festival after assassinated Machetero leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios because his death raised consciousness throughout the Puerto Rican Diaspora; his murder illustrated the colonial oppression Puerto Rico faces and has radicalized a generation of young activists to continue the fight for independence.

We hope these films will do the same. Join us on our three consecutive Fridays!

Don’t support the Hollywood machine that feeds you nonsense, sex, violence and cheap humor! Learn about yourself, your people, and your struggle!

$5 donation/Best offer at each film!

Friday November 7th, 2008 @ 7pm @ Hunter College West Building 2nd floor room 217 (E68th St. and Lexington Avenue)

¡Palante Siempre Palante!

From Chicago streets to the barrios of New York City and other urban centers, the Young Lords emerged to demand decent living conditions and raised a militant voice for the empowerment of Puerto Ricans and other Latino/as in the United States and for the independence of Puerto Rico. Through on-camera interviews with former members, archival footage, photographs and music, the documentary surveys Puerto Rican history, the Young Lords' political vision and actions, and the organization's legacy. Take the 6 train to E68th St. and Lexington Avenue

Friday November 14th, 2008 @ 7pm @ John Jay College of

Criminal Justice 889 10th Ave. Room 3305N (between W58th-W59th St. on 10th Ave.)

The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez

What happens to the parents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters of those willing to sacrifice everything for their beliefs? This film uniquely blends forms to tell the singular story of a son of Puerto Rican revolutionaries — his mother in prison, his father in exile — sent as a baby to Mexico to be raised in safety and anonymity. As a teenager Ernesto/Guillermo learns of his past and collaborates with filmmakers Catherine Ryan and Gary Weimberg to magically chronicle his turbulent journey of self-discovery, offering a striking account of the costs of fiercely held convictions and the binding force of a son's love. (56 minutes) Take the A,B,C,D, 1, and 2 to 59th St. and Columbus Circle

Friday November 21st, 2008 @ 7:30pm @ The Brecht Forum 451 West Street (that's the West Side Highway) between Bank & Bethune Streets

La Operacion/The Operation

This documentary brings to the foreground the problem of widespread sterilization among Puerto Rican women through the use of personal testimony, newsreels, and government propaganda excerpts. The procedure is so common that more than one-third of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age have been sterilized. Begun in the 1930's as a means of curbing the surplus population, it continues to be reinforced politically and socially in the Puerto Rican communities. Directions: A, C, E or L to 14th St. & 8th Ave, walk down 8th Ave. to Bethune, turn right, walk west to the river, turn left. 1, 2, 3 or 9 to 14th St.& 7th Ave, get off at south end of station, walk west on 12th Street to 8th Ave, left to Bethune, turn right, walk west to the river, turn left. PATH Train to Christopher Street, north on Greenwich St to Bank Street, left to the river.

What is the ProLibertad Freedom Campaign?

The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign has been working for the release of the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners for over 10 years.

With the release of 11 of the Political Prisoners in September 1999, we have re-dedicated our efforts to securing the freedom of the remaining Puerto Rican political prisoners.

Through educational events, lobbying and public pressure work and activities it is our goal to secure the freedom of these patriots whose only “crime” has been the love of their home land, Puerto Rico.

We support the release of All U.S. held Political Prisoners, oppose the U.S. colonial control of Puerto Rico, U.S. imperialism throughout the world, and the U.S. military presence in Vieques.

CONTACT US AT ProLibertad@Hotmail.com or call the ProLibertad Hotline at 718-601-4751. Check out our website for campaign updates: www.ProLibertadweb.com

Midwest ELF investigation got a jump-start with discovery in garbage

REDFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) A business owner checking a trash container for scrap cardboard was alarmed by something else: gas masks, maps, an M-80 explosive, arson photos and anti-government writings.

"It was kinda scary," Andy Wishaw recalled. "Some of my employees said it's nothing. I thought, 'What's it going to hurt to call the police?'"

The discovery turned out to be a big break for the Agents on the trail of eco-terrorism used the contents to help solve more than a dozen acts of arson and tree spikings in Michigan and Indiana committed in the name of a radical group, the Earth Liberation Front, known as ELF, from 1999 through 2003.

Details on the trash and other evidence against two key figures are in search warrants in federal court in western Michigan. The warrants and affidavits are sealed, but they've landed on the Internet, offering a look at how the FBI closed in on Frank Ambrose and Marie Mason.

"There's no question that the discovery in the Dumpster was the catalyst that caused this thing to move forward," said Greg Stejskal, a retired FBI agent who was involved in earlier phases of the probe.

Ambrose, whose financial records and e-mail were in the trash, has admitted to 13 acts, including a New Year's Eve 1999 explosion and fire that caused more than $1 million in damage at Michigan State University. He faces up to 20 years in prison when sentenced next month.

The Detroit man also fingered Mason, his ex-wife. He recorded their phone conversations after agreeing to cooperate with the FBI, her attorney says. She pleaded guilty Sept. 11 to the Michigan State arson and admitted working with Ambrose in other incidents.

Ambrose's cooperation is causing a buzz among activists and on the Internet, where the home page of ecoprisoners.org declares "Frank Ambrose: Informant." There's a sympathetic Web site for Mason called freemarie.org.

"There is a lot of anger and resentment," said Craig Rosebraugh, a law student in Arizona and former spokesman for ELF. "Frank was an above-ground activist involved in the national environmental community for a number of years."

Lauren Regan, lawyer and director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, Ore., said there's a fear that Ambrose may have been wearing a wire at activist gatherings.

"Once a snitch, always a snitch," she said.

Defense lawyer Michael Brady declined to comment on Ambrose's work for the government. But in a recent court filing, he said his client's "substantial and rather extraordinary cooperation" with investigators will emerge at sentencing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagen Frank declined to discuss Ambrose's role. He does not contest the authenticity of the search warrants posted on ecoprisoners.org but declined to comment on the contents.

Ambrose's "cooperation to the government will be addressed at sentencing. The judge will decide how much weight to give it," Frank said.

Ambrose, 33, a former Big Ten swimmer at Purdue University, is no stranger to police. In Indiana, he was accused of spiking trees in 2000 to damage logging blades, but the charge was dropped.

In 2003, after he moved to Detroit, four homes under construction in Washtenaw and Macomb counties were destroyed by fire to protest urban sprawl. The FBI had Ambrose under surveillance, Stejskal said, but no charges were filed.

That same year, someone tried to set a fire at a pump station owned by Ice Mountain, a water bottler, in Michigan's Mecosta County. A grand jury demanded fingerprints and DNA from Mason and Ambrose, but again no charges followed.

The trail seemed to turn cold until March 2007 when Wishaw went hunting for scraps in a commercial trash container here in suburban Detroit and found stuff that seemed straight out of an international plot.

"With an airport map and the gas mask with 'No U.S.' written on it — it seemed like something," Wishaw told The Associated Press. "It was not so much the things; it was the writings. ... It didn't look right."

There was an M-80 explosive, a large block of candle wax and a 10-foot-long canvas strap — all "common components of incendiary devices," FBI agent James Shearer wrote in a sealed court affidavit.

Ambrose had a job in the area and tossed his possessions in the garbage, even a rock collection.

"He had been completely inactive for a long time," Brady said of Ambrose's acts for ELF. "Every once in a while you clean out your garage, I guess."

The cache was used to justify a raid of their Detroit home, eight miles away.

In March, federal prosecutors charged Ambrose and Mason in the New Year's Eve 1999 arson at Michigan State's Agriculture Hall, a fire committed in the name of ELF to protest genetically modified crops. The fire was so intense that it burned Mason's hair.

"Domestic terrorism, plain and simple," declared U.S. Attorney Charles Gross.

Ambrose pleaded guilty to conspiracy and also admitted 12 other acts, including six arsons of boats and new home sites in Michigan and Indiana. Value of property destroyed: more than $2.5 million.

Mason, 46, recently pleaded guilty to the campus arson and also admitted to the same list of acts with one addition, the attempted arson at Ice Mountain, something she had long publicly denied.

When Ambrose pleaded guilty in March, U.S. Magistrate Judge Hugh Brenneman Jr. asked about decisions made by ELF activists as to "what's good and what's bad and what's beneficial and what's not beneficial."

"Essentially judge and jury," Ambrose replied, "yes."

Friday, September 26, 2008

Angola 3: Albert Woodfox Conviction is Overturned!!


From: nycjericho@gmail.com

Good evening everyone,

I am thrilled to report that earlier today (Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008) Judge Brady issued the long anticipated final judgment in Albert's case,officially overturning his conviction after 36 years in solitary confinement!

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell immediately told AP reporters that the State intends to appeal and retry if necessary saying: "We respectfully but
vehemently disagree with the judge's ruling ...If this ruling is upheld, we
will with no question retry Albert Woodfox. We will take it as high as we
need to go."

But no matter how hard the State fights back, this is a huge victory--Albert
is no longer convicted of the murder of Brent Miller, and there is at least
a possibility he could be released on bail in the near future. A big
congrats to the attorneys and everyone who has refused to give up on the
idea that Herman and Albert will one day be free.

Albert's attorneys and the Chair of the Louisiana House Judiciary Committee,
Representative Cedric Richmond, will hold a joint press conference call to
discuss the ruling tomorrow (Friday) at 11amC/12amE. The press release and
call-in numbers are below and everyone is welcome to tune in if they'd
like. If you have contacts in the media who may want to cover the story,
please forward the release to them as well. The AP story has already been
picked up by hundreds of outlets around the world.

HOOORAY! YAHOO!! YIPEEE!!!
peace,

--
Tory Pegram
Campaign Coordinator
International Coalition to Free the Angola 3
odsllc@gmail.com
504.338.2631
www.angola3.org

COALITION TO FREE THE ANGOLA THREE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Emma Mackinnon
Thursday, September 25, 2008
202.302.6920/emma@fenton.com


*** Press Call FRIDAY at 11 AM Central ­ Dial 1-800-895-1085, Conf. ID
'ANGOLA' ***

Conviction Overturned After 36 Years in Solitary For "Angola 3" Member
Albert Woodfox

Federal Judge Orders the State: Must Either Retry or Dismiss Charges
Against "Angola 3" Member

Lawyers: Charges Should be Dismissed Immediately; Otherwise, Woodfox
Should be Released on Bail

In response to a federal judge's decision overturning the conviction of
Albert Woodfox, one of the two "Angola 3" members who remain in prison,
lawyers for the men called on the State Attorney General's office to drop
any further charges and release the men immediately.

If the state intends to re-try Woodfox, they said, he should be released on
bail until the time of trial. They argued the man, now 61 and in poor
health, has spent long enough imprisoned on a wrongful conviction and that
continuing to hold him would be unthinkable. They plan a press conference
call for tomorrow, Friday, at 11 AM CDT; to join, reporters can dial
1-800-895-1085 and provide conference ID "Angola."

Woodfox and fellow inmate Herman Wallace have been imprisoned since 1972 for
the murder of prison guard Brent Miller. They spent 36 years
of that time in solitary confinement. The federal judge's ruling
acknowledged that Woodfox has been wrongfully imprisoned. His conviction
rested on the testimony of a fellow prisoner, a convicted serial rapist who
was promised and received the warden's help obtaining a pardon in exchange
for testifying against Herman and Albert. The deal was not disclosed at
trial; the witness was pardoned and freed later. An additional witness, who
said he had seen Albert in the area of the crime, was a schizophrenic who
was on heavy doses of psychotropic medications at the time of the murder,
which also was not disclosed. No physical evidence ties Woodfox or Wallace
to the crime.

"Both the magistrate judge and the district court judge have now found
that Woodfox's conviction was invalid and had to be reversed. Woodfox
has demonstrated the deep flaws in the state's investigation and
prosecution of the case against him, and has presented evidence of his
innocence. If the State of Louisiana appeals, it will bear the burden
of showing the court of appeals that both of the two judges were
incorrect. As the facts and the law are so clearly on the side of Mr.
Woodfox, we are confident that the State cannot carry that burden. No
further legal delay should deprive Albert of even one more day of his
life," said Chris Aberle, one of Woodfox's lawyers.

"The state has already stolen nearly four decades of Albert Woodfox's
life. The injustice in this case is unfathomable. How can Louisiana
continue to imprison a 61 year old man after a federal judge has ruled
that he shouldn't have been convicted in the first place? Albert must
be released," said Nick Trenticosta, co-counsel in the case.

The third member of the Angola 3, Robert King, was released in 2001
after a judge overturned his conviction. King had spent 29 years in
solitary confinement for a separate crime.

For a copy of the ruling or to speak with lawyers in the case, call
Emma Mackinnon at 202-302-6920 or email emma@fenton.com. For Friday's 11
AM CDT call, dial 1-800-895-1085 and provide conference ID
"Angola"; please RSVP for the call by emailing emma@fenton.com.


Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110


415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org <http://www.freedomarchives.org/>

--
Free All Political Prisoners!
nycjericho@gmail.comwww.jerichony.org

A letter from the RNC8

Dear Friends, Family, and Comrades:

We are the RNC 8: individuals targeted because of our political beliefs and
work organizing for protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention, in
what appears to be the first use of Minnesota’s version of the US Patriot
Act. The 8 of us are currently charged with Conspiracy to Commit Riot in
Furtherance of Terrorism, a 2nd degree felony that carries the possibility of
several years in prison. We are writing to let you know about our situation, to
ask for support, and to offer words of hope.

A little background: the RNC Welcoming Committee was a group formed in late
2006 upon hearing that the 2008 Republican National Convention would be
descending on Minneapolis-St. Paul where we live, work, and build community.
The Welcoming Committee’s purpose was to serve as an
anarchist/anti-authoritarian organizing body, creating an informational and
logistical framework for radical resistance to the RNC. We spent more than a
year and a half doing outreach, facilitating meetings throughout the country,
and networking folks of all political persuasions who shared a common interest
in voicing dissent in the streets of St. Paul while the GOP’s machine chugged
away inside the convention.

In mid-August the Welcoming Committee opened a “Convergence Center,” a
space for protesters to gather, eat, share resources, and build networks of
solidarity. On Friday, August 29th, 2008, as folks were finishing dinner and
sitting down to a movie the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department stormed in,
guns drawn, ordering everyone to the ground. This evening raid resulted in
seized property (mostly literature), and after being cuffed, searched, and
IDed, the 60+ individual inside were released.

The next morning, on Saturday, August 30th, the Sheriff’s department executed
search warrants on three houses, seizing personal and common household items
and arresting the first 5 of us- Monica Bicking, Garrett Fitzgerald, Erik
Oseland, Nathanael Secor, and Eryn Trimmer. Later that day Luce Guillen-Givins
was arrested leaving a public meeting at a park. Rob Czernik and Max Specktor
were arrested on Monday, September 1, bringing the number to its present 8. All
were held on probable cause and released on $10,000 bail on Thursday, September
4, the last day of the RNC.

These arrests were preemptive, targeting known organizers in an attempt to
derail anti-RNC protests before the convention had even begun. Conspiracy
charges expand upon the traditional notion of crime. Instead of condemning
action, the very concept of conspiracy criminalizes thought and camaraderie,
the development of relationships, the willingness to hope that our world might
change and the realization that we can be agents of that change.

Conspiracy charges serve a very particular purpose- to criminalize dissent.
They create a convenient method for incapacitating activists, with the
potential for diverting limited resources towards protracted legal battles and
terrorizing entire communities into silence and inaction. Though not the first
conspiracy case against organizers- not even the first in recent memory- our
case may be precedent-setting. Minnesota’s terrorism statutes have never been
enacted in this way before, and if they win their case against us, they will
only be strengthened as they continue their crusade on ever more widespread
fronts. We view our case as an opportunity to demonstrate community solidarity
in the face of repression, to establish a precedent of successful resistance to
the government’s attempts to destroy our movements.

Right now we are in the very early stages of a legal battle that will require
large sums of money and enormous personal resources. We have already been
overwhelmed by the outpouring of support locally and throughout the country,
and are grateful for everything that people have done for us. We now have a
Twin Cities-based support committee and are developing a national support
network that we feel confident will help us through the coming months. For more
information on the case and how to support us, or to donate, go to
http://RNC8.org

We have been humbled by such an immense initial show of solidarity and are
inspired to turn our attention back to the very issues that motivated us to
organize against the RNC in the first place. What’s happening to us is part
of a much broader and very serious problem. The fact is that we live in a
police state- some people first realized this in the streets of St. Paul during
the convention, but many others live with that reality their whole lives.
People of color, poor and working class people, immigrants, are targeted and
criminalized on a daily basis, and we understand what that context suggests
about the repression the 8 of us face now. Because we are political organizers
who have built solid relationships through our work, because we have various
forms of privilege- some of us through our skin, some through our class, some
through our education- and because we have the resources to invoke a national
network of support, we are lucky, even as we are being targeted.

And so, while we ask for support in whatever form you are able to offer it, and
while we need that support to stay free, we also ask that you think of our case
as a late indicator of the oppressive climate in which we live. The best
solidarity is to keep the struggle going, and we hope that supporting us can be
a small part of broader movements for social change.

For better times and with love,

the RNC 8:

Monica Bicking, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, Luce Guillen-Givins,
Nathanael Secor, Max Spector, Eryn Timmer, Erik Oseland,

Support the RNC8! Dissent is not a crime!

www.rnc8.org

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Cuba and Puerto Rico Events this week

The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign
http://www.prolibertadweb.com
ProLibertad@hotmail.com
ProLibertad hotline: 718-601-4751
___________________________________________

Join ProLibertad on our annual Freedom Cook out to HighLands Pool in Ringwood, New Jersey!!

Enjoy the sun, fun and relaxation of

HighLands Pool!! Bring your swimming trunks for the cool and refreshing Chemical-free mountain stream-fed pool!!

We will have DELICOUS BORICUA FOOD, FUN,

MUSIC,DOMINOES, GAMES, SPORTS and RELAXATION!!

Saturday Aug. 2nd, 2008 at 9am!! Get on the Bus!!

Meet at the corner of w179th St. and Broadway at 9am to catch one of our Freedom Vans to HighLand Pools!!

Transportation from NYC ($10), Entrance to HighLand Pools ($5) and Food ($5); all together $20 (Adults) $15 for (Children)

Contact ProLibertad to reserve a seat on our Freedom Bus by calling the ProLibertad hotline: 718-601-4751

____________________________________________

The Puerto Rican Freedom Project

2nd fundraiser Hosted by Hec-one

Suggested donation: $10

Fri. July 25th, 2008

A benefit for the Freedom Album, a CD compilation to raise awareness and funds for the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War and their families

Lcation: Camaradas El Barrio

2241 1st avenue

between 115th-116th St.

212-348-2703

www.camaradaselbarrio.com

Doors open at 7pm, show will begin by 8:30pm-9pm

There will be an art sale to benefit the efforts of the Puerto Rican Freedom Committee as well as a blow out performances by: The Welfare Poets, Bombayo, NOT4PROPHET(OF THE X-VANDALS AND RICANSCTRUCTION) M-TEAM AND Division X

www.prfreedomproject.org or www.myspace.com/freeourpoliticalprisoners

____________________________________________

Friday Sat. July 26, 2008

The Cuban Revolution Today:

Change in Continuity

Continuity in change

Celebrate the 55th Anniversary of the Attack of the

Moncada Garrison; the Start of the Cuban Revolution!

Saturday, July 26, 2008 / 6pm Reception, 7pm Program

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center Auditorium

310 West 43rd Street (Between. 8th-9th Aves. Manhattan

Take the A,C,E,1,2,3, 7,N,Q,R trains to 42nd St Times Square

Suggested Donation: $10 (no one will be turned away for lack of funds)

This year’s July 26th Celebration will tell the truth about what is happening in Cuba today; why the Cuban revolution is stronger than ever and why it continues to inspire popular movements throughout the world.

P R O G R A M

New Film: “Against the Silence in Our Own Voices: Families of the Cuban 5 Speak Out”

Keynote Speaker: Representative of the Cuban Mission to the United Nations

Question & Answer Period: Raise your questions and concerns

about what is happening in Cuba today

Legal Update: The Case of the Cuban 5 & 10th Anniversary

of their unjust imprisonment

Update: Continuing victories in U.S. challenges to Cuba travel prohibitions

Remarks: Casa de las Américas—Historic Solidarity Organization with Cuba

Remarks: Cuba & Puerto Rico: Historic Solidarity

Poetry & Music: Cultural experssions of solidarity with the Cuban People

‘For more information contact The July 26th Coalition at 917-887-8710 or email us at

july26coalition@mindspring.com

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

A Message from Gerardo Hernandez

Cuban Five 2008
Sept. 22, 2008


National Committee To Free the Cuban Five Bulletin


A Message from Gerardo Hernández
on the tenth anniversary
of the unjust imprisonment
of the Cuban Five
Gerardo 2007 Dear compañeras y compañeros:

We arrive at the 10th anniversary of the arrest of the Cuban Five at a crucial moment of our legal process (That is what they call it, although perhaps "illegal process" would be more appropriate.) The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Atlanta, has just ended our appeal.

That is to say, if it were up to them, things would stand as is, and some day my bones would be sent to Cuba, after death frees me from two life sentences.

The court in question has given unmistakable signals of the type of "justice" that the Five can aspire to in this country. When there was a decision 3-to-0 in our favor, with 93 pages of solid arguments in which the three-judge panel characterized our trial as "The Perfect Storm," the full panel, against all predictions, not only agreed to review the decision, but reversed it without much explanation. The "perfect storm" quickly became simply a drizzle.

Yet, this time, when the decision was 2-1 against the Five, with obvious legal errors, with a judge arguing in 16 pages that the prosecution presented absolutely no proof that sustains the charge of conspiracy to commit murder, and with a judge who-although voting against us-recognized that it is a "very close case," and with several defense arguments were not even seriously analyzed, the 11th Circuit categorically refused to review it.

As we say in Cuba: "Not even water is as clear." We have said time and again that this is a political case, and those who do not see it as such, choose not to see it.

Someone recently mentioned that now the Supreme Court has the last word. I would say, the second-to-last word. The final word in the case of the Cuban Five rests with you, our sisters and brothers of Cuba, the United States and the whole world, who throughout all these years have been our principal source of encouragement. Our hopes are not placed in any court. Ten years are more than enough to have cured us of any such naïve notion.

You are our hope, who through sacrifice and swimming against the current, have succeeded in making people on all continents aware of the injustice committed against the Five.
You are the ones who are not taking time out or resting in your homes but instead are honoring us with your presence in different activities, commemorating the 10th anniversary of our imprisonment. You continue struggling to unmask the double standard of a government that invades other countries to supposedly fight terrorism, at the same time that it harbors and protects infamous terrorists, and imprisons those who are trying to stop those criminal acts.

We have confidence in you to expose the hypocrisy of the corporate media and of certain international organizations, which portray mercenaries-who betray our people for a handful of dollars or a visa-as suffering political prisoners. Yet they are disgracefully silent in the case of two women who have been deprived for a decade of the basic right to visit their husbands in prison.

We know that right is on our side, but to win true justice we need a jury of millions of people throughout the world, and we need you, defenders of just causes, to make our truth known.

The injustice committed against the Five has kept us away from our homeland for ten years, but it has not kept us from accompanying our people through joyful times and also the suffering. A few days ago Hurricane Gustav caused great damage in Cuba, mainly on the Isle of Youth and in Pinar del Río, two territories from where we have received a multitude of support and love all these years.

We are certain that all the people of Pinar del Río and Isle of Youth, together with local and national leadership, with the solidarity of all dignified Cubans and many friends of the world, will become stronger in these difficult moments and-as is characteristic of revolutionaries-will convert the setbacks into victory. Although it is not possible for us to be there physically, today more than ever the Cuban Five are with you in our hearts, with our brothers and sisters in the Isle of Youth and Pinar del Río, who have done so much to support the struggle for our liberation.

Compañeras y compañeros: Ten years after that September 12, 1998, we thank you once again for walking this long and rough road together with us. We know, that to continue this march, we can keep counting on you, and you can also always count on our firm determination to resist, with our heads held high, for as long as it takes.

¡Hasta la Victoria Siempre!


Gerardo Hernández Nordelo
Victorville Federal Prison, California
September, 2008

Contact us: info@freethefive.org
Or call: 415-821-6545

Free the Cuban Five Now!
Allow the families' visits!
Grant entry visas to
Adriana Pérez and Olga Salanueva!