The Secret Scheme To Sabotage Abu-Jamal's Appeal Rights

Aug. 24, 2012 This Can't Be Happening

by: Linn Washington Jr.

 
Mumia Abu-Jamal, the internationally recognized American political prisoner, thwarted a Philadelphia judge’s secretive court order that could have eliminated his future appeal rights when he filed a last- minute motion on August 23rd challenging that order sentencing him to life-without-parole.

Most supporters and detractors of Abu-Jamal had been expecting the formal conversion of his controversial death sentence to life-without-parole in the wake of a federal appeals court’s second and final rejection of requests from Philadelphia prosecutors to keep Abu-Jamal on death row back in April 2011.

What was unexpected by Abu-Jamal supporters were the procedures surrounding the secretive court order, which appears to have violated a number of Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure.
Abu-Jamal’s Pro Se Motion for Post Sentence Relief and Reconsideration of Sentence referenced Rule 720 of Pennsylvania’s Criminal Procedure which states in part that defendants shall “have the right” to make post-sentence motion but that motion must be filed “no later than 10 days after imposition of sentence.”

That secretly issued resentencing order occurred on August 13, 2012, exactly ten days before Abu-Jamal filed his motion.

If that ten-day filing period had expired, undiscovered due to secrecy-shrouded issuance of the resentencing order about which no public notice or notice was provided to Abu-Jamal and his legal team, his legal ability to challenge his continued confinement would have been damaged, including his probable loss of future appeal rights.

 

Mumia, off death row but fighting to escape life in prison, with attorney Rachel Wolkenstein and his wife Wadiya Jamal
 
Court rules and common decency require notice of court actions -- both pending and actually taken.
“This is the same backdoor stuff that’s always done to him,” a Mumia attorney, Rachel Wolkenstein, said during an interview outside of Philadelphia’s Criminal Justice Center after delivering Abu-Jamal’s motion.

 

Philadelphia Preident Judge Judy "Take the Law Into Your Hands" Dembe with her husband

Wolkenstein, who has worked on Abu-Jamal's case for over two decades, uncovered that secretly issued judicial order.

She became aware of it during a routine inspection of Philadelphia court records checking to see when a resentencing would occur.

Wolkenstein immediately informed Abu-Jamal and his legal team, all of whom were unaware of the order.

Wolkenstein then made two trips to the Pennsylvania prison holding Abu-Jamal, the last trip to bring Abu-Jamal's Motion to the Philadelphia court house a few hours before that ten-day filing deadline expired.

Rule 114(b)(1) of Pennsylvania’s Rules of Criminal Procedure states that a “copy of any order or court notice promptly shall be served on each party’s attorney…” –- procedures apparently not followed in this resentencing of Abu-Jamal.

Another provision of those Procedures, Rule 704, states the sentencing judge must advise a defendant “of the time within which defendant must exercise” their right to appeal and other post-sentencing matters.

“A number of death sentences have been reversed in Pennsylvania and the person's given life sentences. As far as I know each of those persons received more formal proceeding than what happened here,” Wolkenstein said.

Rule 114(A)(2) of Pennsylvania’s Criminal Procedure states that “all orders and court notices promptly shall be placed in the criminal case file.”

Yet Wolkenstein said when she asked Philadelphia court clerks for the resentencing file days after the order’s issuance, court clerks told her there was no file containing a record of that resentencing.
Philadelphia Court Clerk officials, when contacted for comment, requested that questions be made in a written format for review by their lawyers. Those officials did not reply to the submitted questions by the time of this article’s posting.

Another factor further obscuring that resentencing order, Wolkenstein said, is that the court docket captioned under the birth name Abu-Jamal -- Wesley Cook -- hasn’t been used since the late 1960s.
The majority of court files and court rulings (state and federal) list the name Abu-Jamal not Cook, thus persons examining court files generally look for Abu-Jamal and not the name Cook.
The perverse procedures swirling around that resentencing order were not unusual, given the legal improprieties and other irregularities that have stained Abu-Jamal’s case since his December 1981 arrest for killing a Philadelphia policeman.

Philadelphia’s President Judge, Pamela P. Dembe, resentenced Abu-Jamal to life-without-parole on August 13th, according to sketchy Philadelphia court docket documents.

Those documents state that Dembe was acting in accordance with a December 2001 order from a federal district court judge who voided Abu-Jamal’s death sentence after ruling that the judge at Abu-Jamal’s 1982 murder trial had incorrectly instructed the jury on how to conduct its death penalty deliberation.

“Nothing in that federal ruling says it’s OK for no notice and no record in the resentencing,” Wolkenstein said, questioning the legality of the resentencing.

Abu-Jamal, despite having his death sentence vacated in 2001, remained in death-row isolation until December 2011 because the federal judge that eliminated his death sentence granted a punitive request from Philadelphia prosecutors to keep Abu-Jamal on death row while they appealed that judge’s ruling -- a process that took ten years.

Abu-Jamal's Motion cites the fact that he wrongfully spent nearly thirty-years in death row isolation on a sentence federal courts ruled was illegal. His supporters, like Wolkenstein, cite that illegal death row incarceration as fact enough to release this man whose published six critically acclaimed books and over a thousand commentaries while on death row.

Philadelphia prosecutors pursued two unsuccessful appeals in federal appeals court seeking unsuccessfully to reinstate the death sentence that was vacated in 2001. There were also two efforts going up to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to uphold an execution.

In early December 2011 Philadelphia prosecutors announced that they were no longer appealing those federal appellate court rulings, thus ending their effort to execute Abu-Jamal.
But Pennsylvania prison authorities, instead of removing Abu-Jamal totally from solitary confinement in compliance with those long-delayed federal court rulings at that point, initially simply shifted him from death row to the more draconian isolation of administrative custody.
Prison officials advanced ever-changing rationales for keeping Abu-Jamal in administrative custody, including the Kafkaesque claim that they needed legal clarification that courts had formally replaced Abu-Jamal’s death sentence with life in prison.

Prison officials, in January 2012, facing international protests, finally relented and released Abu-Jamal from isolation into general population.

Judge Dembe’s secretive resentencing is in concert with earlier improprieties that have stalked all facets of Abu-Jamal’s arrest, trial, appeals and imprisonment.

Philadelphia police, for example, right from the moment of Abu-Jamal's arrest at the scene of the shootings, failed to perform the standard test to prove Abu-Jamal had even fired the pistol that police said he used to kill the officer.

One of the gravest yet least examined improprieties occurred on the eve of a pivotal 1995 appeal hearing when then then Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge issued a death warrant on Abu-Jamal.
That warrant was issued because lawyers in Ridge’s office had secretly and unlawfully intercepted correspondence between Abu-Jamal and his lawyers, and discovered the date they planned for the filing of their client’s appeal.

That Ridge-issued death warrant severely disrupted Abu-Jamal’s appeal proceeding, forcing Abu-Jamal’s defense team to fight the warrant while simultaneously preparing for the appeal hearing.
The execution date was also used by the appeal hearing judge -- Albert Sabo, who had also been the judge at Abu-Jamal's original murder trial -- as a justification for unduly speeding that hearing. That gratuitous rush Sabo ordered further constrained defense efforts by limiting their ability to locate and bring in witnesses.

Additionally, issuance of that death warrant was improper because Abu-Jamal had a constitutional right to that 1995 appeal of his death sentence before an execution could take place.
Federal and state courts have persistently ignored that glaringly improper intervention by Ridge, which effectively robbed Abu-Jamal’s of a key step in his appeal rights -- the right to have a fact-finding review of his flawed 1982 trial and to introduce new evidence of innocence.
Significantly, Judge Dembe is the same jurist who years ago rejected compelling evidence that the judge in Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial had made a racist, prosecution-favoring admission on the eve of the proceeding.

A court stenographer had come foreward and announced that she had, back in 1982 during the jury selection phase of the trial, overheard that trial judge, the infamous Albert Sabo, declare to his court aide that he was going to help prosecutors “fry the nigger,” a clear reference to Abu-Jamal.
Racist and/or pro-prosecution bias by a judge is forbidden by Supreme Court rulings and by Pennsylvania’s Code of Judicial Conduct, not to mention basic principles of Common Law.
Yet, Dembe refused to take testimony from the stenographer to determine the veracity of allegations from that woman, who hails from a family of police officers.

Dembe, in a ruling exhibiting ridiculous reasoning, claimed Sabo’s racist, pro-prosecution rant was immaterial to Abu-Jamal’s conviction because, she opined, a jury not Sabo convicted Abu-Jamal.
Dembe’s fundamentally flawed assertion pretended that Sabo, as trial judge, did not influence the course of the trial in a series of sabotaging actions like stripping Abu-Jamal of his right to represent himself at trial just days before testimony began (and sending his defense into a tail-spin), withholding favorable Abu-Jamal evidence from jurors, and even selecting a juror for duty who had honestly admitted to being solidly biased against Abu-Jamal.

The injustice in Abu-Jamal’s long-running case has elicited condemnation from numerous entities as diverse as Amnesty International, the NAACP and the City Council of Munich, Germany.
The injustice evident in Abu-Jamal’s case is consistent with the injustice exhibited daily by some Philadelphia police, prosecutors and judges.

The same day Abu-Jamal filed his resentence-challenging motion, a Philadelphia judge convicted Philadelphia broadcaster Jeff Hart of disorderly conduct for a minor incident arising from Hart's observing police brutality during the arrest of a suspect near Hart’s house.

Hart said the false disorderly conduct charge followed his politely asking a Philadelphia policeman to not use profanity repeatedly when ordering Hart and another man from the arrest scene.
Abu-Jamal, an award-winning broadcast journalist at the time of his 1981 arrest, frequently reported on this kind of rampant police abuse in Philadelphia.

Mumia supporters rally around the cause to end prison abuses

Aug 23, 2012 Amsterdam News

By ADONIS BELIN 

Mumia Abu-Jamal is probably the world’s most famous political prisoner. Known for his writings and being involved with pro-African-American movements, this former Black Panther who had been on death row for almost 30 years is now dealing with the controversy of a life sentence as supporters still demand that he is granted freedom.

However, on Aug. 13, apparently without his knowledge, Abu-Jamal was formally resentenced by Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe to life imprisonment without parole.

America's political prisoners exposed

By Charlene Muhammad -National Correspondent- Final Call | May 1, 2012

(This is the first in a series of articles examining the plight and problem of political prisoners inside the United States.)

Campaigns to free aging revolutionaries and activists have highlighted the reality that political prisoners exist in the United States.

Advocates insist political, law enforcement and corrections officials want to mask decades of parole denials, years of inhumane solitary confinement and episodes of domestic torture inflicted on Blacks and others for challenging racism and oppression.

“The main thing we need to understand is the fact that these soldiers—and they are soldiers—are not in prison because they’re criminals. They’re in prison for daring to stand up to this rotten, no good system that we live under,” said Ramona Africa, minister of information for the MOVE Organization, the Philadelphia-based group founded by John Africa.

Ms. Africa is a former political prisoner, who survived the May 1985 bombing of her family by the Philadelphia police. In 1985, a battle ensued after police tried to arrest MOVE members on charges related to the 1978 death of a police officer. Five children and six adults died in the bombing. Nine members of MOVE were imprisoned. Ramona Africa was jailed for seven years. Debbie Africa died in prison. The remaining members have been in prison for nearly 30 years. MOVE members take the surname “Africa” as part of their beliefs.

Although MOVE members have served the minimum sentence, they are continuously denied parole because they won’t lie and say they’re guilty, Ramona Africa said.

Members of the Black Panther Party are arrested in 1970. Photo: libcom.org

Similar parole denials are occurring across the U.S. The denials are based on politics, not lack of prison time, threats to society or troublemaking inside penal institutions, according to advocates. Officials want to contain and punish these highly politicized inmates, most of whom are in their 50s and 60s, advocates add.

“When (political prisoners) go to parole board hearings, prosecutors aren’t launching legal appeals, but emotional appeals by bringing out police, firemen, family members, all saying he or she should stay in,” said Francisco Torres, a onetime Black Panther. Last year the courts finally dropped accusations that he murdered a police officer in 1971.

But not only have political prisoners done their time, their behavior in prison has been exemplary, say advocates.

Many have quelled prison riots and in some instances, wardens have commended them.

“They’ve gotten certificates and diplomas in prison so when it’s time for them to get out, they’re told they’re being held in there because of their politics basically, their beliefs and their thoughts,” Mr. Torres said.

Veronza Bowers, Jr., who served his entire sentence, was labeled a threat to society and denied release under the George W. Bush-era Patriot Act, which expanded police powers. The former Black Panther Party member was convicted of killing a park ranger on the testimony of two informants and has been incarcerated for 37 years now in Atlanta.

Criminals or prisoners of war?

There’s no debate, said Ramona Africa, about the guilt or innocence of freedom fighters like American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier, who was at Pine Ridge, S.D., when government officials attacked, she said. Two federal agents died in a shootout at the reservation, and Mr. Peltier was labeled a terrorist, said Ms. Africa. He has been imprisoned since 1976 and is serving time in a federal prison in Florida

“This is getting more and more outrageous because we the people have not stood up like we should, uncompromisingly, and refused to accept it,” Ms. Africa charged.

“I mean, my family was bombed! A bomb was dropped on our home. Babies were burned alive and I know a lot of people are outraged. They were and still are but it’s not enough to just have those feelings. We have to act on those feelings,” Ms. Africa said.

Some say it’s hard to keep track of 1960s and 1970s freedom fighters with people facing bleak economic times and struggling day-to-day to survive. “MOVE understands that but all we’re saying is that we have to put a priority on our freedom and our lives. If we don’t do that, how are we going to expect our enemy to do that, have any kind of value for our lives, our freedom, if we don’t?” Ms. Africa said. 

The war on Black liberation

Most political prisoners in the United States stem from repressive and oppressive policies largely ushered in during 1960s and 1970s government targeting, surveillance, infiltration, harassment and destruction of Black Liberation and progressive organizations.

The case of late Black Panther leader Geronimo Pratt is a textbook example of political targeting, say advocates. Mr. Pratt, or Geronimo ji-Jaga, served 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. The relentless effort of the late attorney Johnnie Cochran and a tenacious campaign to free him succeeded in 1997 when his conviction was vacated.

(l) Two members of the Angola 3 and Geronimo Pratt, inset. (r) Elaine Brown

A former FBI agent said federal wiretaps placed Mr. Pratt hundreds of miles away from the place where the murders occurred. In 1970, the FBI office in Los Angeles targeted Mr. Pratt, a decorated Vietnam veteran and local Panther minister of defense, seeking to neutralize him. Within months he was facing murder charges. His supporters say ex-Panther Julius Butler, who testified for the prosecution that Mr. Pratt told him about the shooting of a White couple on a tennis court, was an FBI informant. Mr. Pratt died in Tanzania last summer.

Attorney James Simmons, of Los Angeles-based Human Rights Advocacy, is also the legal representative for political prisoners Dr. Mutulu Shakur, in California, and Sundiata Acoli in Maryland.

Dr. Shakur, who has been in prison since 1986, and 10 others were charged in 1982 under U.S. conspiracy laws with participating in armored car and bank robberies with a Black paramilitary group. Mr. Acoli was convicted by an all- White jury in 1977 on charges of murdering a police officer.

Mr. Acoli, 79, has served 39 years in prison and is up for parole, his attorney said. Dr. Shakur, 61, has an upcoming parole hearing as well. Dr. Shakur is the stepfather of the late rapper Tupac Shakur and became involved with the Republic of New Afrika and the liberation struggle as a teenager.

From prison, he has advocated a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission to reveal the targeting of Black groups, highlight resistance efforts, and as a way to free U.S. political prisoners. “Our movement must accept our sojourn of struggle consisted of both legal and ‘illegal’ tactics (but legitimate under international law). The context of the U.S. legal system is designed to ignore on the one hand the oppression and on the other the right of those to resist that oppression,” he wrote in an online paper.

Though a congressional committee documented the illegal and repressive acts of the FBI and government agencies and law enforcement’s subversive and constitution-shredding Cointelpro, which aimed to destroy Black and other groups pressing for major changes in the Black Power-era, there is nothing to address “the freedom of our PP’s or POW or that memorializes the history that provides a relief for the victims of the quasi-apartheid system in the U.S.,” observed Mr. Shakur.

Elaine Brown, former Black Panther Party chairman, talked about two kinds of political prisoners. One might have done something actively or consciously that caused them to be put into prison or are doing something in prison that has caused them to suffer extraordinary punishment by the prison system. Others are prisoners at war, jailed because of their revolutionary work and because they choose to fight back, such as Imam Jamil Al Amin, formerly known as Black Panther leader H. Rap Brown, who fits all these categories, she said.

“Because of the work he was doing, organizing the community in Atlanta, the district attorney actually said after he was wrongfully convicted of killing an Atlanta sheriff, ‘We finally got him after 24 years.’ Well, when you hear that kind of statement you know this wasn’t really about the murder of a deputy sheriff because that killing did not take place 24 years before,” Ms. Brown said.

Imam Al-Amin was convicted in the 2000 shooting of two Fulton County deputies, one died, in Atlanta. The deputies were serving summons for a speeding ticket and another minor charge. He is serving life in prison in Colorado and is among nearly 70 political prisoners documented by the Jericho Movement and other national and international human rights groups.

“He is being held in the Supermax prison, 1,400 miles away, which makes traveling very costly. It essentially takes a full day to travel there and another day to return home. It’s really been a struggle, and we haven’t been able to visit as often as we’d like. Florence is seen by many as a concentration camp for Muslim inmates. Imam Jamil is handcuffed at the waist behind a glass when we see him in one of the legal rooms,” said his wife Karima El-Amin, in a 2010 media interview. The imam is in a high security federal prison though he was convicted on state charges.

Original members of The Black Panther Party.

“On the days we are with him, we are able to visit for approximately six hours. If he receives food during the visit, he has to hold his hands chained in front of him in order to eat. It is a very difficult position, and his wrists begin to swell,” said his wife, who is also an attorney.

Supporters of the imam are still fighting for his release and fighting to have him brought to an institution closer to home.

Meanwhile, activists say far too many men and women are still incarcerated, such as Hugo Dahariki Pinell and Russell Maroon Shoatz, both locked in solitary confinement for 35-40 years now.

On May 5, artists, farmers, and New York-based organizers will launch a campaign to free Mr. Shoatz, now 70. Campaign organizers want him immediately released from solitary confinement, as well as other prisoners in solitary who have been in prison for 25 years, and who are 50-plus years old.

“Humanity’s in question here and it’s about what are we going to do. Are we going to help them?” said Jihad Abdulmumit, co-chair of the Jericho Movement, which works on behalf of political prisoners.

“Somebody is being snatched up right now. Just like that! You or I could be charged for something we don’t know anything about with no opportunity to gain access to information,” he added. Mr. Abdulmumit was talking about changes in civil liberties laws, court rules, use of secret evidence and other erosion of personal and legal rights connected with the war on terror.

“It’s very oppressive and going on among the Black Panthers, the Native American Movement, Puerto Rican nationalists, White comrades, Students for the Democratic Society,” all on the front lines dealing with White racism, he said.

From the more popularly-known, such as journalist Mumia Abu Jamal and Mr. Peltier, to many lesser known-known political prisoners, such as Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen We Langa or Mondo, formerly known as David Rice and Ed Poindexter, known as the Omaha Two, the fight is also for better medical care, support for their families and money to survive.

The first focus is always legal, finding out who is due for state or federal pardons or clemency, and the second is to educate communities on the reality of political prisoners. The government and media have convinced people U.S. political prisoners don’t exist, Mr. Abdulmumit said.

“If somebody was able to capture people’s attention without distraction for 15 minutes, I think there’ll be millions of people demanding these people’s release,” Mr. Abdulmumit said.

Worldwide and national attention helped to free Robert King and get all charges dismissed against the San Francisco 8, Francisco Torres was the last SF8 defendant.

Mr. King served 31 years in Angola State Prison in Louisiana and was freed in 2001 after an overturned conviction. Amnesty International recently delivered a 65,000-signature petition to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for the release of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace. They have been jailed 40 years in solitary confinement at Angola Prison on charges they and Mr. King, known as the Angola 3, murdered a prison guard.

Human rights groups say truth is the men were targeted because they dared form a Black Panther Party chapter to organize Black men within the notorious prison. When a guard died in a prison riot, the three men were falsely tied to the crime, say supporters. 

Solitary confinement and other pressures

Solitary confinement must be abolished and its impact on prisoners can be physically and psychologically devastating, said advocates. “It was legal to own slaves. It wasn’t until people saw it as reprehensible that slavery ended,” observed Mr. King.

“We want to raise the bar for everyone. Herman and Albert are not just victims of being held in solitary confinement unjustly for that period of time ... They’re in prison unjustly,” Mr. King continued.

He expects that at a May 29 federal hearing, the judge will reverse Mr. Woodfox’ conviction and grant bond as has been done before, but State Attorney General James “Buddy” Caldwell will try to intercede again, but will be unsuccessful.

Mr. King also feels since the Angola 3 cases are being viewed as one, Mr. Wallace’s may be reversed as well. That means the men may not just be released from solitary confinement, but released from prison altogether.

“Political prisoners should be released from prison altogether because they’re there unjustly ... ending solitary confinement is just one step,” said Mr. King.

Victory for the San Francisco 8 came August 18, 2011, when a judge dismissed the last charges against Mr. Torres. In January 2007, Mr. Torres, and fellow Black Panther Party members were arrested on murder charges for killing a police officer in 1971.

The men, who beat the charge in the 1970s, were targeted under new anti-terror laws and with promises of new evidence from prosecutors. The men were rounded up from across the country, some living as respected solid citizens and others working as community activists.

The case initially had been thrown out because nothing connected any of the SF8 to the killing except confessions derived from torturing three of them and testimony from a Panther who they suspected was a government informant.

“Police tortured people in the most horrific fashion, comparable to tortures inflicted at Abu Ghraib and other places,” said Attorney Simmons. In the 1970s, these men were water boarded, had scouring water poured over towels placed on their bodies, were suffocated, beaten, and had cattle prods poked into their genitals, necks and under arms, among other things, he continued.

The torture back then implicated not just the New Orleans Police Department, which held the men, but the interrogation was overseen by the Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York Police Departments and the FBI, he added.

But when the case was brought back 36 years later, no new evidence ever surfaced, according to Atty. Simmons. There was little publicity when the final charges were dropped, though there had been a barrage of news coverage when the case was brought back.

“We knew they were not going to grant us complete victory in the courtroom because they didn’t want us to cheer,” said Mr. Torres, who learned about the decision in a phone call from his lawyer. “There were highs and lows in the case and when you deal with these people, you never know the end until you can really see the end because they’re always coming back at you in some other way and form,” Mr. Torres told The Final Call.

He is working now to get other comrades out of prison, particularly because the majority have satisfied requirements for parole and jumped through all the legal hoops.

Related news:

NDAA lays foundation for targeting political dissenters, activism (FCN, 01-10-2012)

Government infiltration threatens rights and freedom, warn analysts (FCN, 09-21-2010)
Cointelpro 2009: FBI up to old dirty tricks?  (FCN, 04-18-2009)
Nation of Islam Targeted by Homeland Security (FCN, 12-24-2009)

Mumia Abu-Jamal Speaks from Prison on Life After Death Row and His Quest for Freedom

April 25, 2012 Democracy Now!
download:   Video Audio Get CD/DVD More Formats Transcript |

In a Democracy Now! exclusive, Mumia Abu-Jamal phones in from the SCI Mahanoy prison in Frackville, Pennsylvania, where he is being held in general population after nearly 30 years on death row. Although he now lives in a bigger cell than what he calls the "small dog cage" of the last three decades, Mumia says his life sentence is akin to "a slow death row. It’s bigger in terms of the time differential, but it’s slow death row, to be sure." After having his death sentence overturned in late 2011, Abu-Jamal says he is determined to win his release from prison over allegations of racial bias and judicial misconduct in his conviction. "We want freedom," he says of the movement calling for his release. Supporters have long argued racism by the trial judge and prosecutors led to Abu-Jamal’s conviction. He notes that during his trial a court reporter overheard the judge in his case, Judge Albert F. Sabo, say in his chambers, "I’m going to help them fry the nigger." "This was heard by a court reporter—a member of the court staff, a court employee, and a person that is perhaps the best listener you could ever have for any conversation, because that’s her job," Abu-Jamal says. "We didn’t know about it until years later, but when we put this into our papers, our filings, it has been essentially ignored by every court it’s come in front of. How is that possible? And so, I mean, that’s certainly one indication, as you can see, one example of an unfair system." [includes rush transcript]

Filed under  Mumia Abu-Jamal

Guest:

Mumia Abu-Jamal, former death row prisoner. For decades, Abu-Jamal has argued racism by the trial judge and prosecutors led to his conviction for the killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Last year, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set aside his death sentence after finding jurors were given confusing instructions that encouraged them to choose the death penalty rather than a life sentence.

Occupy The Justice Department Challenges Obama Administration Integrity on Prosecutor Misconduct Issue

April 23, 2012 This Can't Be Happening
by: Linn Washington Jr.

One of the issues driving protesters participating in the April 24, 2012 Occupy The Justice Department demonstration is an issue that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder knows well: prosecutorial misconduct.

Holder knows this misconduct issue well because he has criticized it during congressional testimony, in fact as recently as March 2012 when he was commenting on a special prosecutor’s report castigating the wrongdoing of federal prosecutors.

That wrongdoing, Holder acknowledged, unlawfully tainted the corruption investigation and 2008 trial of the late U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, who was convicted of corruption in his home state of Alaska.

Protesters, including fiery Philadelphia activist Pam Africa, want Holder to take action against the prosecutorial misconduct evident in scores of unjust convictions that have led to the wrongful imprisonment of political prisoners across America, most of them jailed for two or more decades.
Those political prisoners – ignored domestically while exalted abroad – include Native American activist Leonard Peltier, Puerto Rican Nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera, the Cuban 5, author/activist Mumia Abu-Jamal and other former Black Panther Party members like the Omaha Two (Ed Poindexter and Mondo W. Langa).

 

Pam Africa with Mumia Abu-Jamal following the latter's transfer from Pennsylvania's death row to the general prison population

Demands of the Occupy The Justice Department protesters include the immediate release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the freeing all political prisoners, ending of the racist death penalty and the ending solitary confinement and torture.

Individuals and incidents underlying those demands are within the purview of USAG Holder to investigate and/or to act immediately to resolve.

April 24th is the birthday of Mumia Abu-Jamal, perhaps the most recognized U.S. political prisoner worldwide.

Abu-Jamal, for example, was the subject of two demonstrations held recently outside the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, Germany, one of which included extending a 2,200-foot banner around that embassy building.

Pam Africa is the head of International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Philadelphia-based organization at the center of the international movement seeking Abu-Jamal’s release.

Africa is the dynamo who most Philadelphia police, prosecutors, politicians and many pastors love to hate because of her strident advocacy on behalf of both imprisoned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal and the MOVE members sentenced for a fatal 1978 shootout.

The nearly three-decades long advocacy of Pam Africa on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal – helping construct support networks while confronting incessant opposition – contributed to the climate where U.S. federal courts late last year finally killed the death sentence Abu-Jamal received following his controversial 1982 conviction for killing a policeman.

Abu-Jamal is now fighting against a life-without-parole sentence, which was automatically imposed when the death sentence was invalidated.

That elimination of Abu-Jamal’s government-sanctioned murder chagrined powerful figures across Pennsylvania and around America who had shamefully bent and broken laws (deliberately sabotaging court proceedings) in their various failed efforts to execute Abu-Jamal, known widely as the Voice-of-the-Voiceless.

While winning freedom for Abu-Jamal and the MOVE 9 is a prime focus of Pam Africa’s advocacy work, she is frequently found on ‘front-lines’ nationwide fighting for and end to the mistreatment of people regardless of their color and creed.

“Pam Africa is in each and every struggle for social justice in Philadelphia, the U.S. and abroad. It’s not just Mumia,” said Latino activist/writer Berta Joubert-Ceci, who recently chaired a program featuring former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney in West Philadelphia.

Dr. Claude Guillaumaud, a professor in France who has known Africa for 20-years, said she's “had time to appreciate her warm personality and total commitment to the cause of Mumia and the fight against racial discrimination and the barbaric death penalty.”

Temple University African-American history professor Dr. Tony Monterio first met Pam Africa during an ugly June 1979 incident in South Philadelphia where local police beat Africa. Philadelphia police pummeled her with nightsticks with one stick-strike knocking out some of her teeth.
The scholar in Dr. Monterio sees Pam Africa as a unique figure whose contributions locally, nationally and internationally merit both examination and recognition. He has initiated a process for what he envisions as a formalized study of Africa's life works.

Prosecutorial misconduct is a core element in the Abu-Jamal case. This festering injustice has been repeatedly dismissed by state and federal courts that have refused to grant legal relief to Abu-Jamal despite granting new trials to others where the evidence of prosecutorial misconduct was far less grievous than that evident in the Abu-Jamal case.

One example of prosecutorial misconduct in the Abu-Jamal case occurred during his 1982 murder trial, when the prosecutor perverted a comment Abu-Jamal made over a decade earlier when responding to a reporter’s question about the December 1969 murder by Chicago Police of Chicago Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton.

The police assassination of Hampton, later linked to the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO campaign, outraged many at the time, including leaders as diverse as the then head of the NAACP, Roy Wilkins and former U.S. United Nations Ambassador and Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg.
Hampton’s assassination, later documented by congressional and other investigations, was a part of a joint police-FBI campaign to slay BPP members which led to 28 BPP deaths between January 1968 and December 1969.

As a teenaged BBP member, Abu-Jamal told that reporter that Hampton’s murder proved that “power” comes from the barrel of a gun.

But the 1982 trial prosecutor shifted the context of Abu-Jamal’s comment from applying it to the police killing Black Panthers to a supposed proclaimation of Abu-Jamal’s intent to kill police. It was one of many factual mischaracterizations that millions worldwide constantly cite when charging Abu-Jamal received an unfair trial.

That improper perversion of Abu-Jamal’s 12-year-old comment made when he was just 15 helped sway jurors to send an award-winning journalist with no criminal record to death row. That same prosecutor had improperly excluded blacks from Abu-Jamal’s trial jury despite their having declared their willingness to impose a death penalty if warranted by the arguments at trial.

Not only was prosecutor Joseph McGill's twisting of Abu-Jamal’s comment an improper tactic -- it violated associational rights granted under the First Amendment.

The U.S. Supreme Court gave new hearings in the early 1990s to two convicted murderers –- a white racist prisoner gang member in Delaware and a white devil worshipper in Nevada -– while denying comparable relief to former BPP member Abu-Jamal three times on the exact same issue of prosecutors improperly inflaming through use of constitutionally protected associations.

USAG Eric Holder, shortly after taking office in January 2009, went to court successfully to request dismissal of Sen. Stevens’ conviction, after finding that the federal prosecutor in that case withheld evidence of innocence from Stevens’ defense team and also tampered with witnesses and documents.
That recently released special prosecutor’s report in the Stevens case confirmed prosecutorial misconduct and wrongdoing.

The type of misconduct now confirmed in the Stevens case is rife in the cases U.S. political prisoners. Lawyers and supporters of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, for example, have documented federal authorities withholding evidence, presenting false evidence at trial although with intimidating witnesses into committing perjury.

The Occupy The Justice Department demonstrators are raising the issue of Holder’s credibility and of the ethical integrity of the Obama Administration in acting to dismiss the wrongful conviction of ex-Senator Stevens while ignoring the continued imprisonment of U.S. political prisoners who were also victims of misconduct by police and prosecutors.

On December 9, 2011 –- one day before the U.N. annual Human Rights Day –- Noble Peace Prize Laureate and noted anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu asked America to “rise to the challenge of reconciliation, human rights and justice” in calling for the “immediate release” of Abu-Jamal.

Tuesday, April 24th - Occupy the Justice Department - Oakland

OCCUPY4PRISONERS PRESENTS
In Solidarity with the Occupy the Justice Department protest in Washington, DC

on Tuesday, April 24th - Mumia Abu-Jamal's 58th Birthday
End Mass Incarceration!

4PM - RALLY at 14th and Broadway, Oakland

Occupy4Prisoners and supporters will rally at Oscar Grant Plaza, 
where awareness and understanding regarding the brutality and 
corruption within the United States INjustice system will begin to 
rise up.  We will be doing educational outreach about the prison 
system with music, speakers, a "Truth Mob" and amplifying the voices 
of people inside of prisons.

5PM - MARCH to Federal Building and Obama Headquarters

We will take to the streets to march as an expression of our 
solidarity with the 2.5 million people incarcerated in the 
country.  The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any 
country, with 743 people in prison per 100,000 of national 
population.  Occupy4Prisoners brings to the attention of the greater 
Occupy Movement how we cannot forget the bottom 1% of the 99% in our 
greater struggle for justice and equality.

The march will continue past the Federal Building (13th and Clay) 
where representatives from the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia 
and the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal will speak.  Folks from 
the Bradley Manning Support Network will share information about 
Bradley's plight when we reach the Obama Headquarters (17th and 
Telegraph.) Then we will march to...

6PM - THE INJUSTICE SYSTEM ON TRIAL - 19th and Telegraph

Once we arrive at the 19th and Telegraph Plaza, we will be putting 
the Injustice System on trial. Powerful local activists will preside 
over a trial that is actually about the truth.

The prosecutor will be Anita Wills, (Oscar Grant Committee and 
Occupy4Prisoners), the defense attorney will be Deborah Small, (Break 
the Chains), and the judge will be Jerry Elster (All of Us or None). 
The system will be played by Dan Siegel (National Lawyers Guild).

The jury will be YOU!

These witnesses will be bringing evidence against the system 
regarding the following charges:

1. Targeting youth of color

Chris M, Occupy Oakland

Sagnicthe Salazar, Youth Together and Xicana Moratorium Coalition

2. Allowing murder and assault by police to go unpunished

Denika Chatman, Kenneth Harding Jr. Foundation

Carey Downs & Dionne Smith Downs, A Mother's Cry for Justice

3. Enforcing racism at every level

Jabari Shaw, Rapper, Laney College Black Student Union

Manuel La Fontaine, All of Us or None and Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity

4. Holding political prisoners hostage

Kiilu Nyasha, Independent journalist and former Black Panther

Aaron Mirmalek, Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee Oakland

5. Torturing people inside the prisons

Sharena Curley, Oscar Grant Committee

Luis "Bato" Talamantez, California Prison Focus and one of the San Quentin Six

6. Conspiring to commit mass incarceration

Linda Evans, All of Us or None and former political prisoner

Ghetto Prophet, Onyx Organizing Committee and spoken word artist

More information:
http://www.occupy4prisoners.org/
www.occupythejusticedepartment.com
occupy4prisoners@gmail.com

4/24, DC: Occupy the Justice Department

M1 PERFORMS -- DANNY GLOVER and others TO OCCUPY THE JUSTICE 
DEPARTMENT: TRANSFORM THE WORLD! April 24, 11AM -- Washington DC

GET ON THE BUS!
New York: 212 - 330 - 8029
Princeton Seminary:  260 - 355 - 8085
Philadelphia: 215 - 600 - 6626
Virginia, leaving from RVA: Othrva2012@gmail.com

WHAT?
Join Danny Glover, M1 of Dead Prez, Frances Fox Piven, Normal 
Finkelstein and others in a non-violent civil disobedience action or 
join our large-scale, spirited rally at the US Department of Justice, 
which will mark Mumia Abu-Jamal's 58th birthday. Your pledge to 
engage in an act of civil disobedience (CD) is critical to ensuring 
news coverage of the case of this imprisoned, radical journalist and 
our broader demands. If you cannot commit to CD, pledge to be at the 
demonstration.

HOW?
Pledge to Occupy the Justice Department, download the flyer, and get 
more information:
http://occupythejusticedepartment.com/

On April 24, we will breath life into the old labor slogan: "an 
injury to one, is an injury to all." On that day we will say that we 
are all Mumia, we are all immigrants, we are all prisoners, we are 
all Bradley Manning, we are all poor, we are all Palestinian, we are 
all Troy Davis, we are all political prisoners, we are all occupiers!!!

VIDEOS: WHY OCCUPY!
Angela Davis:    http://vimeo.com/39317617
M1, Amiri, Cornel West: http://vimeo.com/38787282
Mark Taylor & Princeton Seminary: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgDRAOKJdfU
Johanna Fernandez: http://vimeo.com/39661382
Big Rock:  http://vimeo.com/39663303

WE DEMAND!
1. Release Mumia Abu-Jamal
2. End mass incarceration
3. Jobs, Education, & Health Care. NOT JAILS!
4. End solitary confinement & stop torture
5. End the racist death penalty
6. Hands off immigrants
7. Free all political prisoners

Big Brother ‘legal’ in US: Mumia Abu-Jamal exclusive to RT

April 10, 2012 RT

RT has become the first TV channel in the world to speak to former journalist and Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal since he was removed from death row in January. Abu-Jamal will spend his life behind bars for killing a police officer in 1981.

Considered by many to be a flagrant miscarriage of justice, the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal has gained much attention worldwide. The defense claimed Abu-Jamal is innocent of the charges as the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses was not reliable. For decades, supporters have rallied behind him.

After spending almost 30 years on death row, Abu-Jamal told RT’s Anastasia Churkina that “The truth is I spent most of my living years in my lifetime, on death row. So, in many ways, even to this day, in my own mind, if not in fact, I’m still on death row.”

RT: If you were not behind bars and could be anywhere else in the world, where would you be – and what would you be doing?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Since my earliest years I was what one would call an internationalist. That is paying attention to what is happening in other parts of the world. As an internationalist I am thinking about life lived by other people all around the world. Of course as an African American I would love to spend some time in parts of Africa. But it is also true that I have many friends and loved ones in France. I would really like to bring my family, my wife and kids to come see our street in Paris.

RT: Being behind bars you seem to be watching world affairs much closer than most people who are free to walk the streets. Which event of the last 30 years would you like to be a part of, if you could?

MAJ: I think the first would probably be the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Because of course once being South African, it was also global, because it was the touch point of white supremacy versus the freedom and dignity of African people. So South Africa would be a logical first choice.

But wherever the people are fighting for freedom, that wins my eye and gets my attention and moves my passion.

RT: You turn 56 at the end of the month, which means you will have to spend more than half of your life behind bars. Most people cannot even begin to imagine that. What is it like? How has it changed you?

MAJ: The point and fact is I have spent most of my life, the bigger percentage of my life on death row. And it cannot but have had a profound effect on consciousness and on the way one sees and interacts with the world. I like to tell myself that I actually spent a lot of that time beyond the bars, in other countries and in other parts of the world. Because I did so mentally. But mental can only take you so far. The truth of the matter is that I spent most of my living years in my lifetime on death row. So, in many ways, even to this day, in my own mind, if not in fact, I am still on death row.

RT: Your story has really become a symbol for many of a flawed justice system. Do you personally have any faith left in a fair and free justice system? Considering your life has been so much affected by it?

MAJ: When I was a teenager and in the Black Panther party I remember I was going to downtown Manhattan and protesting against political imprisonment and incarceration and threats facing Angela Davis… When Davis attacked the prison system, she talked about perhaps 250,000 or 300,000 people imprisoned throughout all the US as a problem to be dealt with, a crisis, a situation that bordered on fascism. Fast forward 30-40 years to the present, today more than 300,000 prisoners in California alone, one state out of fifty. The imprisonment in California alone exceeds that of France, Belgium and England – I could name 4-5 countries combined.

We could not perceive back then of what it would become. It is monstrous when you really look at what is happening today. You can literally talk about millions of people incarcerated by the prisoner-industrial complex today: men, women and children. And that level of mass incarceration, really mass repression, has to have an immense impact in effect on the other communities, not just among families, but in a social and communal consciousness way, and in inculcation of fear among generations. So it is at a level and at a depth that many of us cannot even dream of today.

RT: You talk about so many important social and economic issues in your work; do you have a dream today? If you could see one of those aspects changed which one would you pick? What do you wish you could see happen in the United States?

MAJ: There is never one thing… Because of the system of interconnectedness and because one part of the system impacts another part of the system, and because, what Antonio Gramsci called hegemony of the ideological system impacts other parts of the system. You cannot change one thing that will impact all things. That is one of the lessons of the 1960s, because the civil rights movement was talking about integration and changing the schools. In point of fact if you look at the vast majority of working class and poor black kids in American schools today, they live and spend their hours and their days in the system profoundly as segregated as that of their grandparents, but it is not segregated by race, it is segregated by race and class.

The schools that my grandchildren go to are worse than the schools I went to when I was in my minor years and my teenage years. That’s a condemnation of a system but because former generations only concentrated on one thing or one side of the problem. The problem has really got worse and worse and worse. And while there is a lot of rhetoric about schools, American schools are a tragedy.

RT: You were monitored by the FBI at the age of fourteen, now with laws such as NDAA being passed in the United States when people are watched, detained and can be held, that has become easier than ever, do you think Big Brother has officially shown his face in this country?

MAJ: If you look back it is clear that FBI and their leaders and their agents knew that everything they did then was illegal and FBI agents were taught and trained how to break into places, how to do, what they called, black bag jobs and that kind of stuff, how to commit crimes. And this is what they were also taught, you’d better do it and you’d better not get caught, because if you get caught you are going to jail and we act like we don’t know you, you are on your own. What has happened in the last twenty and thirty years not just NDAA but the so-called Patriot Act has legalized everything that was illegal back in the 1950s-1970s. They legalized the very things that the FBI agents and administrative knew was criminal back then. That means they can look in your mail, they certainly can read your email, they tap your phone – they do all of that. But they do it in the name of national security. What we’re living today is a national security state where Big Brother is legalized and rationalized.

RT: You have described politicians once as prostitutes in suits giving your apologies to honest prostitutes. It is election season in the US right now and we want to ask who do people trust, who would you vote for?

MAJ: Nobody. I have seen no one who I could in good conscience vote for today. Because most of the people that are out there are from two major political parties and all I hear is kind of madness – a wish to return to days of youth to the 1950s or they talk about the perpetuation of the American empire, imperialism. What is there to vote for? How many people consciously go to the polls voting for imperialism, for more war or voting for their son or daughter or father or mother to become a member of the armed forces and become a mass murderer?

RT:You seem to have endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement that has sprung out the US this year. Is this the type of uprising that you think could change America and do good to the United States?

MAJ: I think it is the beginning of this kind of uprising. Because it has to be deeper, it has to be broader, it has to address issues that are touching on the lives of poor working class people…It is a damn good beginning, I just wish it was bigger and angrier.

RT: You are the voice of the voiceless. What is your message to your supporters right now, to those who are listening to you?

MAJ: Organize, organize, organize. I love you all. Thank you for fighting for me and let’s fight together to be free.

Our Contact Visit With Mumia

February 4, 2012 Prison Radio

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters:

Heidi Boghosian and I just returned from a very moving visit with Mumia. We visited yesterday, Thursday, February 2. This was Mumia’s second contact visit in over 30 years, since his transfer to General Population last Friday, Jan 27. His first contact visit was with his wife, Wadiya, on Monday, January 30.

Unlike our previous visits to Death Row at SCI Greene and to solitary confinement at SCI Mahanoy, our visit yesterday took place in a large visitor’s area, amidst numerous circles of families and spouses who were visiting other inmates. Compared to the intense and focused conversations we had had with Mumia in a small, isolated visiting cell on Death Row, behind sterile plexiglass, this exchange was more relaxed and informal and more unpredictably interactive with the people around us…it was more human. There were so many scenes of affection around us, of children jumping on top of and pulling at their fathers, of entire families talking intimately around small tables, of couples sitting and quietly holding each other, and of girlfriends and wives stealing a forbidden kiss from the men they were there to visit (kisses are only allowed at the start and at the end of visits). These scenes were touching and beautiful, and markedly different from the images of prisoners presented to us by those in power. Our collective work could benefit greatly from these humane, intimate images.

When we entered, we immediately saw Mumia standing across the room. We walked toward each other and he hugged both of us simultaneously. We were both stunned that he would embrace us so warmly and share his personal space so generously after so many years in isolation.

He looked young, and we told him as much. He responded, “Black don’t crack!” We laughed.

He talked to us about the newness of every step he has taken since his release to general population a week ago. So much of what we take for granted daily is new to him, from the microwave in the visiting room to the tremor he felt when, for the first time in 30 years, he kissed his wife. As he said in his own words, “the only thing more drastically different than what I’m experiencing now would be freedom.” He also noted that everyone in the room was watching him.

The experience of breaking bread with our friend and comrade was emotional. It was wonderful to be able to talk and share grilled cheese sandwiches, apple danishes, cookies and hot chocolate from the visiting room vending machines.

One of the highlights of the visit came with the opportunity to take a photo. This was one of the first such opportunities for Mumia in decades, and we had a ball! Primping the hair, making sure that we didn’t have food in our teeth, and nervously getting ready for the big photo moment was such a laugh! And Mumia was openly tickled by every second of it.

When the time came to leave, we all hugged and were promptly instructed to line up against the wall and walk out with the other visitors. As we were exiting the prison, one sister pulled us aside and told us that she couldn’t stop singing Kelly Clarkson’s line “some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this.” She shared that she and her parents had followed Mumia’s case since 1981 and that she was overjoyed that Mumia was alive and in general population despite Pennsylvania’s bloodthirsty pursuit of his execution. We told her that on April 24 we were going to launch the fight that would win Mumia’s release: that on that day we were going to Occupy the Justice Department in Washington DC. She told us that because she recently survived cancer she now believed in possibility, and that since Mumia was now in general population she could see how we could win. She sent us off with the line from Laverne and Shirley’s theme song – “never heard the word impossible!”- gave us her number, and asked us to sign her up for the fight.

We’re still taking it all in. The journey has been humbling and humanizing, and we are re-energized and re-inspired!! In the words of City Lights editor, Greg Ruggiero:” Short Term Goal: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!”

–Johanna Fernandez

Mumia: ‘[We've] made one step. We have one more to go'

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Thursday, February 2, 2012

By NAYABA ARINDE Amsterdam News

"Getting Mumia moved into general population is a victory, but the real victory-and what we are working toward-is to bring him home. We are steadily working on that," said Pam Africa from Philadelphia's MOVE organization.

While supporters mull over the victory of getting Mumia Abu-Jamal off death row and into the general population of the medium-security facility SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, Pa., it is as Abu-Jamal himself said: "One step. We have one more to go."

For almost two months, the worldwide army of supporters of the iconic "political prisoner" waited for news about the Mahanoy prison authority's ultimatum that Abu-Jamal must cut his decades-old locks in order to enter general population.

The movement, being what it is, refuses to be predictable but is always strategic. And so, after having endured nine years in solitary confinement in protest and refusing to cut his hair, Abu-Jamal decided to trim his hair to the shoulder-length requirement and indeed come out of solitary.

"We pick our battles," said Africa, speaking to the AmNews at the 16th annual Political Prisoner Dinner held at 1199SEIU's Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center in Midtown on Saturday. "They had him for nine years in the Restrictive Housing Unit-we got him out of solitary confinement in just seven weeks this time around."

The development came in the wake of prosecutor Seth Williams' decision seven weeks ago that he would no longer pursue the death penalty against Abu-Jamal 10 years after federal Judge William H. Yohn originally overturned his death sentence.

Speaking to Noelle Hanrahan of PrisonRadio.org on Sunday, Abu-Jamal declared, "You know, it's back to the drawing board, as the old saying goes. We have to work and take the next step, which is, of course, not this. So that's the job that has to be done.

"I trust we will do it," he said. "I believe we will do it. Give my love to everybody and tell them I'm thankful for all of our people. They've made one step. We have one more to go. On the move."

Supporters were thrilled that he was able to hug his wife for the very first time in 30 years earlier this week.

"The ideal is to get him home and out of the prison, where he never should have been to begin with," said Herman Ferguson, 91, a former political prisoner and prisoner in exile in Guyana. "Mumia is in prison for a crime they know he did not commit. The real victory would be to get him out of there altogether."

A former Black Panther and journalist, Abu-Jamal has always maintained his innocence and has said that it was his political convictions and writing that really had him convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of officer.

Meanwhile, for years, witnesses have recanted their initial "coerced" statements against Abu-Jamal, and an alleged mafia hitman, Arnold Beverly, has even admitted to shooting the officer.

At the dinner on Saturday were families like those of Russell Shoats and Sekou Odinga, who went in to prison as young men and remain behind the wall as grandparents.

Supporters and family members call them political prisoners because they believe that the only reason they are in prison is because of their political beliefs or membership in organizations like the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, MOVE or even Malcolm X's Organization of Afro-American Unity.

"We have to remain forever vigilant for Mumia," said Iyaluua Ferguson, wife of Herman Ferguson. "In many ways, they have greater access to him now, and we have to make sure that they understand that nothing can happen to him."

"John Africa taught us that you never allow the government to misuse your religion against you," said Pam Africa.

"The desire of this government is to keep Mumia in restrictive housing under its tortuous conditions-where he is subjected to body searches and has to sleep under blinking lights so you have no idea what time it is, where they tried to block his communication, where he couldn't do the radio. For nine years, he was in a worse hell than death row-in restrictive housing. They just knew the position would be the same."

Surrounded by the families and supporters of political prisoners, Africa continued proudly, "Mumia has proven his point. He is strong in his religion. He is strong in his beliefs. He is still fighting for all life, and we will not allow the government to use his religion against him. Long live strategic revolution!"

'People Power' Pries Abu-Jamal from Punitive Administrative Custody

Jan. 29, 2012 This Can't be Happening

by Linn Washington Jr.

He’s out!

Credit ‘people power’ for getting internationally known inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal sprung from his apparently punitive, seven-week placement in ‘The Hole.’

For the first time since receiving a controversial death sentence in 1982 for killing a Philadelphia policeman, the widely acclaimed author-activist finds himself in general population, a prison housing status far less restrictive than the solitary confinement of death row.

Inmates in general population have full privileges to visitation, telephone and commissary, along with access to all prison programs and services, all things denied or severely limited to convicts on death row waiting to be killed by the state.

In early December 2011, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections officials, after the federal courts had removed his death penalty and the Philadelphia District Attorney opted not to attempt to re-try the penalty phase in hopes of winning a new death sentence, placed Abu-Jamal in Administrative Custody (a/k/a ‘The Hole’).

Administrative Custody is confinement in a Spartan isolation cell where conditions are more draconian than even death row.

The release of Abu-Jamal from Administrative Custody into general population on Friday, January 27, 2012 followed with a multi-layered protest campaign by his supporters worldwide that included flooding Pennsylvania prison authorities with telephone calls, collecting petitions containing over 5,000 signatures and a complaint filed with United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.

Public pressure to release Mumia Abu-Jamal from the "Hole" trumped the pressure from those trying to keep torturing him (photo by Linn Washington

Supporters condemned the Administrative Custody placement, calling it retaliation for Abu-Jamal's having successfully defeated the state's efforts to execute him. Abu-Jamal, a model prisoner, did not meet any of the 11 specific circumstances listed in Pennsylvania DoC regulations dictating administrative custody placement.

Prison staff evaluations of Abu-Jamal since his December death row removal, sources said, listed him as “polite [and] respectful.” Those positive evaluations did not evidence any of the incorrigibility or other serious misbehaviors that usually trigger AC placement.

“When people are united around an issue they have power. This is the power of the people all races in many places,” said Pam Africa, director of the Philadelphia-based International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Abu-Jamal, in a statement released through his wife Wadiya Jamal, thanked his supporters for their hard work. “I am no longer on death row, no longer in the hole, I’m in population,” Abu-Jamal’s statement noted. “This is only Part One and I thank you for the work you’ve done. But the struggle is for freedom!”

Media reports quoted Pennsylvania DoC spokespersons confirming Abu-Jamal’s placement in general population at Mahanoy Prison, a medium security facility about 100 miles from Philadelphia in central Pennsylvania where he was transferred last December from another prison in western Pennsylvania that houses the state's death row.

DoC spokespersons had previously declined comment on Abu-Jamal’s Administrative Custody placement, citing regulations covering inmate privacy.

Prison officials advanced ever-changing rationales for keeping Abu-Jamal in AC at Mahanoy, including the curious claim of that they were waiting for legal clarification that the courts had formally replaced Abu-Jamal’s death sentence with life in prison.

That Kafkaesque claim contradicted the DoC’s own documents specifically acknowledging that federal courts had vacated the death sentence (thus requiring a default life sentence) and Philadelphia’s DA having dropped appeals to reinstate the death sentence.

Typical of the way that Abu-Jamal’s long-running case has shone a bright light on grievous abuses within the criminal justice system, his AC placement exposed what independent prison monitors have long contended is a dirty secret of Pennsylvania’s prison system: authorities using Administrative Custody isolation to maliciously penalize inmates who are not violating prison rules.

Bret Grote, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Human Rights Coalition, said during a media interview that prison authorities misuse Administrative Custody as repression against inmates for their political activism, their complaining about poor conditions in prison, their roles as jailhouse lawyers and often for racist reasons.

Grote said Pennsylvania’s DoC holds approximately 2,500 of its fifty-thousand-plus prisoners in solitary confinement on any given day. That's five percent of the total.

“Andre Jacobs and Carrington Keys, two members of a group of prisoners known as the Dallas 6 [Dallas is a Pennsylvania prison] have been held in solitary for approximately 11 and nine years respectively as a result of their speaking out against torture and other human rights violations inside the state's control units,” Grote said during an interview with Prison Radio.

Philadelphian Russell “Maroon” Shoats, a former Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member, has spent 30 of his 40 years in prison inside an isolation cell despite not having any prison infractions, said his daughter Theresa Shoats during a press conference in Philadelphia held one day before Abu-Jamal’s release.

“Prison officials keep my Dad in solitary instead of releasing him into general population because they say he is a leader. My Dad turns 70 this year and he has medical problems, some from being in solitary for so long. Keeping him in solitary is unfair,” Shoats said about her father, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia policeman.

“My Dad says he encourages young inmates to read to stay sane. Why does that make him too dangerous for general population? He told me that 15 young men hung themselves in SCI Greene during a one-year period.”

King Downing, director of the American Friends Service Center’s Healing Justice Program, said prison authorities nationwide misuse solitary confinement to “silence political prisoners.” Downing hosted the press conference where Shoats spoke alongside other speakers representing Abu-Jamal.

Last October, Juan Mendez, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, called on all countries worldwide to ban the use of solitary confinement of inmates as punishment and/or an extortion technique, except in very exceptional circumstances.

Mendez cited scientific studies establishing the mental and medical damage arising from prolonged isolation. His report stated that an estimated 20,000-to-25,000 persons regularly occupy solitary confinement cells across America.

Recently a federal jury awarded a New Mexico man $22-million for violations of his constitutional rights arising from his having spent two years in solitary confinement in a county jail in Albuquerque following a drunk driving arrest. Although during that entire time he was never even charged or brought to trial, authorities in Dona Ana County New Mexico vow to appeal that verdict, one of the largest damage judgements in history for illegal incarceration.

Mumia's Message to Supporters in call from General Population

Mumia's Message to Supporters in call from General Population, SCI
Mahanoy to his wife, Wadiya Jamal:

My dear friends, brothers and sisters -- I want to thank you for your
real hard work and support. I am no longer on death row, no longer in
the hole, I'm in population. This is only part one and I thank you
all for the work you've done. But the struggle is for freedom! From
Mumia and Wadiya, Ona Move. Long Live John Africa!

------------------------------------

--Mumia is Innocent! Stop the Frame Up! Free Mumia!--

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC
P.O. Box 16, College Station, NY, NY 10030
212-330-8029, www.FreeMumia.com, info@FreeMumia.com

Mumia Transferred to General Prison Population

As of 1/27/12, Mumia Abu-Jamal has officially been transferred to
General Prison Population after being held in Administrative Custody
("The Hole" or Solitary Confinement) at SCI Mahanoy, Frackville, PA
for seven weeks. This is the first time Mumia has been in General
Population since his arrest in 1981.

This comes within hours of the of delivery of over 5,500 signed
petitions to Department of Corrections headquarters in Camp Hill, PA
and a compliant filed with United Nations Special Rapporteur on
Torture, Juan Mendez.

PLEASE NOTE that while this is a victory in transferring Mumia out of
the torturous Restricted Housing Unit (RHU), we call upon the closure
of ALL RHU's! Furthermore, we call upon the IMMEDIATE RELEASE of
Mumia Abu-Jamal and are not disillusioned by this transfer. FREE MUMIA NOW!

More at: http://www.freemumia.com/?p=867


Write to Mumia to send him some love!

MAILING ADDRESS FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
#AM8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932


Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC
P.O. Box 16, College Station, NY, NY 10030
212-330-8029, www.FreeMumia.com, info@FreeMumia.com

Correction: Rare Admission of Mistake in Mumia Case

Jan 25, 2012 This Can't Be Happening

by Linn Washington Jr.

I made a mistake.

An article I wrote recently for TCBH about the Pennsylvania prison system’s latest punitive assault on now ex-death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal (unnecessarily continuing his solitary confinement) contained a factual misstatement.

Most journalists consider any inaccuracy an error, regardless of how small.

The Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists calls for admitting “mistakes” and correcting them promptly.

This journalist’s inaccuracy-as-error standard contrasts with court systems, where appellate courts too often dismiss mistakes made during trials by prosecutors and judges without correction by using the court-invented legalistic term: harmless error.

The Abu-Jamal case is fraught with such misconduct and mistakes that appellate courts have not only not corrected, but have allowed to fester and get worse. But you won't see the courts or the prosecutors ever admitting those things.

In my article, I inaccurately listed Pennsylvania state prison officials as being the prime movers in keeping Abu-Jamal on death row instead of transferring him into general prison population after a federal judge had voided his death sentence in a December 2001 ruling converting that sentence to a life in prison.

Pennsylvania prisoners are put in "the Hole" for their politics, for protesting prison conditions, and for racist reasons

In that article I stated prison authorities kept Abu-Jamal on death row in 2001 “as a courtesy to Philadelphia’s District Attorney’s Office…”

Yes, keeping Abu-Jamal on death row arose from a courtesy…a courtesy that kept him on death row ten years after that 2001 ruling.

And yes, Philly’s DA (and others) did want Abu-Jamal to rot on death row.

But, no, Pennsylvania prison authorities did not extend that "courtesy."

That "courtesy" came from William Yohn, the federal District Court judge who voided Abu-Jamal’s death sentence after finding errors in the 1982 jury deliberations resulting in Abu-Jamal receiving the death penalty.

Yohn granted a request from Philadelphia’s then District Attorney Lynne Abraham, who wanted to keep the outspoken author/activist in solitary death row confinement during her appeal of Yohn’s ruling.

Author J. Patrick O’Connor, in his probative book “The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal, wrote that Abraham, “in a particularly spiteful maneuver,” requested that Yohn stay his order lifting Abu-Jamal’s death sentence and, “incredibly,” Yohn agreed.

With that "courtesy" Yohn allowed Abu-Jamal to suffer death row deprivations despite his judicial determination that Abu-Jamal had unjustly spent nearly twenty-years in solitary confinement due to that legally flawed sentence.

Abraham, in the wake of Yohn’s ruling, had blasted him.

An angry Abraham, in December 2001, said she was “completely dismayed” that Yohn had granted “any relief whatsoever.”

Abraham’s reaction ignored the fact that federal district and appellate courts in Philadelphia had cited penalty phase errors (the same failing Yohn found in Abu-Jamal’s case) in two of the four death sentences those courts voided between May and November 2001.

Maureen Faulkner, the widow of slain Officer Daniel Faulkner, had also blasted Yohn, calling him a “sick and twisted person,” despite Yohn dismissing 28 of the 29 appeal claims raised by Abu-Jamal, including all claims regarding his conviction, which if accepted could have led to a new trial for Abu-Jamal, possibly leading to his release.

While my article inaccurately assigned that "courtesy" off keeping Abu-Jamal on death row to prison authorities instead of Yohn, the article did accurately account for the wasted costs of that "courtesy."

Keeping Abu-Jamal on death row for an additional decade cost Pennsylvania taxpayers at least $100,000 because the state's prison system spends at last an extra ten thousand dollars per year over the cost of incarcerating ordinary prisoners to handle each death row inmate.

In early December 2011, prison authorities finally shifted Abu-Jamal from death row into more harshly restrictive Administrative Custody (a/k/a The Hole) hours after Philadelphia’s DA announced he would not seek reinstatement of a death sentence.

Yohn’s 2001 ruling required the DA to either hold a mini-trial in an effort to obtain a new death sentence from a new jury, or to accept a sentence of life imprisonment. The federal Third Circuit Appeals Court twice upheld Yohn’s ruling and the U.S. Supreme Court finally ended appeals of Yohn’s ruling last fall.

One of the many problems with the Abu-Jamal case is the refusal of police, prosecutors, prison authorities and judges to acknowledge mistakes or worse, misconduct -- both things that are not harmless.

Yohn, for example, made “several” mistakes in that 2001 ruling “on questions of constitutional rights central to commonly held concepts of justice,” as my TCBH colleague Dave Lindorff put it in his seminal book Killing Time: An Investigation Into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Lindorff presented a disturbing, thorough analysis of Yohn’s flawed dismissal of Abu-Jamal’s jury selection discrimination appeal claims in his 2003 book.

The Third Circuit rejected Abu-Jamal’s jury discrimination appeal in 2008 despite the Third Circuit's having granted relief to other death row inmates he had raised identical jury discrimination claims.

In another mistake by Yohn that escaped scrutiny and correction by federal appellate judges, the respected jurist brushed-off Abu-Jamal’s claims that his attorney during the 1982 trial was legally ineffective because that lawyer was inexperienced in death penalty law, undercapitalized and lacked adequate support staff during that 1982 trial.

Yohn seized upon erroneous state court findings that attorney Anthony Jackson “had tried approximately twenty” first-degree murder cases. Pennsylvania state courts had twisted the exact testimony Jackson gave during a 1995 Post-Conviction Relief Actl hearing about his capital case experience.

During three days of testimony in July 1995, Jackson had repeatedly told Abu-Jamal’s appellate attorney Leonard Weinglass that he had tried "one or two" capital murder cases, serving as lead counsel only once.

According to transcripts from 1995, Jackson first told Abu-Jamal’s appeal attorney that he had tried one or two first-degree murder cases. On cross-examination by the prosecutor, Jackson did say he tried twenty murder cases but stressed that only “one or two” of those cases were death penalty cases…testimony the prosecutor did not challenge with contrary evidence. On re-direct from Abu-Jamal’s attorney, Jackson again said he had only handled one or two capital cases.

Jackson, also during that 1995 testimony, said he had received inadequate funding from the courts for his defense efforts, that he had no paralegals and investigators to assist him, that a Philadelphia judge rejected his request for another lawyer to assist him and at the time of Abu-Jamal’s trial he only had a part-time secretary because he had returned to private practice only months earlier.

Yohn and lower Pennsylvania state court judges rejected Jackson’s admission that he was “ineffective” during Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial, arguing that Jackson’s defense effort was legally sufficient.

Yohn asserted that “even were I to assume that Jackson was inexperienced, undercapitalized and lacked adequate support, [Abu-Jamal did not] demonstrate that there is a reasonable probability that but for these [conditions] the result of the proceeding would have been different.”

While Pennsylvania prison officials kept Abu-Jamal in solitary confinement for ten unnecessary years on Judge Yohn’s orders, his current continued solitary confinement is solely the responsibility of those prison officials.

As I reported in my article, the draconian Administrative Custody confinement rammed on Abu-Jamal by prison authorities evidences violations of the prison system’s own written regulations, because that placement does not meet any of the 11 specific circumstances listed in Pennsylvania Department of Corrections regulations used to justify administrative custody placement.

The “current rationales offered by prison officials for [Abu-Jamal’s] placement in solitary confinement do not withstand scrutiny, which lends further support to the inference that he is continuing to be targeted,” said Bret Grote, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Human Rights Coalition, during a recent interview.

Typical of Abu-Jamal’s selflessness, he directs his supporters to fight not just against his unjust confinement but also to assist the scores of other people the state's Department of Corrections unjustly holds in solitary confinement on a daily basis, according to data from HRC, a prison-monitoring organization.

Grote said prison authorities improperly use Administrative Custody to penalize inmates for their political activism, for complaining about conditions, for their roles as jailhouse lawyers and often simply for racist reasons.

Thanks to a Vindictive Prison System, Mumia's Still in the Hole

January 18, 201 counterpunch.org

Sadism in the Cell

by LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.

Those intent on tormenting now ex-death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal have done it again, this time perhaps even exceeding their past efforts to painfully harass this man widely perceived as a political prisoner.

The latest punitive slap involves Pennsylvania prison authorities throwing Abu-Jamal into “Administrative Custody,” more commonly known as ‘The Hole.’

The draconian constraints of AC placement surpass the harsh restrictions of the death row isolation Abu-Jamal has endured for over a quarter century.

A jury sentenced Abu-Jamal to death following a controversial July 1982 conviction for killing a Philadelphia policeman.

No surprise that this latest punitive assault against Abu-Jamal has his worldwide support movement in an uproar. Supporters see AC placement as retaliation by those incensed that Abu-Jamal is no longer facing execution.

Energizing supporters is the opposite of what Philadelphia’s District Attorney Seth Williams said he desired when he announced last month that his office would not seek reinstitution of Abu-Jamal’s death sentence. At the time, DA Williams said he hoped avoiding a rehearing on the death sentence would consign Abu-Jamal to obscurity.

Pennsylvania’s governor and the president of Philadelphia’s police union also used the word obscurity when voicing their hopes that the life sentence for Abu-Jamal would decimate his cause célèbre status among death penalty abolitions worldwide.

Prison authorities removed Abu-Jamal from death row mere hours after the Philadelphia DA’s December announcement, transferring him to an Administrative Custody cell block inside the same super-max Greene prison located more than 300-miles from Philadelphia in southwest Pennsylvania.

Prison officials rejected the standard procedure of placing Abu-Jamal in general population, the status for all inmates not sentenced to death.

Significantly, inmates in general population have full privileges to visitation (contact, not conjugal contact), telephone and commissary, along with access to all prison programs and services.

Administrative Custody restrictions, on the other hand, are punitive in nature, including a limited number of visits, no telephone calls (except legal or emergency) and limitations on access to legal materials needed for appeals.

Sue Bensinger, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, declined comment on Abu-Jamal’s case citing the Department’s “security and privacy” regulations.

Bensinger did confirm that authorities now hold Abu-Jamal in Mahanoy, a medium security prison about 100 miles from Philadelphia in central Pennsylvania. Mahanoy, by Department regulation, cannot hold death row prisoners.

DoC personnel moved Abu-Jamal to Mahanoy from Greene prison during an unannounced pre-dawn transfer on December 14, 2011.

Abu-Jamal’s December removal from death row was in belated compliance with federal court rulings voiding Abu-Jamal’s death sentence. That sentence launched Abu-Jamal’s decade’s long grind on Pennsylvania’s death row – an ordeal that a string of federal court rulings since 2001 have declared to have been reached illegally and unconstitutionally.

When a federal District Court judge voided Abu-Jamal’s death sentence in December 2001, converting it to a life sentence, Pennsylvania prison authorities refused to remove him from death row. Authorities justified their refusal to transfer Abu-Jamal into general population from death row in 2001 as extending a “courtesy” to Philadelphia’s District Attorney’s Office, to that city’s police union (the Fraternal Order of Police) and to the widow of the slain officer.

The FOP, the widow and the DA’s Office, including Williams and his predecessor Lynne Abraham, actively lobbied year after year for Abu-Jamal’s continuance on death row during their unsuccessful appeals of that 2001 ruling ending his capital sentence.

Those malicious demands for Abu-Jamal’s continued death row confinement sought to inflict increased suffering through keeping Abu-Jamal mired in the deprivations of death row isolation.

That “courtesy” also cost taxpayers at least $100,000, because it costs Pennsylvania’s prison system an extra ten thousand dollars per year to handle each death row inmate, according to prison system spokespersons.

That “courtesy” cost adds to the enormous expenditures Philadelphia prosecutors have made fighting in courts to block Abu-Jamal’s efforts to win a retrial where a jury could hear what that 1982 jury did not: evidence of innocence withheld by police and prosecutors.

As an example of the addional restrictions administrative custody imposes on Abu-Jamal, the acclaimed prison author/journalist now has no access to books, a radio and a typewriter – all items he utilized on death row for his writings.

A federal appeals court in 1998 stated Abu-Jamal had a First Amendment right to write while imprisoned. That ruling derailed efforts by detractors to bar Abu-Jamal’s writing.

Legal experts familiar with Abu-Jamal’s plight say some of those current Administrative Custody restrictions – particularly those blocking his ability to write – arguably violate that 1998 appeals court ruling.

Under current AC status, authorities force Abu-Jamal to wear shackles during the limited visits he’s permitted. Under administrative custody restrictions, his visits are actually less frequent and of shorter duration than were his highly restrictive death row visitations.

Prison authorities had stopped shackling Abu-Jamal during death row visits a few years ago, following complaints from Noble Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Tutu, during a visit to the famous inmate, refused to see him until the shackles, which Tutu declared were a gratuitous torture, were removed.

In an interesting twist, Maureen Faulkner, the slain officer’s widow, expressed her desire in December for having Abu-Jamal placed in general population where, she said, he would live among the “criminals that infest” Pennsylvania’s prisons. Faulkner has been at the forefront of past punitive efforts against Abu-Jamal, including the legal rights-robbing onslaught that led to the 1998 federal appeals court ruling.

That 1995 onslaught was retaliation for the publication of Abu-Jamal’s book Live From Death Row, and it substantially sabotaged his pivotal hearing that year appealing his conviction. The book features essays on prison life Abu-Jamal had prepared for an NPR program that detractors successfully intimidated NPR into cancelling before it could air.

This perverse Administrative Custody confinement, the latest link in the chain of injustices lashing Abu-Jamal since his 1981 arrest, is just the latest violation by the Department of Corrections of the Pennsylvania prison system’s own written regulations for placing inmates into that harsh disciplinary status.

Abu-Jamal does not meet any of the 11 specific circumstances listed in Pennsylvania Department of Corrections regulations for justifying administrative custody placement.

A model prisoner, Abu-Jamal does not constitute “a threat” to life, property, himself, staff, other inmates, the public or orderly prison operations as the policy declaration for AC placement states.

Indeed, prison staff evaluations of Abu-Jamal since his December death row removal list him as “polite [and] respectful.” Those positive evaluations hardly offer evidence of incorrigibility or other serious misbehavior which usually triggers AC placement.

Among the ever-changing rationales prison authorities advance for keeping Abu-Jamal in AC is their curious and Kafkaesque claim that they are awaiting legal clarification that the courts have formally replaced Abu-Jamal’s death sentence with life in prison.

That claim contradicts the Department of Corrections’ own documents specifically acknowledging that federal courts have vacated the death sentence (requiring a life sentence) and that the Philadelphia’s DA has dropped appeals to reinstate the death sentence and is accepting the life imprisonment.

Since DoC documents clearly reference a vacated death sentence, how can prison officials also claim they need clarification for what is objectively obvious, unless they are using that need-for-clarification explanation to cover-up continued punitive harassment?

The mammoth legal battles raging around Abu-Jamal’s conviction obscure the smaller little-known skirmishes Abu-Jamal constantly has to fight over mundane matters like the types of food he can eat, what newspapers he can read and the permissible length of his dreadlock hair style.

In 2003 Abu-Jamal and other inmates at Greene prison asked authorities for healthier diets, prompting hundreds of activists from Germany and other countries to send letters to prison authorities supporting that dietary request which arrived containing garlic cloves in the envelopes. Activists used garlic because it is widely recognized for its medicinal properties and it makes a pungent statement.

Abu-Jamal’s current AC status once again limits his ability to obtain food from the prison commissary which he needs for his vegetarian diet.

In the late 1980s Abu-Jamal mounted an unsuccessful lawsuit against prison authorities for barring his death row receipt of a newspaper published by a socialist organization.

Prison authorities barred that newspaper by speciously deeming it a “danger” to prison security, despite their allowing non-isolation-cell inmates to receive white racist hate literature and pornography.

Those racist and pornographic publications approved for general population inmates clearly threatened security by spurring interracial tensions and homosexual rapes – unlike a leftist newspaper sent to one inmate in death row isolation.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, prison authorities disciplined Abu-Jamal for refusing to cut his dreadlocks (citing religious reasons). Authorities ultimately relented, allowing him to leave his locks uncut.

Authorities now cite Abu-Jamal’s hair length as a reason for keeping him in punitive isolation, though suspiciously, they only first offered that excuse five long weeks after his December AC placement.

While Abu-Jamal’s detractors indignantly dismiss all claims of his being a political prisoner, his post-arrest ordeals provide a compelling case of a person specifically targeted by authorities for being who he is politically more than for the crime he is supposedly serving time for.

Linn Washington, Jr. is a founder of This Can’t Be Happening and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He lives in Philadelphia.