LEADING UK LAWYERS PETITION US APPEAL ABU JAMALS CASE

The signatories include many who are Queen's Counsel; leading criminal trial lawyers, in some cases household names such as Michael Mansfield QC, Helena Kennedy QC, Lord Gifford QC, Gareth Peirce, Clive Stafford Smith and Geoffrey Bindman; those with experience of doing appeals in the Privy Council in death penalty cases from the Caribbean; many experienced in race and gender discrimination cases; and a professor of law. On 20 July, Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel for Mr Abu-Jamal, will submit opening briefs for the appeal on issues such as prosecutorial use of racism in jury selection and the death penalty.

Ian Macdonald QC, criminal trial lawyer and leading authority in the UK on anti-racism and immigration law, says:
"This is a most unusual case: although it is taking place in a United States court, there is enormous concern among the legal profession here at the strikingly unfair trial that took place. As members of this distinguished profession, which claims to work for justice, we feel obliged to register our grave concern. There is no doubt that what happens in US courts affects the legal climate in the UK.

Drawing on the common legal heritage between the UK and the US which, "since the time of Magna Carta in 1215, has given pride of place to common notions of due process and a fair trial" to justify their intervention, the letter lists some of the more noteworthy outrages including: the prosecution's systematic removal of Black people from the jury and the blatant and documented racist bias of the trial judge.

Mr Abu-Jamal's case is a key test of judicial murder. Thousands of lives depend on the outcome, starting with the 3370 people on death row who are disproportionately Black people and other people of colour.* Mr Abu-Jamal had no criminal convictions before his arrest. The determination of the police, prosecution and judge to deny him a fair trial and execute him strongly suggests that this outstanding campaigning journalist is being tried for his track record of exposing racism, police brutality and corruption in Philadelphia, and for the opposition to US government policies and practices that his journalism continues to express. What does it mean if political opposition within the superpower can be disposed of in this anti-democratic way? When the standard of justice there is allowed to fall, the rest of the world is inevitably influenced.

The lawyers entreat the US courts to make right the actions of Judge Sabo, a racist hanging judge, lest he be taken as the face of US justice.

Legal Action for Women comments:
"We have supported Mr Abu-Jamal's fight for a new trial for many years and last October had the first opportunity to visit him in prison. With Ian Macdonald we initiated this letter to help ensure that this remarkable man, who is in the greatest danger of judicial murder, and whose case against conviction has never been heard by a jury, gets what we are all entitled to: a fair trial."

* NAACP-LDF Death Row USA (April 1 2006)

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

Background

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist who, in the years leading up to his December 9, 1981, arrest, had actively exposed police corruption, racism, and violence against Black people and other people of colour. Despite severe restrictions on contact with the outside, including how much written material he is allowed, he continues his work from inside prison, recording weekly Dispatches From Death Row, incisive radio commentaries, which goes out on 100 stations. He also writes for other publications. He has written five books while in prison including: Live From Death Row and most recently We Want Freedom: a Life in the Black Panther Party.

The US government's determination to kill Mr Abu-Jamal has to be seen in the context of its treatment of other journalists, many of whom have been killed for trying to speak the truth. His work as a ‘jailhouse lawyer', regularly providing legal advice to other prisoners, led to an honorary position with the prestigious National Lawyers Guild in the US. His Jailhouse Lawyers will soon be finalised and published.

Mumia Abu-Jamal's fight for a fair trial has won the support of tens of thousands of people around the world including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, the European Parliament, Alice Walker, Paul Newman, Sister Helen Prejean, Danny Glover, Rage Against The Machine, the Detroit and San Francisco City Councils, Amnesty International, and many others. Various cities including Paris, have bestowed on him honorary citizenship.

Accusations aimed at discrediting Mr Abu-Jamal, for example that he has never given an account of what happened on that night, ignore the evidence that he was shot in the chest and rendered unconscious shortly after approaching the scene and consequently knows nothing of what happened there.

Mumia Abu-Jamal comments:
"I remain innocent. A court cannot make an innocent man guilty. Any ruling founded on injustice is not justice."

Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel comments:
"Mumia's case is now moving forward and may proceed at great speed. The authorities want to silence his voice and pen. In over three decades of litigating death-penalty cases, I have not seen one in which the government wants so badly to kill a client."

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

Legal Action for Women, founded in 1982, is a grassroots anti-sexist, anti-racist legal service for all women and their families. LAW combines access to a network of sympathetic lawyers with experienced lay workers. Its insistence that no case is "hopeless", that something can always be done, has won LAW recognition including from distinguished legal professionals. LAW has helped prevent many injustices and set important precedents including for the first private prosecution for rape in England.

Ian Macdonald QC is a criminal trial lawyer and a leading authority on immigration law, and author of the standard text Macdonald's Immigration Law and Practice used by immigration practitioners, officials, adjudicators and judges. Head of Garden Court Chambers until 2003 and known for notable cases such as the Mangrove Nine whose case against conspiracy was fought and won in the context of massive community support, and as author of the path-breaking report Murder in the Playground, an Inquiry into Racial Violence in Manchester Schools, following the murder of 13-year-old Ahmed Ullah by another pupil. He was leading counsel for Duwayne Brooks, friend of Stephen Lawrence and key witness in the government Inquiry into his racist murder.

Robert R Bryan became lead attorney for Mumia Abu-Jamal in 2003. He has specialized in death-penalty litigation for three decades, and is lead counsel in various murder cases pending at the federal and state level. Notable cases include representing Anna Hauptmann, widow of Richard Hauptmann executed in 1936 in New Jersey for the kidnap-murder of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. and Jimmy Eagle indicted for the killing of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He is legal commentator for ABC television in San Francisco and lectures widely on the death penalty and human rights in the US and Europe.

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

Some facts about Mr Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial

According to the medical examiner, the policeman was killed with a .44 calibre gun. Mr. Abu-Jamal's pistol, which he was licensed to carry as a night-time taxi driver, was .38 calibre. The trial jury never heard about this contradiction.

The police never tested Mr Abu-Jamal's gun to see if it had been recently fired. They did not even examine his hands to see if he had fired a gun.

It was claimed at trial that Mr Abu-Jamal stated, at the hospital shortly after the shooting, that he fired the fatal shots. Yet, that was contradicted in a written police report by the officer who was with Mr Abu-Jamal from the moment he was placed in the paddy wagon at the homicide scene until he went into surgery for removal of the bullet lodged near his spine. When asked about the long time spent guarding the defendant, the police office reported: "The negro male made no comment." A week later he was asked by the chief detective on the case if there was anything he wished to add to his statement, to which the officer replied: "Nothing I can think of now." He was hidden from the defense at the 1982 trial so did not testify to contradict what other police witnesses claimed was said. Incredibly, 13 years later the officer's memory "improved" and he claimed to have heard Mr Abu-Jamal state while lying on the floor at the hospital: "I shot him. I hope the motherfucker dies."

The treating doctor said that Mr Abu-Jamal was unconscious and said nothing. He reported that a nurse found police with loaded guns pointed at the suspect as he lay virtually lifeless in his hospital bed.

William Singletary, a Vietnam veteran and local businessman, saw the whole incident and said that Abu-Jamal was not the shooter. However, the police forced him to change his story and intimidated him into leaving Philadelphia. Over a decade after, he testified at an evidentiary hearing that Mr Abu-Jamal did not shoot the cop and was innocent. The police had put pressure on him to corroborate their version of events.

Other key witnesses, such as Veronica Jones who at the 1995 hearing, testified in support of Mr Abu-Jamal, were harassed into initially giving false testimony. Two prosecution witnesses were given special favors, including exemption from criminal prosecution, for their testimony against him.

The defense lawyer did not interview a single witness in preparation for the 1982 trial, and lacked adequate funds for defending a capital case. Mr Abu-Jamal could not afford to retain competent counsel, an investigator, or needed experts in such fields as pathology and ballistics.

Discuss this article on the forums. (0 posts)