The recent visit to Australia by Amnesty International US chairperson Rick Halperin has focused attention on the death penalty in the United States. The case of radical journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, on death row in Pennsylvania convicted for the killing of a police officer in 1982, highlights the danger that the death penalty poses for civil liberties and human rights. NORM DIXON reports.
Mumia Abu-Jamal could be executed at any time. A broad movement fighting to save the respected radical journalist's life has mobilised in Philadelphia and throughout the US. Activists are fighting to win a new trial, raise $90,000 to pay for his defence and track down witnesses before Pennsylvania governor Robert Casey — who has signed 15 death warrants since he came to office — orders the execution.
Prior to Abu-Jamal's arrest for murder, he had seriously antagonised the local police and political establishment through his courageous reporting of the persecution of the radical black groups in the Philadelphia area on radio and in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Abu-Jamal refused to vilify the radical black organisation MOVE in its confrontations with city authorities and police during the late '70s and early '80s and was prepared to allow its side of the story to be told. Senior police and city officials went so far as to blame the police-MOVE confrontations on "a new breed of advocacy journalism".
Abu-Jamal was working nights as a taxi driver in 1981. Late on December 9, he came upon police officer Daniel Faulkner beating up his brother and intervened. Faulkner drew his gun and shot Abu-Jamal. Other cops arrived and began beating the wounded journalist. Abu-Jamal was taken to hospital, where he was again beaten. In the melee, someone on the scene shot Daniel Faulkner dead.
Despite the fact that police ballistics experts could not match the two bullets that felled Faulkner to the gun Abu-Jamal always carried in his cab, Abu-Jamal was charged with murder.
He came before "hanging judge" Albert Sabo, who has the distinction of having sentenced more people to death than any other judge in the US. The jury had just one black member. Abu-Jamal's court-appointed lawyer had never tried a capital case before and was given a budget of just $150 to prove his client's innocence.
The prosecution's eyewitness had three charges pending against her at the time of the trial, and rumours circulating at the time said that her boyfriend had been released from jail in return for her testimony. Two other witnesses described the person who killed Faulkner as having an Afro and weighing over 90 kilos; Abu-Jamal wears dreadlocks and is slight in stature.
At his trial, the prosecutor grilled Abu-Jamal about his political views when he was a 16-year-old member of the Black Panther Party.
The NAACP, Amnesty International, PEN, American Civil Liberties Union ngress support a new trial. Demonstrations have been held in France and Germany.
Meanwhile, Abu-Jamal has been in "disciplinary custody" since 1987 for refusing to cut his dreadlocks. He is not allowed to receive outside books, newspapers or magazines; is allowed only one visit per month; and has access to only one file box of legal documents at any one time.
The Ad Hoc Coalition to Save the Life of Mumia Abu-Jamal can be contacting by phoning 0011 1 212 740 8557.