THE VOICE 23 July 2006

It’s not often that a significant legal case is dealt with so unjustly that members of the legal profession here rally to make their feelings known across international borders.  Yet when we, together with Ian Macdonald QC, started circulating a letter petitioning the US Appeal Court to consider the gross racism in the case of death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, within days over 100 lawyers had signed.  Now over 150 lawyers have added their name including leading criminal trial lawyers, those experienced in Privy Council death penalty appeals from the Caribbean and household names such as Geoffrey Bindman, Lord Gifford QC, Helena Kennedy QC, Michael Mansfield QC, Gareth Peirce, Clive Stafford Smith. 

The letter comes at a crucial moment.  Mumia (as he is known to millions) was convicted in 1982 of killing a policeman and has been on death row for 24 years.  He has finally been granted an appeal which could lead to a new trial -- the first time his case against conviction would be heard by a jury.

As a grassroots legal service with a track record of fighting for justice, we have supported Mumia for many years but in 2005 Selma James of the Global Women’s Strike and myself got the opportunity to visit him in prison.  We found a remarkable man.  Before that we knew him only by reputation: an ex-Black Panther who had remained a movement organiser despite being a political prisoner since 1981.  Severe restrictions on contact with the outside has not stopped him continuing his work as a writer and journalist, publishing five books and recording weekly Dispatches From Death Row, incisive radio commentaries broadcast to 100 stations.  Mumia also does important legal and human rights work, including as a jailhouse lawyer -- helping other prisoners to defend themselves. 

Mumia spearheads the movement against the death penalty and recently commented to Robert R. Bryan, his lawyer:  “Of course I do not want to die, but this is not about me.  It is about the global campaign against the death penalty and the international struggle for human rights, and if my name can be helpful in that regard, then of course you can talk about me.” [1]

The UK lawyers letter highlights the prosecution’s systematic removal of Black people from the jury, and the actions of racist Judge Albert F. Sabo, overheard by a court stenographer bragging that he would help ‘fry the nigger’. He banned Mr Abu-Jamal from crucial periods of his own trial, and allowed the prosecution to slander the defendant before the jury.  The Katrina hurricane “disaster“ exposed an unparalleled display of racism on a massive scale, allowed (some would say enabled) by the US government.  The question is whether the courts will redress it in this case. 

There are grave questions about evidence presented at the original trial, including that no ballistic tests were done on Mumia’s hands or on the gun found at the scene; his so-called confession was highly suspect and there is evidence of police nobbling witnesses before and during the trial.