End the Cover Up! Free Mumia Now!
RALLY: 4 PM Friday July 7th
Oscar Grant Plaza, 14th & Broadway, Oakland
Mumia Abu-Jamal has been kept alive while on the slow death life imprisonment without parole, by those who came out to support him worldwide in the fight to get him hepatitis-C treatment! Now, let’s act to finally free him!
“…I’m Hep C ‘negative’! Aint’t that a gas? I wanna thank you and the brothers in N. Cali for helping to make it happen. Without a people’s movement we would have never gotten into ct. W/out it, we never coulda won…” Excerpt from Mumia’s letter to the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Mumia’s Hepatitis-C infection, which came from a blood transfusion in the hospital after he was critically wounded from police shooting him on December 9, 1981, is cured due to active support by thousands of supporters who tirelessly resisted the PA prison system’s refusal to supply the needed medication. Mumia’s federal legal victory is now the precedent to provide Hep-C treatment to thousands of prisoners.
Mumia’s New Legal Action
Now, Mumia has a new legal action pending in the Pennsylvania courts, and the movement of Mumia’s supporters worldwide has called for actions to free Mumia on July 7th.
Mumia’s legal action is based on the 2016 US Supreme Court ruling in the case of Williams v Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court ruled that a prosecutor who “had significant personal involvement” in a “critical decision” cannot later sit in judgment in appeals concerning the very same case. This was found to be a conflict of interest, which violates the due process right to an impartial appeal. In the Williams case, the former DA, then judge, was one Ronald Castille. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Williams now has the right to re-litigate all of his legal arguments that were previously rejected.
In Mumia’s case, the very same Ronald Castille was the Philadelphia District Attorney who argued to uphold Mumia’s frame-up conviction and death sentence in 1989 and then as a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice denied all Mumia’s post-conviction appeals from 1998-2008. Last August Mumia filed a post-conviction appeal based on the Williams decision. A legal victory in Mumia’s action will reinstate his appeal rights to assert his innocence and the wholesale denial of his due process trial rights.
Mumia Won “Discovery” But DA’s Office Stonewalls
On April 28, 2017 Mumia Abu-Jamal won in court against the prosecution motion to dismiss Mumia’s new appeal. The judge also ordered the District Attorney’s Office to disclose all files and information that would support Mumia’s claims that his state appeal process was corrupted because Philadelphia District Attorney Ronald Castille was involved in prosecuting Mumia’s appeals. Not surprisingly, the DA’s office did not comply. Only public documents from Mumia’s case that have Castille’s name listed as District Attorney were released. Mumia’s lawyers have demanded “full compliance” with the judge’s order and the judge issued a new order to the DA to release the files by July 7.
The DA’s office states there is no evidence of Castille’s involvement in Mumia’s case. This is a cover-up of the prosecutorial, police and judicial frame-up of Mumia. It is inconceivable that Castille as District Attorney did not make “critical decisions” on Mumia’s appeal given that he was elected to that office as a “law-and-order” and pro-death penalty candidate. When he ran for Supreme Court justice he openly bragged that he put 45 men on death row. Castille also stated publicly that he was personally responsible for all filings in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mumia Challenges Race Discrimination and Lies in Prosecution
Mumia’s appeals included direct challenges to the practice of racial discrimination in jury selection, as well as prosecution’s arguments that told jury’s they could ignore the responsibility for sentencing someone to death, since a defendant had “appeal after appeal.” Mumia also challenged the prosecution using his teenaged membership in the Black Panther Party to argue that Mumia had a life-long intent to kill a police officer. These issues were fought in the PA Supreme Court and then in the U.S. Supreme Court by Mumia while Castille was the District Attorney.
As DA, Castille produced a training videotape to instruct prosecutors how to evade the 1986 Batson decision, a US v Supreme Court ruling which banned racial discrimination in jury selection. Prosecutors were told how to keep Black people off their juries and how to conceal this discriminatory purpose.
During Mumia’s 1988 appeals to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, the D.A.’s office argued that Mumia could not prove the prosecution’s discriminatory motive when they removed Black people from his jury. The existence of the videotape, which was the very evidence of the discriminatory motive, was suppressed.
Former Prosecutor Sits In Judgement On Mumia’s Case
As a PA Supreme Court Judge, Castille sat in judgment over all the appeals of Mumia’s case since 1998, including the issues of his direct appeal—jury selection (Batson), jury integrity (appeal after appeal), membership in the Black Panther Party, as well as the new evidence of coercion of witnesses, of falsified ballistics, the confession of Arnold Beverly, who confessed to being the actual killer, and the racial bias of the trial and post-conviction hearing judge Albert Sabo, who stated, “I’m gonna help ’em fry the n—-r”.
In 1996 and again in 2002 Mumia’s lawyers demanded that Castille recuse himself from hearing the case, on account of his earlier role as prosecutor over the same case. In each instance, Castille refused to recuse himself, stating he had no knowledge of Mumia’s case. Castille denied any knowledge of the DA/TV videotape.
Yet Castille’s alleged “non-involvement” is what the current Philadelphia DA now wants us to believe, as their office has refused the full “discovery” of evidence of Castille’s collusion (in framing Mumia), which was ordered by the Philadelphia Court earlier this year! This is why we call for action now.
Demand Full Disclosure of Documents in Mumia’s Case!
We need to free Mumia now, and demand full disclosure of documents in his case! The Williams decision could lead to the throwing out of all the negative decisions on Mumia’s appeals by the PA Supreme Court, which, in turn, could lead to throwing out his original false conviction! But all of Mumia’s scant victories in court, such as the reversal of his original death sentence, have depended on the mass mobilization of his supporters worldwide.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a journalist, a former Black Panther, a MOVE supporter and an innocent political prisoner. His freedom from false murder charges is long overdue, after 36 years for a crime he did not commit. Winning Mumia’s freedom is a fight against this injustice system and paves the way for others, as did his victory to get Hep-C treatment, which is precedent for Pennsylvania prisoners as well as other thousands nationwide.
Former political prisoners such as Panther Albert Woodfox, whistle-blower Chelsea Manning, and Puerto Rican Nationalist/activist Oscar Lopez Rivera have recently achieved freedom with the help and support of masses of supporters. Now, let us move on.
In 1995 we mobilized in the thousands against the death warrant issued by the Pennsylvania governor; and in 1999 Longshore workers on the entire West Coast of the US shut down all ports to free Mumia. Also in 1999, Oakland teachers held unauthorized teach-ins in Oakland Schools on Mumia and the death penalty.
Join us at Oscar Grant Plaza, 14th & Broadway, Oakland, on Friday July 7th, at 4pm. Rally and march to the Federal Building, with flyers to distribute on Mumia’s case. Solidarity with Mumia and all his worldwide supporters! Free Mumia Now!
End the Cover Up! Free Mumia Now!
RALLY: 4 PM Friday July 7th
Oscar Grant Plaza, 14th & Broadway, Oakland
The July 7th action, called by the Labor Action To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal in Oakland, is initially endorsed by: Oakland Teachers For Mumia, Oscar Grant Committee, Oscar Grant’s Uncle Bobby of Love Not Blood Campaign, Workers World Party, Speak Out, Party of Socialism and Liberation, ANSWER Coalition, Freedom Socialist Party, Socialist Viewpoint, Mobilization To Free Mumia, Socialist Action, and Doro Chiba-the Japanese Railway Workers Union.
Download the flyer for this event (PDF)
