Mumia challenges state misconduct
2016Rachel Wolkenstein 2016-09Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 3 →
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We are reprinting this excerpt from an article at www.rachelwolkenstein.net. As staff counsel for the Partisan Defense Committee, the author worked on the legal team for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Mumia’s Aug. 7 petition has been filed by at torneys Judith Ritter and Christina Swams.
A new legal action filed by Mumia Abu-Jamal in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas on August 7, 2016, provides a path in the courts to overturn Mumia’s conviction and win his freedom. The legal underpinning is the recent precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court deci sion Williams v. Pennsylvania, 136 S.Ct. 1989 (2016), which holds it is a violation of the due process right to an impartial tribunal free of ju dicial bias if a judge participating in a criminal appeal had “a significant personal involvement as a prosecutor in a critical decision” in a defen dant’s case.
Ronald D. Castille was a senior Assistant District At torney during Mumia’s 1982 trial and the Philadel phia District Attorney during Mumia’s direct appeal of conviction and death sentence. Ronald D. Castille was a Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court dur ing the entire period of Mumia’s appeals of his postconviction proceedings from 1995-2008.
Mumia made motions to Justice Castille to recuse himself from his post-conviction appeals to the Penn sylvania Supreme Court from 1996-98 and again in 2002 on grounds of bias and conflict of interest, but Castille refused. Mumia raised Castille’s denial to re cuse himself as an appeal issue in the federal courts, but it was ignored.
The District Attorney’s office and Justice Castille did not disclose, or denied or minimized any direct role District Attorney Castille had as a prosecutor in capi tal prosecutions, including jury selection and other prosecutorial trial conduct and appeal strategy and preparation. As stated in the new filing, “The high profile and political sensitivity of Mr. Abu-Jamal’s case increases the likelihood that Justice Castille’s minimization of his involvement in the case was not credible.”
Castille’s role as both prosecutor and judge in Mu mia’s case, in light of the Williams decision, opens the door to a court decision vacating (overturning and dismissing) all Pennsylvania Supreme Court denials of Mumia’s post-conviction petitions. If this new le gal action succeeds, Mumia would get “do-overs” to the legal challenges he made to the racist frame-up conviction, for which he has now spent close to 35 years in prison, almost thirty in solitary confinement on death row.
This new legal action can lead to renewed challenges to all the state’s unconstitutional racial, political and class biased procedures and state misconduct that resulted in Mumia’s frame-up conviction before the pro-cop and racist judge Albert Sabo who declared before trial, “I’m going to help them fry the n----r.”
Mumia’s other challenges to his conviction include: Ineffective assistance of trial counsel; the prosecu tion’s intentional exclusion of African-Americans from his jury; the Prosecution’s summation argument that Mumia would have “appeal after appeal” depriv ing Mumia of the constitutional standard of guilt be yond a reasonable doubt and the importance of the jury decision in determining guilt and a death sen tence; denying Mumia the right to self-representation and to be in the courtroom during his trial; police and prosecutorial fabrication of evidence of guilt—false hospital confession, phony ballistics evidence, lying witnesses Cynthia White, Priscilla Durham, Robert Chobert—and suppression of evidence of Mumia’s innocence—Veronica Jones, Dessie Hightower, Wil liam Singletary, Ken Freeman, Arnold Howard and the confession of Arnold Beverly.
In other words, Mumia would be able to re-appeal the entirety of his frame-up conviction before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. If the new appeal wins, Mumia will get a new trial, if not dismissal, on grounds of gross state misconduct in prosecuting Mumia.
And should a new trial be ordered, the prosecution has no evidence to present against Mumia. The three legs of the case—eyewitnesses, confession and bal listics—have been proven to be manufactured by the police.
This is what should happen under the U.S. Supreme Court holding in Williams. But Mumia’s case isn’t any case. There is no other case in the United States that has faced as much orchestrated hostility from the Fraternal Order of Police and both parties of U.S. capi talism as that of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The legal and political caveats for a winning strat egy to free Mumia: Legal action that underscores Mu mia is innocent and framed in a political and racist prosecution that denied every aspect of due process and a fair trial; and an intensified international cam paign of publicity and protest demanding Mumia’s