Free Mumia

by Kaponda

A sea of orange jumpsuits leaped for joy when the verdict of the marathon trial of O.J. Simpson was being read. My eyes were also fixed on the television during the final episode of that saga, along with the other predominantly black inmates incarcerated at San Bruno Jail. The black inmates who surrounded the television and exulted after hearing the verdict on that day in 1996, considered it an indictment on the Los Angeles Police Department. It exposed a tight-knight and thuggish mentality within the Los Angeles Police Department.

But the notorious Los Angeles Police Department and its RAMPART Division would be labeled as altar boys if compared to the Philadelphia Police Department. With a history of underhanded law enforcement methods and improper conduct, the Philadelphia Police Department has the dubious distinction of being the only law enforcement agency in America that has been investigated three times in a decade for corruption. The Federal Bureau of Investigation scrutinized the Philadelphia Police Department three time during the decade of 1980. These are some of the reasons that the disciple of John Africa and minister of confrontation for the MOVE organization, Pam Africa, expressed to me during an interview last winter that, “We are at war!”

A rally and march was held last Saturday, May 12, 2001, in support of a prisoner of war, Mumia Abu-Jamal. A swell of supporters of Abu-Jamal gathered at Dolores Park around 11:00 a.m., to help underwrite his legal representation and convey to the Pennsylvania judiciary a message of outrage at its blatant racist policies. The thousands of people of the multiracial crowd listened as the speakers at Dolores Park explained how Abu-Jamal became ensnared in the precarious predicament in which he has been placed. A three-year member of the Steering Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Merle Woo, expressed to me that “We are here today to save a hero, a man whose only guilt is that he is for all of us -- the voice of the voiceless -- the disenfranchised. Millions are celebrating and demanding his full freedom all over the world, today. We are against censorship, and we are for free speech. We are here today to demand the freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a political prisoner.”

The political prisoners in San Bruno Jail in California, where blacks make up only seven percent of the population but an astounding 50 percent of the California prison population, the political prisoners in the penitentiary located at 175 Progress Drive, where Abu-Jamal currently resides on death row, and those political prisoners throughout the industrial prison complex of America, were not physically at Dolores Park last Saturday. But like the clamorous voices of the inmates at San Bruno during the verdict of the O.J. Simpson trial, the unrestrained emotions in support of Mumia by prisoners, and especially black prisoners, were witnessed by guards of prisons.

The beat of the start of the march from Dolores Park to the Civic Center was provided by the San Francisco producer, activist and ragae artist, Pam Pam. Like an inflated balloon, the spirited crowd burst out of their tranquillity as they bounced west on 19th Street, bellowing chants that resonated from the halls of City Hall in San Francisco, through the airwaves of radio transmission into the halls of the Pennsylvania courts where, on May 4, 2001, the legal team of Abu-Jamal filed new evidence in the federal District Court in Pennsylvania that overwhelmingly points to Abu-Jaml’s innocence. The evidence, which consists of four sworn affidavits, has become a part of the official court records.

Rashidi Omari and Brutha Los of the Company of Prophets restored the vitality of the marchers with three of their musical songs as the masses entered Civic Center Plaza for what supporters of the Free Mumia Movement are calling the last dance if the new evidence is suppressed in federal court. The stage was draped in a banner that bore the words, “In Commemoration of the 11 Men, Women and Children Killed in the 1985 Police Bombing of the MOVE House in Philadelphia.” These were some of the people who also were a part of the international protest in 1995 that forced the hand of the executioner from the lever of the death of the former Black Panther and award-winning journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal. The wide array of support by the masses has been the mainstay and tactical defense of Abu-Jamal. His support includes not only prisoners of war in the United States, but also Nelson Mandela of South Africa, French president Jacques Chirac and members of the British Parliament.

Mumia Abu-Jamal has run his course in the Pennsylvania state courts, where every shred of evidence that provided open-and-shut evidence of his innocence was ruled out by a judge known in Philadelphia as the “king of death row” for handing down more death sentences than any other sitting judge in the United States, Albert Sabo. His case has now come before the lowest federal court in Pennsylvania, the federal District Court, and the sitting judge, William H. Yohn, Jr. Judge Yohn, however, does not have to admit any evidence that was not already a part of the original evidence based on a 1996 law, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton. I asked one of the four new legal representatives for Mumia Abu-Jamal, Elliot Grossman, to give me an update of the situation of Abu-Jamal.

“We just appeared for the first time in federal court in Philadelphia last Friday, May 4th. We filed evidence, affidavits, which are sworn statements, just like testimony in court, on Friday. New evidence and some evidence that we have found in the files of the previous attorneys that had never before been presented to the court.”

I asked Grossman that this new evidence, according to information I have received, may not make it at the appellate level because Judge Yohn might refuse to admit it based on the Death Penalty Act, is this correct?

“No,” stated Grossman. “I think that is getting ahead of the game. We’ve filed this evidence in court. It is now a part of the official record, and we expect the judge to consider the evidence. What’s done with the evidence remains to be seen. But basically what we’ve got here is evidence that we feel cannot be ignored. This is evidence that proves that Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent. That he did not kill Officer Faulkner. That, in fact, we have a sworn confession by the man who really did kill Officer Faulkner -- a man named Arnold Beverly -- who says in his sworn confession that he was hired by corrupt elements in the police department itself, and elements of organized crime in Philadelphia to kill Faulkner because Faulkner was interfering with corruption and payoffs in the center city area. We have also filed an affidavit from Mumia himself for the first time presenting his sworn testimony in court explaining what happened the night of December 9, 1981, specifically, “ continued Grossman, “that 1) he did not shoot the officer; 2) he was not involved in that; 3) he was basically in the wrong place at the wrong time; and 4) he was shot down himself,” stated Grossman.

Elliott Grossman went on to tell me that “the reason that he [Mumia Abu-Jamal] did not testify to this effect in the 1995 Post-Conviction hearings that took place after his trial and appeal was over was because his previous attorney, Leonard Weinglass, told him ‘not to testify.’”

“We also have an affidavit from Billy :Cook, Mumia’s brother, in which he testifies that the incident began, basically, when a volkswagon driven by Billy Cook was stopped by Officer Falkner. Billy Cook testifies in his affidavit that there was a passenger in his car with him. This is an interesting fact that the prosecution completely kept out of the trial of Mumia, and in fact, suborn perjury in Mumia’s trial by having one of their witnesses testify that no one else was there when, in fact, there was someone else there at the scene -- the passenger in Billy Cook’s car. What Billy Cook says in his affidavit is that ‘after the incident was over,’ and after Billy was released by the police, when he talked with this man again -- the person who was his passenger -- the passenger told him that ‘he,’ the passenger, ‘had been part of a plot to kill Faulkner. That there was a plot to kill Faulkner.’ The passenger was armed that night and participated in the shooting. Billy Cook states in his affidavit that he was ‘willing and ready to testify in the 1995 Post-Conviction proceedings, and the reason he did not testify is that Leonard Weinglass, Mumia’s previous attorney, told him not to testify.’”

Grossman concluded his stated by saying that “Faulkner was set up to be hit. We have a confession from the man who was one of the people who did that, and this man says, sworn under penalty of perjury, that ‘Mumia Abu-Jamal had nothing to do with it. That Mumia did not get there until after the officer had been shot. That Mumia had nothing to do with the shooting.’”

I asked Elliott Grossman about the whereabouts of Arnold Beverly, the man who has come forward to take responsibility for his actions 20 years ago?

“We are not disclosing any information regarding his whereabouts,” began Grossman “because he, obviously, is running serious risks of his own personal security by coming forward and presenting this information. Because he has testified that he was paid and he was hired by high-ups in organized crime and corrupt police officials to murder a police officer.”

I asked Elliot Grossman if this evidence is sufficient to compel Yohn to look at the evidence and admit it into the federal District Court, on its face

“We consider that this evidence proves that Mumia is innocent. If he is innocent, then they should overturn his conviction and release him. That is what they should do. We are talking a serious turn of events here. We have clear evidence to exonerate Mumia Abu-Jamal. This man is innocent. There is no reason for him to continue to be in prison and certainly no reason for him to be on death row. That is our position,” concluded Grossman as he walked toward the stage.