> World Socialist Website, http://www.wsws.org/
>
> The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal: US court agrees to
> consider defense motion charging bias
>
> By Tom Bishop
> 4 February 2000
>
> In a significant development in the case of US
> political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, Federal
> Judge William Yohn on January 20 allowed
> defense attorneys to file a new motion charging
> extreme bias on the part of Judge Albert Sabo,
> who presided over Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial and
> subsequent appeals.
>
> Abu-Jamal has been on Pennsylvania's death
> row for the past 18 years after being framed up
> for the shooting death of Philadelphia policeman
> Daniel Faulkner. The 100-page motion and
> memorandum requests Judge Yohn to "review
> for reasonableness the State Court's Finding
> of Fact" in the 1982 trial and post-conviction relief hearings.
>
> Albert Sabo, who is now retired, is a lifetime
> member of the Fraternal Order of Police. During
> his time on the bench he sentenced 32 defendants
> to death, more than any other judge in the country.
>
> Attorneys representing the Pennsylvania
> District Attorney's office wanted the "Findings of
> Fact" excluded from the record. They maintained
> that under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective
> Death Penalty Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton
> in 1996, a federal judge is bound by the
> findings of the state courts. The 1996 law severely
> restricts the ability of federal courts to
> overturn decisions in state trials. However
> Judge Yohn rejected the arguments of the
> Pennsylvania DA's office.
>
> The "Findings of Fact" motion details that at the
> 1995 state court appeal, Judge Sabo ruled
> that decisions made in the 1982 municipal court
> trial were correct. The appeal hearing took
> place after Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge
> had signed the first death warrant for
> Abu-Jamal. Sabo quashed over two dozen
> subpoenas and denied without any explanation the
> defense request for pre-hearing discovery.
>
> Sabo also ruled in 1995 that witnesses who
> said they had been pressured and threatened by
> police to give false testimony in 1982 were not
> credible. He ruled that every prosecution
> witness had been truthful, while every defense
> witness had been untruthful, and barred the
> admission of witnesses and documents critical
> to Abu-Jamal's defense.
>
> In 1997 the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court
> upheld Sabo's denial of Abu-Jamal's appeal
> for a new trial. Abu-Jamal's lawyers contend
> that the "Findings of Fact" show that their
> client was "denied a full and fair hearing" when
> the state Supreme Court upheld his death
> sentence.
>
> Judge Yohn will now be able to review a petition
> for Habeas Corpus filed last October 15 and
> the "Findings of Fact" in making his decision on
> whether or not to allow an evidentiary
> hearing, where witnesses can provide testimony,
> in determining whether there is a basis for a
> new trial. If such a hearing were granted it would
> strengthen the case of the defense in
> demonstrating that their client was the victim of
> a frameup. A decision on how the court will
> proceed is expected sometime in early April.
>
> In a related legal development, the Pennsylvania
> Supreme Court has ordered the review of the
> murder conviction of a Philadelphia man to
> determine if the prosecutor improperly kept
> African-Americans off of his jury. Though it
> called the evidence of his guilt
> "overwhelming", the Court ordered Philadelphia
> Common Pleas Judge David Savitt to
> review the case of William Basemore, who
> was convicted by a jury in 1988 and given the
> death sentence.
>
> The decision reopens a 1997 controversy that
> was sparked when Philadelphia District
> Attorney Lynne Abraham, running for re-election,
> released a ten-year old videotape of her
> Republican opponent, Jack McMahon. In the
> training video for novice prosecutors,
> McMahon advised them to keep African-Americans
> from low-income neighborhoods off of
> juries because they are "less likely to convict."
> It also advised against picking young black
> women because they tended to show "antagonism"
> to law enforcement officials, and advised
> keeping "smart" people off as well. Basemore's
> case was prosecuted by McMahon when he
> was a district attorney.
>
> The McMahon tape has been one of the issues in
> Mumia Abu-Jamal's case. In May 1997, the
> Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied admission
> of the tape as evidence. Abu-Jamal has
> repeatedly protested the jury selection process
> at his 1982 trial.
>
> At the 1995 appeal before Judge Sabo, Abu-Jamal
> was prevented from presenting evidence
> that race-conscious jury selection of nearly all-white
> juries was a routine practice of Philadelphia prosecutors.
> He was also barred from introducing a study that showed
> the DA's office struck African-Americans from jury service
> 55.3 percent of the time, as opposed to 23.4 percent for
> non African-Americans.
>
> Support for Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has become
> well-known as an opponent of police brutality,
> racism and the death penalty, continues
> to build in the United States and internationally.
> On January 12, three officials of the Civil Rights Division
> of the US Department of Justice met with a twelve-member
> delegation representing the International
> Committee to Save the Life of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
>
> The delegation included trade union officials, a number
> of human rights organizations such as Amnesty
> International, and members of the National
> Lawyers Guild. They presented an "Open Letter to Bill
> Clinton" signed by hundreds of thousands of people around
> the world, requesting an investigation into Abu-Jamal's
> case by the US Justice Department. Although a well-attended
> press conference took place with reporters from both the American and
> international press corps, it was blacked out by the US news media.