-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [BRC-MUMIA] Mumia Debate in NY Daily News Resent-Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 14:21:17 -0700 (PDT) Resent-From: Art McGee <amcgee at igc.org> Resent-To: brc-mumia at egroups.com Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 17:07:46 +0000 From: Mitchel Cohen <amcgee at tao.ca> To: mitchelcohen at mindspring.com
Debate on Mumia, in NY Daily News, 5/30/00, follows this Appeal from Mitchel Cohen pertaining to his (and others') Appeal of conviction and sentencing.
As you undoubtedly are aware, a number of activists seeking a new trial for Mumia -- including myself (Mitchel Cohen, from the Brooklyn Greens), Clark Kissinger (Refuse & Resist), Frances Goldin (Mumia's literary agent), Marcy Gayer (Greens), Jane Jackson, Paul Magno & Kim Lamberty (Catholic Worker), and Joe Brown (Washington DC) -- are appealing our April conviction and draconian sentence for the legal equivalent of "jay-walking" -- "Failure to obey a lawful order" to disperse. Those arrests took place last July 3rd at the Liberty Bell. 89 demonstrators pleaded guilty and were given a fine of $250, plus $25 to a victims restititution fund.
That was bad enough. But those who pleaded not guilty -- the eight above mentioned -- were found guilty (two separate trials) in Philadelphia by a federal judge, and sentenced not only to the fines, but to a year's supervised probation. The judge ordered special terms restricting travel, intended solely to stop the political activity of those involved -- that'll teach us to execute our Constitutional right to a trial! The terms stipulate: Lifting of our passports -- no travel out of the country; making it illegal for us to travel IN the US outside of NYC or the immediate local area without permission; urine tests; unannounced visits from probation officer at our apartments at any time; and prevention of contact with convicted felons (including Mumia, which makes Frances's job especially difficult, for she is Mumia's literary agent, and holds his Power of Attorney!). We're also required to submit detailed financial reports on where all our money comes from and how we spend it; and we're supposed to sign away our right to privacy and grant the government access to all medical, psychological and financial records.
VISIT FROM THE FBI
No sooner had these restrictions been imposed than Clark Kissinger's wife was visited by FBI agents at work and was served with a subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury, supposedly relating to an investigation of a former employer. She was also ordered to produce all her financial records (which include joint accounts with Clark) for the last ten years! This is nothing but a giant federal fishing expedition, using every legal mechanism to bring pressure on a key leader in the Mumia movement and find out everything possible about his finances and personal activity.
Supervised probation puts the lives of the probationers under complete control. We are required to be employed (i.e., no fulltime volunteer work for Mumia) -- even though the travel restrictions have denied all of us the ability to pursue our work. This is especially difficult for me, a freelance journalist and member of the editorial boards of the national and NY State Green Party newspapers who makes my living, scant as it is, from my articles and pamphlets, and giving talks based on them. Catch-22.
Clark Kissinger has already been denied permission to travel to Philadelphia to speak on the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the MOVE house. Or as another example, Judge Rapoport himself denied me permission to travel to Brussels where I was scheduled to speak at an international environmental conference. He instructed the Department of Probation to lift my passport immediately! I was also prevented from traveling upstate in New York to speak about genetic engineering. A number of other engagements had to be canceled, as well as my participation in national Green Party meetings.
These sentences were designed to take out key activists at a critical moment and send a message to the whole movement: You have a constitutional right to a trial, but if you exercise it instead of taking whatever deal the government offers you will be severely penalized for it -- way out of proportion to the alleged offense: a summons from a Park Ranger for "failure to obey a lawful order." The government saw our principled stance as an opportunity to lash back at the movement for a new trial for Mumia -- and, let me hasten to add, Leonard Peltier as well (that's what MY sign said: Freedom for Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal.)
WRITE TO THE NEW JUDGE, PLEASE!
I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support. It was a very down time for me, struggling at every turn to take care of my trials, travels and then travel restrictions while also continuing, as a volunteer (we're ALL volunteers) to help to coordinate the No Spray Coalition's lawsuit against indiscriminate spraying of pesticides in New York City and the nearby counties. No money, no time, and then you all came through big time! (Of course I'm still broke -- travel back and forth to Philly, to Washington, etc. and all sorts of expenses -- but, hey ... what the hell!) Your letters, and funds, just pulled me right back to some semblance of sanity, and I thank you all so much! Scores of folks wrote powerful letters to the trial judge, Arnold Rapoport, in response to my last letter to you. You were fabulous!
I am now asking you to write once again, please, this time to the Appeals Judge: Hon. Bruce W. Kauffman, U.S. District Court, 601 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Judge Kauffman's fax number is: 215-580-2281. No threats, please, but feel free to let your politics be heard. The Judge will be deciding whether Rapoport's sentences were legal and justified, and whether the decision of the trial judge itself should be overturned. (If you already wrote a letter to Rapoport, you might re-post a copy to Judge Kauffman.)
WHY NOW?
As Refuse & Resist writes: "The early months of 2000 have witnessed an explosion of activity for Mumia. First, Amnesty International released its long awaited report which condemned Mumia's conviction and called for a new trial. Then a national conference brought together Mumia activists from all over the country, Europe, and Japan, to lay out a strategy for the months leading up to Mumia's habeas corpus appeal. This was immediately followed by major civil disobedience actions on both coasts in which hundreds were arrested.
"The movement also began to reach a mass audience through the publication of Mumia's third book All Things Censored, the appearance of a statement by religious leaders in Christian Century magazine, and a full-page ad in the New York Times signed by teachers calling for a new trial. Next, controversy erupted in the media over the invitations to Mumia to speak at the Antioch College commencement and at the thirtieth anniversary of the shooting of anti-war protestors at Kent State University.
"All this culminated in 6,000 people packing the theater at Madison Square Garden in a May 7 rally for justice for Mumia and mass demonstrations in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and internationally on May 13. These events themselves occurred against a backdrop of the governor of Illinois instituting a moratorium on executions in his state, burgeoning police scandals from the Ramparts Division in Los Angeles to police murders in New York, and a growing international outcry against the explosion of executions in the United States.
"With Mumia's petition now pending before a federal court in Philadelphia, a critical moment in Mumia's struggle for justice is approaching, and both sides know it.
"So how have the authorities in Pennsylvania responded? By granting Mumia a new and fair trial? No. By offering to look into charges of official misconduct? No. By opening up the police and prosecutors files so the public can judge for themselves? Again, no.
"Instead, the city government in Philadelphia has continued its ban on city employees contributing to the Black United Fund through payroll deductions, because the BUF provided fiscal services to the Mumia movement. Local authorities also launched a new and dangerous attack on the MOVE organization by attempting to transfer legal custody of one of the MOVE children. And now they are trying to use the federal courts to single out and shut down key activists in the national movement for Mumia by putting them on supervised probation."
Regardless of your views on Mumia's guilt or innocence, it is clear that he never got a fair trial. And it is also clear that the crackdown on non-violent but dedicated protesters is escalating.
Below is a debate from today's NY Daily News, 5/30/00, between Ed Asner and Maureen Faulkner. I thought it would interest you.
You can write directly to the Daily News as well to let them know YOUR thoughts, at voicers at edit.nydailynews.com.
Thank You, Mitchel Cohen Brooklyn Greens / Green Party of NY
2652 Cropsey Avenue, #7H Brooklyn, NY 11214 (718) 449-0037 mitchelcohen at mindspring.com
**************************************************************** A New Trial for Mumia? Yes, the first one was a farce
By EDWARD ASNER
I'm getting a little tired of pundits and police decrying my interest in justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Philadelphia radio journalist sitting on Death Row.
I don't know if Abu-Jamal is innocent of killing Officer Daniel Faulkner 19 years ago — and I have never said he is. But I do know that the trial he got was a farce, and one wonders why more people aren't up in arms about it. Abu-Jamal's appeal for a new trial is before federal courts now — and he deserves a second chance at justice.
The evidence in the case against him was so flimsy that two months after his arrest, a group of cops and security guards suddenly said for the first time that Abu-Jamal had loudly confessed the night he was brought into the hospital. The judge allowed these recovered amnesiacs to tell this story to the jury, but the jury was never allowed to see the official report from the night of Abu-Jamal's arrest that said he made no statement.
The two witnesses who testified at trial that Abu-Jamal was the shooter both changed their stories from what they said the night of the incident.
What the jury didn't hear is another witness who says that Abu-Jamal was not the shooter, and that when he told this to police they tore up his statement and dictated a new one for him. Yet another witness has now come forward and testified that she gave false evidence in the original trial because of police pressure.
Police can't seem to explain why they never tested Abu-Jamal's hands to see if he had fired a gun that night. They also have to admit that the fatal bullet cannot be identified as coming from Abu-Jamal's gun. But what's really disturbing is that the medical examiner's report was never shown to the jury. It states that the fatal bullet was of a different caliber than Abu-Jamal's gun.
This man's court-appointed attorney did not interview a single witness before putting them on the stand, offered no witnesses in mitigation during the penalty phase and was subsequently disbarred. When Abu-Jamal protested his lawyer's conduct and the judge's refusal to allow him to represent himself, he was removed from the courtroom for half his trial with no provision to follow the proceedings.
Finally, the prosecutor introduced political statements made by Abu-Jamal 12 years earlier in a newspaper interview as an argument to the jury for why he should be executed. So, on July 3, 1982, a jury admittedly anxious to get to their Fourth of July barbecues quickly voted for the death penalty.
It's little wonder that the European Parliament and Amnesty International have singled out this case for condemnation.
In the last few years, more than 80 people have been freed from Death Rows across the country after it was shown that they were wrongfully convicted. In Illinois, they have released as many people as they executed. A 50% accuracy rate doesn't inspire much confidence in capital punishment, and the Republican governor of Illinois has now instituted a moratorium on executions.
Not a single one of these wrongfully convicted was freed from Death Row because a courageous judge, or a courageous prosecutor or a courageous police investigator, had second thoughts about a conviction and asked to have the case reopened. It's a sad fact that justice comes only when people outside the judicial system get involved and bring the facts to light.
[Asner, a film and TV actor, is also active in many humanitarian and political organizations.]
A New Trial for Mumia? No, his supporters ignore facts
By MAUREEN FAULKNER
Like sheep, those who support my husband's killer blindly cling to the distortions made by Mumia Abu-Jamal's attorney, Leonard Weinglass. These same distortions drew the ire of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, whose seven justices, in their unanimous rejection of Abu-Jamal's 1998 appeal, excoriated Weinglass for distorting the record to support his case.
Armed with Weinglass' misinformation, the celebrities and intellectuals who call for a new trial for Abu-Jamal have demonstrated repeatedly that they have no knowledge of what really went on in Judge Albert Sabo's courtroom 18 years ago. Yet these same uninformed individuals seek to rewrite history by proclaiming Sabo a racist hangman and Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial a travesty of justice.
Abu-Jamal's supporters specialize in denying reality. They deny the fact that the court allocated funds for him to be represented by an experienced attorney of his own choosing. And that Abu-Jamal undermined his attorney's efforts to defend him at every opportunity.
They deny that Abu-Jamal was given access to both a ballistics expert and an investigator. They are unaware that Abu-Jamal personally determined how each of his 20 peremptory challenges was used — thus picking his own jury — and that the prosecutor accepted four African-Americans to the jury, one of which Abu-Jamal himself rejected.
They lament that Abu-Jamal wasn't permitted to represent himself when, in fact, he relentlessly demanded to have John Africa, a nonlawyer and founder of a violent anti-government group called MOVE (whose members killed Officer James Ramp in 1978), represent him in the courtroom.
It's astonishing that Abu-Jamal's supporters dismiss that he was apprehended sitting on the pavement 40 seconds after he killed my defenseless husband and that he was wearing an empty shoulder holster at his side with a gun registered in his name. To them, it's just an inconvenient coincidence that Abu-Jamal's five-shot revolver contained five spent shells from the identical Federal Arms .38-caliber Special +P ammunition that was removed from my husband's brain.
Abu-Jamal's supporters ignore the fact that the fatal bullet can be tied to his weapon by the general rifling pattern etched into its outer edge — the same pattern found in the barrel of Abu-Jamal's gun. And apparently unknown to them is the testimony of defense witness Robert Harkins, who stated that the killer "sat on the pavement" after firing the fatal shot. They demand a new trial but don't even know that the testimony of the defense's own witness corroborates the testimony of the four allegedly coerced prosecution witnesses.
Actor Ed Asner told ABC's Sam Donaldson that he has not reviewed the trial transcripts because they would "bore" him. If Asner had an ounce of integrity, he would invest a few hours reviewing the transcripts posted at www.danielfaulkner.com to gain his own understanding of the facts. I would direct him and Abu-Jamal's other supporters to the first day of the trial, June 17, 1982, so they can see for themselves that it was Abu-Jamal's intention to squander the opportunity he had to receive a normal trial.
I also would ask Abu-Jamal's supporters this: Given the same set of circumstances, if it were your 25-year-old husband who was murdered by Abu-Jamal, would you still be screaming for a new trial?
[Faulkner is the widow of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner]
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