>What mitigating circumstances can be offered short of the alleged
>fight going on between Mumia's brother and Ofc. Faulkner? The
>prosecution has already established premeditation; I don't know
>how much of a mitigating circumstance this fight could be.
Forget what they proved in the abstract and take it to the new jury-- premeditation may be formally proved in a fight between Mumia and a cop where the prosecution itself argues that Mumia had just come upon Faulkner fighting with his brother, but it fails in the broader sense of pre-planned action or brutality that usually is required for a death penalty. The reason Mumia has been a poster child for the death penalty movement, aside from his own politics, is that almost no one else on death row has this kind of profile.
> The fact that the cop was
> apparently wailing on Mumia's brother would bring up all sorts of "heat of
> passion" mitigating issues.
-But wouldn't Mumia's brother have to testify that he was in fact -being wailed on in order for this to be considered by the jury? -Plus, Mumia shot Faulkner in the back from a distance, before he -would have been able to determine what was going on in the fight. -Wouldn't Mumia have to have been involved in the altercation -before being able to claim any kind of ``heat of passion''?
All of these supposed facts get replayed out in the new jury and all the weaknesses of the prosecution case get presented to the new jury, something that never happened in the first trial.
This is all probably a long way off, since there will no doubt be many appeals before this gets sorted out . The main effect of this decision is to restop the clock on the execution for an indefinite period of time.
-- Nathan Newman