PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Pennsylvania officials on Thursday temporarily blocked a U.S. court order overturning former Black Panther and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal's death sentence for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer.
In a case that has drawn worldwide attention from death penalty opponents, prosecutors filed a federal notice of appeal against a ruling by U.S. District Judge William Yohn, who had given authorities 180 days to conduct a new sentencing hearing or see Abu-Jamal's sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
``This automatically stops the clock,'' said Cathie Abookire, spokeswoman for the Philadelphia district attorney's office.
On Tuesday, Yohn stunned authorities and Abu-Jamal supporters with a 272-page opinion that cited errors in the death-penalty phase of Abu-Jamal's 1982 state trial for the murder of Officer Daniel Faulkner.
He ordered that a jury give Abu-Jamal, 47, another chance to plead for his life in a state that has executed three convicted murderers since 1995. But the judge also wrote that his ruling would be stayed by an appeal from either side.
The prosecution's notice of appeal, which was expected to be followed by comprehensive legal briefs within two months, set the stage for a legal showdown before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia sometime next year.
Abu-Jamal supporters, who maintain he is innocent, also have vowed to appeal a portion of Yohn's ruling that upheld the 1982 conviction despite defense claims of corruption and legal irregularities.
As one of 245 death row inmates in Pennsylvania, he has already had two death warrants signed for his execution -- in 1995 and again in 1999. But both were stayed by subsequent court action.
A one-time journalist for National Public Radio, Mutual Black Network and National Black Network, Abu-Jamal also belonged to the Black Panther Party that sought to establish a separate state for blacks in America.
Prosecutors say he murdered Faulkner, a rookie policeman, during a downtown Philadelphia gun battle in the early hours of Dec. 9, 1981, after the officer got into a scuffle with Abu-Jamal's brother William Cook. Abu-Jamal was shot in the chest, he maintains, while running from police.
His supporters contend that he was railroaded onto death row by a corrupt judicial system. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld his conviction and death sentence in 1989, and let stand a lower court's decision to deny his appeal for a new trial in 1998. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Abu-Jamal's appeal two years ago.
Since Yohn's ruling, Abu-Jamal has not been moved from his regular cell with 244 other death row inmates at a maximum security prison south of Pittsburgh. ``He isn't in any sort of process to be executed, but as far as housing is concerned his status remains the same,'' said Department of Corrections spokesman Mike Lukens.