I also do not have a position of whether Mumia was actually guilty. I do note, and this is the purpose of this post, that his case does not make him out to be a poster child case of wrongful conviction. He's unlike, e.g., Hurricane Carter or Rolando Cruz in that regard. The Beverly confession is hardly a show-stopper. Excellent lawyers, like Weinglass (Mumia's first counsel in this process, and the one who got him habeas relief) found it too weak to be credible. That is the legal point.
But there is also a political point. The political point is that it's a mistake for the left to get too invested in the facts of a particular matter in the legal process. You can't sensibly accuse people of being sellouts and phonies because they have beliefs about particular concrete facts that might well be so in light of the evidence. Julius Rosenbergh turns out, it seems, to have been a spy. That doesn't alter the fact taht he was legally lynched by an unjust process, he was framed anyway. Guilty or not -- unlike Moore I don't think we'll ever know, Mumia was railroaded, and no one should face death. That, and the political dimension, is enough reason to support the defendant in cases like this.
jks (esq.)
--- Joseph Wanzala <jwanzala at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> EYES WIDE OPEN ...
> ===================
>
> From: leslie jones <leslie at youth4mumia.org>
> Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 13:26:38 -0600
>
> From: AWOL Magazine
>
> Excerpt from Michael Moore's new book "Dude,
> Where's My Country?"·
> "Mumia [the campaigning Pennsylvania journalist who
> was sentenced for
> the shooting of a police officer and has been on
> death row since 1982]
> probably killed that guy. There, I said it. That
> does not mean he should
>
> be denied a fair trial or that he should be put to
> death. But because we
>
> don't want to see him or anyone executed, the
> efforts to defend him may
> have overlooked the fact that he did indeed kill
> that cop. This takes
> nothing away from the eloquence of his writings or
> commentary, or the
> important place he now holds on the international
> political stage. But
> he probably did kill that guy."
>
> So, despite the fact that Arnold Beverly has
> confessed to the killing of
>
> Officer Faulkner, Moore finds that saying Mumia
> probably did it is a
> good way to win over conservatives when having a
> debate with them. (The
> excerpt came from a section of the book on how to
> deal with a
> conservative brother-in-law) This is typical of
> white liberals with
> their weak-ass non-positions on issues of
> importance. These days
> Michael Moore is busy promoting Wesley Clark for
> president,
> notwithstanding the fact that the man is a certified
> war criminal. But
> he's a Democrat, and friends with black people and
> Bill Clinton, whine
> the sorry-ass liberals who are desperate for someone
> they think stands a
>
> chance against Bush. I heard similar
> rationalizations from people who
> were voting for Gore even though they felt Nader was
> a better candidate.
>
> We all know what good that did, and these fools
> still think voting is
> gonna change something. If it did, it would be
> illegal. The struggle
> for freedom in this country and worldwide has no
> time for these people
> who are so scared of the system they won't take a
> real, strong stand
> against it. Michael Moore, Amy Goodman and all the
> other phony
> limousine liberals ain't no help to anyone but
> themselves.
>
>
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