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PENNSYLVANIA: U.S. SUPREME COURT RULES IN FAVOR OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
October 11, 2011: The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request from Philadelphia prosecutors who want to re-impose a death sentence on former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted in 1982 of killing a white Philadelphia police officer in 1981.
The justices refused to get involved in the racially charged case. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ordered a new sentencing hearing for Abu-Jamal after finding that the death-penalty instructions given to the jury at Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial were potentially misleading.
Courts have upheld Abu-Jamal's conviction for killing Officer Daniel Faulkner over objections that African-Americans were improperly excluded from the jury. The federal appeals court in Philadelphia said prosecutors could agree to a life sentence for Abu-Jamal or try again to sentence him to death.
The Philadelphia District Attorney's office appealed the ruling, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, ending decades of legal wrangling over his death sentence.
The DA's office declined to comment on the Supreme Court's decision against taking the case. Abu-Jamal, born Wesley Cook, will now spend the rest of his life in prison unless the Philadelphia District Attorney's office seeks the death penalty again at the new sentencing hearing in a county trial court.
"At long last, the profoundly troubling prospect of Mr. Abu-Jamal facing an execution that was produced by an unfair and unreliable penalty phase has been eliminated," said John Payton, president and director-counsel for the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund, which represented Abu-Jamal. "Like all Americans, Mr. Abu-Jamal was entitled to a proper proceeding that takes into account the many substantial reasons why death was an inappropriate sentence." (Sources: Associated Press, International Business Times, 11/10/2011)
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