In a 1982 frame-up trial presided over by now deceased “hanging judge” Albert Sabo, Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award-winning radio journalist, was convicted of the Dec. 9, 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. The grotesque trial proceedings have been condemned by groups ranging from Amnesty International and the NAACP to the European Parliament and the presidents of France and South Africa. One third of the 35 Philadelphia police officers involved in one way or another in Mumia’s case were later indicted on charges of corruption, witness intimidation, falsification of evidence, and involvement in drug peddling and prostitution.
Judge Sabo himself was a retired member of the death-penalty-obsessed Fraternal Order of Police and was widely seen as “a prosecutor’s best friend.” Sabo sentenced to execution a national record of 32 defendants (30 of whom were racial minorities) over the course of his 14-year stint on the bench.
According to an affidavit filed by award-winning court stenographer Terri Maurer Cater, she overheard Sabo state during a Mumia trial recess period and in the presence of another judge, “Yeah, and I’m going to help ‘em fry the n-word.”
This and other evidence of racial bias was clearly presented to the court. In one instance, said Bryan, a Black juror with a hearing disability, who explained that he could function perfectly well when he turned up his hearing aid, was dismissed while a white juror with the same disability was accepted.
The May 17 hearing began with prosecution designee Hugh Burns presenting the state’s case to reinstate the death sentence and execute Mumia by lethal injection. A 2001 federal district court decision by William H. Yohn Jr. had previously voided the trial court’s death sentence based on Judge Sabo’s flawed and ambiguous oral instructions and the similar written forms regarding mitigating circumstances sufficient to sentence Mumia to life imprisonment rather than death. In the face of repeated questions on this issue it seemed apparent that Burns was losing ground with his effort to cite cases to justify the flawed instructions that operated to lead jurors to falsely conclude that they had to be unanimous with regard to each and every mitigating circumstance to find sufficient grounds to sentence Mumia to life imprisonment as opposed to death.
In a withering presentation of Mumia’s side of this issue, Judith Ritter detailed the flaws in Sabo’s oral and written instructions and cited chapter and verse why similar unclear and ambiguous instructions had been struck down by the courts.
If Mumia wins on this issue, if the state insists on death it would be compelled within 180 days to hold what amounts to a new trial, except that the new jury would be barred from finding a verdict of innocence and instead be limited to choosing a sentence of either life in prison or death.
The prosecution has stated that in this eventuality the state has yet to decide if it would pursue a new trial. Instead it might well conclude that its interests would best be served by dropping the matter, thereby keeping Mumia in prison for life and avoiding having the state’s frame-up further exposed with a defense presentation to a new jury, replete with volumes of new or suppressed evidence that prove Mumia’s innocence. Before facing such a prospect the state has a further option, perhaps its magic weapon in turning any defeat it might suffer into victory. It can appeal any decision against it to that bastion of reaction and graveyard of civil liberties, U.S. Supreme Court.
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