Free Mumia!

[Isome]

...and all the other wrongfully convicted prisoners in these united states. But, since the title of this thread bears Mumia Abu-Jamal's name I should first address whether the demand to free him is just.

Personally, I don't know with any degree of certainty. I do know however that both the possibility and probablity of his innocence exist!

Three eyewitnesses in the case, Veronica Jones, William Singletary, and Robert Chobert, later said they were threatened, coerced, or made promises by the police to get them to give false testimony against Mumia (who was a respected journalist and Philadelphia's leading police corruption critic).

Eyewitness statements corroborate Arnold Beverly’s confession that he shot Officer Faulkner. Beverly says he was wearing a green army jacket the night he shot Faulkner.

Eyewitness William Singletary says he saw a man shoot Faulkner and it was not Mumia. He states that the killer was wearing a green army jacket. Four other eyewitnesses, including two policemen, put a man wearing a green army jacket on the scene.

Five eyewitnesses described a man fleeing the scene the way Beverly describes it. Mumia could not have been fleeing the scene, because he had been shot in the chest and was lying on the ground.

Beverly’s confession is also corroborated by forensic evidence and the report of a policeman at the scene. The cop stated that an arriving officer shot Mumia. The downward trajectory of the bullet into Mumia’s chest also makes it physically impossible for Faulkner to have shot Mumia from the ground.

It's not as though innocent people in America have never been sent to prison, or even executed! It's an all-too familiar story by now, usually, but not exclusively, with a person of color being a victim of the system.

• geronimo (his preferred spelling is with a lower case "c") Pratt spent 27 years in prison for the murder of woman in California, despite the FBI possessing recordings, from a wiretap, that proved he wasn't in the state at the time.

  1. http://www.jackolsen.com/geronimo.htm
  2. http://www.cnn.com/US/9805/29/pratt/
  3. http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/geronimo.htm

• "Through its in-depth analysis of the Terence Garner case, "An Ordinary Crime" provides a chilling window on how our criminal justice system can fail miserably... It is tempting to dismiss this case as an aberration, but there is no reason to believe that there is anything that rare about what happened to Garner. As the documentary's title suggests, this was "an ordinary crime." The only unusual fact is that someone has exposed what happened here."
  
  
• Rolando Cruz was sentenced to death on March 15, 1985. He was convicted of the 1983 rape and murder of Jeanine Nicarico (10 yrs. old). Another man later confessed to the crime, but the confession was ignored. Cruz was acquitted after a third trial and freed on November 3, 1995. The murder remains officially unsolved.
  
  
• A Chicago Tribune investigation, published as a five part series, shows the frequency of prosecutorial misconduct in criminal cases against poor people and non-white people.

The "Free Mumia" cause has national and international support -- I'm sure this is to the chargrin of pathetically uninformed posters on DU who were whining about the presence of "Free Mumia" marchers & posters at the DC rally this past weekend. Those supporters include:

• Amnesty International, whose Director of USA’s Program to Abolish the Death Penalty, Sam Jordan, gave speeches on the innocence of Mumia Abu-Jamal in Durban, South Africa back in September.
• European Parliament
• Nelson Mandela
• the Congressional Black Caucus
• Danny Glover, Ed Asner, Mike Farrell, et al.

After reading the vapid proclamations about Mumia's guilt, I was awestruck at how ridiculous they seem. Let's face it no one knows except the late Officer Faulkner, Mumia, and GOD; the rest of us believe one way or the other. Consequently, we should give serious consideration to the many injustices, past & present, that happen within the judicial system in this country, and refrain from blind acceptance of dubious convictions simply because a member of law enforcement happens to be the victim.