Live From Death Row

Born Wesley Cook in 1954, the man currently known as Mumia Abu Jamal was a member of the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panthers; he served as that group’s Information Minister when he was just 15 years old. Known, as many blacks have, for referring to police officers as “pigs,” a young Abu Jamal was a supporter of MOVE, a Philadelphia-based Black Power cult known for its demonstrations against local residents and its incitements against police officers and the city government. An outspoken, controversial figure, he was a frequent guest on television and radio programs. An advocacy journalist and well regarded in Philadelphia and beyond for his interviewing skills, Mumia Abu-Jamal was destined for fame as a news anchor or writer; for a while, he even hosted his own show on Philadelphia’s National Public Radio affiliate WUHY-FM -- though he was eventually fired from that job because of his radicalism.

Sentenced to death in 1982 for allegedly killing a police officer named Daniel Faulkner, Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most famous death row inmate in the United States, if not the world. Abu-Jamal is the author of six books and hundreds of columns and articles; he has been on death row for the last 29 years. In December 2001, his sentence - but not his conviction - was overturned by Federal District Court judge William Yohn. Both the prosecution and the defense appealed Yohn’s ruling. Abu Jamal is presently incarcerated in the maximum-security State Correctional Institution Greene, near Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.

Organizations that have publicly declared their solidarity with Mumia Abu Jamal include: the Committees of Correspondence, Refuse and Resist, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Products, the International Action Center, and the NAACP. The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, whose officials frequently speak at “Free Mumia” rallies. Another notable backer is International ANSWER, which, at a large anti-war rally, played a videotaped message from Abu Jamal, recorded in his prison cell, to the cheering throngs in attendance.

Noted individual supporters include: Maya Angelou, Ed Asner, Alec Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, Ben Cohen, Susan Sarandon, Snoop Dogg, Roger Ebert, Mike Farrell, Howard Zinn, Molly Ivins, Norman Mailer, Robert Meerepol, Michael Moore, Paul Newman, Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, John Landis, Joyce Carol Oates, Naomi Campbell, Salman Rushdie, and Angela Davis. When the city of Paris made Abu Jamal an honorary citizen, Ms. Davis picked up the parchment for him. Another supporter was the late actor Ossie Davis.

Abu Jamal has been a guest speaker at several college commencement ceremonies -- in each instance delivering his addresses from the confines of his prison cell. In 1999, for instance, Abu Jamal spoke to the graduating class of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Likening himself to persecuted social-justice leaders of the past, he explained that he was a revolutionary seeking to raise public consciousness about America’s alleged repression of blacks and other minorities. “Revolution,” he said, “according to the Declaration of Independence, is a right” of all oppressed people. Among the other schools whose graduates Abu Jamal has addressed are Antioch College, UC Santa Cruz, Occidental College, and Kent State University.

The book, The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal, by longtime investigative reporter and Crime Magazine editor and publisher J. Patrick O'Connor argues that Mumia was set up. O'Connor confirms Abu Jamal’s work as a peace activist while a student at ultraliberal Goddard College and the fact that he was seemingly on the path to becoming a Rastafarian ascetic when he was charged with murder. Abu-Jamal admittedly carried a gun; a part-time cab driver since being fired from the public radio station for his unscripted political commentary, Mumia had twice been robbed and was concerned for his safety. Connected by several threads to the "back-to-nature group MOVE," which had drawn the ire and bullets of Philadelphia police during the Frank Rizzo years, Abu-Jamal was framed, perhaps to keep him from looking too deeply into police counterintelligence operations. The police investigation was incomplete, confused and much-revised, and the forensics were improbable. O'Connor states that, "It would not come out until trial that the police had not bothered to run any tests of Abu-Jamal's hands or clothing to determine if he had fired a gun or even if [his] .38 had been fired." Such tests being commonplace at shooting scenes, O'Connor correctly advances the view that the results did not fit the setup and were consequently discarded. Compounding all this was the flawed physical evidence, a biased judge, perjured testimony and a district attorney known as the " Queen of Death' because of her zeal for seeking the death penalty," particularly for black capital offenders. O'Connor sets forth a careful, well-constructed argument. O'Connor clearly lays out the case that Abu-Jamal should receive at least a new trial, if not complete exoneration; the investigation into Faulkner's murder deserves another look.

Write To Mumia:  AM 8335, SCI-Greene, 175 Progress Drive, Waynesburg, PA 15370
Listen To Mumia's Radio Show: www.prisonradio.org/mumia/htm