The Jamal Journal: The International Movement Supporting US Political Prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal: Mobilization4Mumia Press Release for Saturday, March 6 event for Mumia: Virtual street meeting to demand freedom for Mumia and all incarcerated elders!

Friday, March 5, 2021

Mobilization4Mumia Press Release for Saturday, March 6 event for Mumia: Virtual street meeting to demand freedom for Mumia and all incarcerated elders!

Mobilization4Mumia

Mobilization4Mumia.com

PRESS RELEASE

STATE PRISON ATTORNEYS CONFIRM ABU-JAMAL HAS COVID PLUS CONGESTIVE HEART DISEASE. MARCH 6 VIRTUAL STREET MEETING TO DEMAND FREEDOM FOR MUMIA AND ALL INCARCERATED ELDERS!

News that imprisoned radio journalist and veteran Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal tested positive for COVID came at the very end of a press conference on March 3rd in front of DA Larry Krasner’s offices. Abu-Jamal's attorney Bob Boyle called to deliver the news he’d just received from attorneys at the PA Department of Corrections. Boyle was one of the lawyers who five years ago filed the legal suit that won Hep C treatment for Abu-Jamal and other incarcerated people. Abu-Jamal confirmed via phone a few minutes later that he had been hospitalized for four days in a local medical center where 10lbs of fluid were removed from his body. Further tests determined that he has Congestive Heart Disease and COVID.

Dr. Ricardo Alvarez, an Independent physician with decades of work in prison advocacy, explained that the prison infirmary where Mumia is now being held is no place for those who are ill or elderly. “The only acceptable treatment for Mumia Abu-Jamal is his freedom.” He added, “We have a simple cost-effective public health intervention in the face of COVID in prisons- release our elderly prisoners. Data shows they do not pose a public safety risk.”

Abu-Jamal, a political prisoner and 66 year-old senior with COVID, cirrhosis of the liver plus a serious heart condition needs not just medical attention but the specialized diet and exercise and loving human contact that he can never receive in prison.

A virtual town hall, entitled “Freedom has never been so close”, on Saturday, Mar. 6, 2-4pm will feature up to the minute updates on Abu-Jamal's medical and legal developments and upcoming actions. Other parts of the program include COVID in prisons, political prisoners, police brutality and mass incarceration and special appearances by Chairman Fred Hampton Jr and Chicago Hip-hop artist Vic Mensa. Register in advance at shorturl.at .

Abu-Jamal's new medical diagnosis comes after 39 years of wrongful imprisonment due to police, judicial and prosecutorial misconduct—28 years unconstitutionally held in the infernal isolation of death row.

The prison infirmary at SCI Mahanoy is the very same place that in 2014 diagnosed Mumia as having critically low blood sugar. The infirmary then ignored the notation in his chart to monitor his blood sugar levels for three weeks. It was not until he fainted and went into renal failure that he was rushed to the hospital. It took a federal civil rights lawsuit and worldwide protests for Mumia to receive the fast acting antiviral cure to his belatedly diagnosed Hepatitis C. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections routinely fails to provide adequate care for Abu-Jamal and thousands of other incarcerated people.

Aging people in prison are vulnerable to premature death if they contract the flu, cancer, hepatitis, pneumonia, COVID-19 or congestive heart disease, in Abu-Jamal case. The only humane recourse is to let elderly and vulnerable prisoners go home.

Most governors have refused to decarcerate, failing to protect prisoners’ lives from COVID transmission by guards, who bring coronavirus into the prison because many live in rural areas designated COVID “red zones.” Holding a captive population under these conditions is a crime against humanity. It is morally indefensible because excessive and draconian sentencing in the last 40 years means that many US incarcerated people have grown old serving life terms or 40-year sentences. In contrast, most developed nations limit sentences to 10-12 years even for the most serious offenses.

Dr. Johanna Fernandez, Associate Professor at Baruch College remarked, “Ultimately we want a society in which social problems are not solved with carceral repression. Today’s reality has turned US prisons into cruel, old people’s homes for poor Black and Brown workers warehoused at the height of urban deindustrialization in the 1980s and 1990s when American capitalism could not employ large swaths of city dwellers.” She added, “At the very least, we demand that Dr. Ricardo Alvarez be allowed daily check-ins with Mumia’s medical handlers in the prison.”

Gov. Wolf promised to reprieve 1,800 prisoners but he has only granted 165. Separately, 14 people sentenced to life in prison, mostly from Philadelphia, were pardoned to life on parole by Gov. Wolf on Dec. 19th. However, he waited until Feb. 12th to approve their releases, too late for Bruce Norris, 69, who died from COVID 19 on Jan. 30th. (https://bit.ly/3uLzsq2 )

At least 110 incarcerated people have died of COVID in PA prisons. And “90% of inmates who died of coronavirus in 2020 were over 50 with likely pre-existing health conditions,” stated 32 PA lawmakers in a Feb. 8th letter to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf. (https://bit.ly/3uH11AH )

Free Mumia and all incarcerated people over 50 in Pennsylvania and every state prison immediately!

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HAIr44wtf-7oHeaDj5LlEXWcdHg2AlmSqhcVcIK3rgI/edit?usp=sharing

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ICFFMAJ’s Network of Supporters

Philadelphia:

Mobilization 4 Mumia

(215) 724-1618

mobilization4mumia@gmail.com www.mobilization4mumia.com

New York:

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC)

(212) 330-8029

info@freemumia.com

www.freemumia.com

Campaign to Bring Mumia Home

info@bringmumiahome.com

www.bringmumiahome.com

California:

Prison Radio

(415) 648-4505

info@prisonradio.org

www.prisonradio.org

SF Bay Area Mobilization to Free Mumia

(510) 268-9429

www.free-mumia.org

Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia

www.laboractionmumia.org

France:

Collectif Unitaire National De Soutien A Mumia Abu-Jamal

Telephone: 01 53 38 99 99

Fax: 01 40 40 90 98 contact@mumiabujamal.com

www.mumiabujamal.com

International Solidarity Committee for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Political Prisoners (COSIMAPP), co-founder Julia Wright

julianahrv1966@gmail.com

Mumia’s Legal Team:

Contact the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (click here)

Mumia FAQ by Mobilization 4 Mumia

On December 9, 1981 Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist and former Black Panther, was arrested for the murder of white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial that was rife with perjured testimony and manufactured evidence that Amnesty International found, "did not meet the minimum international standards for a fair trial."

Mumia was working as a cab driver to make extra money when he happened upon Officer Faulkner, who had stopped his brother Billy Cook, and was beating him in the head with a metal flashlight.

The prosecutor, Joseph McGill, presented a story that has Mumia running behind the officer and shooting him in the back. He then claimed that the officer turned around and pulled his weapon shooting Mumia in the chest. McGill ends the story by saying the officer fell to the ground where Mumia stood over him and unloaded on him, missing with several shots but hitting him once between the eyes. McGill also claimed that Mumia confessed to the shooting later on in police custody.

None of the physical evidence supports the prosecution's case! Mumia did legally own a gun, not uncommon for anyone driving a cab in Philadelphia during that time. However, the police never tested his gun to see if it had been fired nor tested his hands to see if they had recently fired a gun. They bullet taken from Faulkner could not be matched to Mumia's gun.

There were no divots in the sidewalk around the officer's head as there would have been if the shooter had stood above him. The only bullets that were found were approximately eight feet west to where Faulkner was laying and were from an angle that would not have been possible from the trajectory where Mumia entered the scene.

The bullet wound that hit Mumia also debunks the prosecution's scenario. The bullet was traveling at a hard downward trajectory suggesting that his body was learning forward while still running to the scene when he was shot, and that the officer was elevated, likely standing on the sidewalk.

The prosecution witnesses told different stories in their original statements than they did at trial. One, a prostitute named Cynthia White, changed her story five times by the time she reached trial. Another, a cab driver named Robert Chobert, who was driving with a suspended license while on probation for arson, first told arriving officers, "the shooter ran away." He then said the shooter ran thirty feet and fell despite the fact that Mumia was laying less than three feet from Faulkner.

Crime scene photographs that were never disclosed to the defense until 2007 show that Chobert was not parked where he said he was. They also show confirm that there were no bullet divots around Faulkner's head, that police collected evidence incorrectly - damaging its integrity, and that the officer's hat had been moved from its original place on the roof of a car suggesting that Faulkner was talking to a passenger.

Four different witnesses claimed that they saw someone running from the scene. In 1995 at a post-conviction relief act hearing it was discovered that Faulkner had a temporary drivers license for another person in his pocket when he was killed. The owner of that license, Arnold Howard, revealed at the 1995 PCRA hearing that though he was able to prove he was not there that night that he had loaned his license to a friend named Kenneth Freeman who was close with Billy Cook.

There were three different police officers who claimed that Mumia confessed. The only officer who testified at trial, Gary Bell, claimed that after Mumia was brought into Jefferson hospital for his gunshot wound, he yelled, "I shot the motherfucker and I hope the motherfucker dies."

However, the officer never made a report of the incident and claimed to have forgotten this crucial information for over sixty days. He had no recollection until after Mumia's defense attorney file police brutality charges due to the fact that the officers beat him when they arrived on the scene. After that filing all three officers came forward in the subsequent weeks with stories of a confession. The two other officers, Gary Wakshul and Thomas Bray came forward and neither of them had made a report on the night of the shooting. Wakshul even went as far in his original report to say, "The male negro made no statements." He made a second report a week later where he offered recollections of tiny details even so far as to remember the make and model of a camera found in Faulkner's car but made no mention of a confession. He later claimed that he just forgot.

Wakshul claimed that Mumia said, "I shot the motherfucker and I hope the motherfucker dies" while lying on the ground in the ER, unlike Bell, who claimed he said it while entering the hospital. Bray claimed that later while on a gurney Mumia confessed to him but in his story Mumia said, "I shot him and if you let me go I will kill all of you cops." The doctor who operated on both Mumia and Faulkner heard no confession and neither did any of the hospital staff. None of the officers corroborated each others stories.

After the police officers came forward with a confession story a hospital guard named Priscilla Durham came forward and claimed she heard a confession as well, but never alerted the police. She was interviewed by the prosecution and brought to trial. During the trial she claimed, for the first time, that she made a handwritten report about the confession the day after the shooting but only gave it to her superior officer. She somehow never mentioned this to the prosecution or the police despite being interviewed by both. During the trial the judge sent a police officer to the hospital who returned with a piece of paper that was not on hospital letterhead, was typed, and was not signed. This document was allowed to be submitted as evidence over the objections of the defense.

At the trial the defense tried to call Gary Wakshul after Mumia discovered his report claiming that "the male negro made no statements." The prosecution claimed that Wakshul was unavailable due to being on vacation. The judge refused to delay the trial and told Mumia and his attorney that they, "goofed." The defense would later learn that though Wakshul was technically on vacation he was instructed by the DA's office to stay at home incase he was called for trial, a fact that was hidden by the prosecutor.

Mumia had a court appointed lawyer who did not have the funds to investigate witnesses or do any ballistics investigations whatsoever. The judge who presided over the case was Albert Sabo, a former Sherrif and member of the Fratneral Order of Police who presided over more trials ending in death sentences than any other judge in the US. A third of all lawyers surveyed by the American Bar Association in Philadelphia said that he was unfit to be on the bench.

While the original trial was underway a court stenographer, Terri Maurer-Carter, for Judge Richard Klein entered Sabo's chambers and overhead Sabo complaining about the performance of the prosecution and said, "I'm gonna help them fry that nigger".

During Mumia's Post Conviction Relief Act Hearings Judge Sabo was brought out of retirement to preside. He sustained every single prosecution objection and quashed most of the subpoenas brought forth by the defense. He did not find that Mumia deserved a new trial and said so in a finding of fact that was a carbon copy of the prosecution's closing brief.

Friday, March 5, 2021

Mobilization4Mumia Press Release for Saturday, March 6 event for Mumia: Virtual street meeting to demand freedom for Mumia and all incarcerated elders!

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