https://socialistaction.org/2018/05/01/why-my-brother-mumia-should-be-set-free/
Why my brother, Mumia, should be set free
/ 22 hours ago
May 2018 Mumia 2 4-30 cropped
“Free Mumia!” marchers shout in Philadelphia on April 30, as court
hearing reviews aspects of the trial procedure used in the frame-up
case against him. (Photo: John Leslie / Socialist Action)
By KEITH COOK
Reprinted from the Philadelphia Inquirer (May 1, 2018).
I was stationed in Europe 37 years ago when I received the call that all
black families dread. My little brother, Mumia Abu-Jamal, had been shot
by the police and was fighting for his life.
Mumia was the kindest and gentlest of my five siblings. At the time, he
had been working two jobs to support his wife and children and honing
his distinctive voice as a radio journalist. He was a rising star, and
the pride of our family.
Dedicated to truth, Mumia used his radio show to expose police
brutality, housing discrimination, and City Hall corruption.
Philadelphia magazine had just heralded him as one of “81 People to
Watch” and Columbia University had given him the prestigious Major
Armstrong Award for his radio editorial on the pope’s visit to Philadelphia.
Contemplating the painful reality of black life in America, I flew home
immediately. I arrived to a bad situation. My brother lay unconscious,
handcuffed to a hospital bed, and accused of killing Daniel Faulkner.
Faulkner was a white police officer; my brother a black man on the
scene. It seemed that nothing else mattered.
The police labeled him a cop killer. Journalists and politicians buried
his humanity. And Judge Albert F. Salbo — who, according to a 1992
Inquirer report, presided over 31 cases that resulted in the imposition
of the death penalty — convicted and sentenced him to death in the
absence of material evidence.
The conflicting and recanted testimonies and absence of a motive didn’t
matter. It didn’t matter that four witnesses told police that the
shooter fled the scene. Nor did it matter that a Justice Department
investigation had just concluded that the level of police corruption
“shocks the conscience.”
Still, Mumia maintained his innocence. In 1995, an international
movement stopped his state execution. In 2011, his death sentence was
declared unconstitutional; and now a pending court order demanding that
the DA release all the files in his case could open the path to his freedom.
In opposition, the officer’s widow, Maureen Faulkner, has asserted that
the police are victims of the legal system and that the appellate
process is a gravy train for criminals.
Yet, the incestuous nature of the District Attorney’s Office and
appellate judges tells a different story. In Philly, prosecutors who
convict defendants often become the judges who deny their appeals.
This miscarriage of justice brings Mumia to court Monday. He seeks
relief on the basis of Williams v. Pennsylvania, where the Supreme Court
ruled that one person, Ron Castille, should not be both prosecutor and
judge in the same case.
I believe Castille double-dipped in Mumia’s case. Before he became a
Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice, he was Philly’s district attorney.
As such, Castille helped prosecute Mumia in the city’s most famous case.
Later, as a judge, he denied Mumia’s appeal. In the 1990s, Mumia’s
lawyers asked for Castille’s recusal. The judge had been funded and
named Man of the Year by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), an
organization invested in Mumia’s conviction and execution. He refused to
recuse himself.
Despite these violations, Mrs. Faulkner is calling on elected officials
to turn their backs on the constitution and block Mumia’s due process.
Our family empathizes with Mrs. Faulkner’s pain. But we regret that the
police have manipulated her thirst for vengeance all these years in
order to conceal the truth about who killed Officer Faulkner.
Photos taken by a freelance photographer, Pedro Polakoff, appear to show
police cooking up the crime scene in Mumia’s case. In the photos,
Officer James Forbes, who testified in court that he properly handled
the two guns allegedly retrieved at the scene, is seen holding the
weapons with bare hands.
In 1995, amidst another scandal of police corruption, then-District
Attorney Lynne Abraham told the Legal Intelligencer that her office
would “discard any cases where evidence surfaces that even one of the
officers involved in an investigation lied in court or in written reports.”
We call on District Attorney Larry Krasner to honor his predecessors’
promise and stay true to his own pledge to right the wrongs of his
office: Do your part to help free my brother, Mumia.
Keith Cook served 26 years in the Army and retired as a command sergeant
major.
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May 1, 2018 in Black Liberation, Philadelphia, Police & FBI, Prisons.
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