For Release November 1, 1996
For more information call 212-713-5657
Philadelphia's hanging judge, Albert Sabo, who has presided over more death sentences than any sitting judge in the United States, ruled today that new evidence favorable to convicted journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal could not be added to the record of his hearing on a motion for a new trial.
This is yet another outrage in the 15-year persecution of Jamal, an award-winning radio journalist who reported regularly on police abuse in Philadelphia, and was in turn framed by police on a murder charge. Refuse & Resist! demands that this important new evidence be entered into the record of the case and that Jamal be immediately granted a fair trial for the first time.
Judge Sabo's ruling was the result of a hearing that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered him to conduct against his will, in order to hear new testimony from Veronica Jones, a witness from Jamal's original sham trial in 1982. At the October 1-3 hearing, Jones recounted how she testified falsely against Jamal in 1982 because police had threatened her with a long prison term in an unrelated case if she did not. Such a sentence would have separated her from her young daughters.
Jones had nothing to gain and a lot to lose by testifying truthfully now. At the beginning of her October 1 appearance she was threatened by Sabo with prosecution for perjury if she changed her testimony from that in the original trial, and at the end of her testimony she was arrested on the spot for an old outstanding warrant for failing to make a court appearance. In spite of the fact that Miss Jones never flinched in the face of these attempts to intimidate her, Judge Sabo found "her testimony to be incredible and worthy of little or no belief."
The admission of this testimony to the record is critically important because of the new Clinton-GOP "Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act" which rolls back the scope of federal review of state convictions to the era before the Civil Rights Movement. The new law requires federal courts to accept all finding of fact made by state courts and to rule only on points of law.
During the just completed National Month of Resistance in October, Refuse & Resist! has repeatedly raised this issue of "habeas corpus reform," or what might be more aptly called "the return to Cracker justice," while the major party candidates have called for quicker executions with fewer safeguards.
Jamal's case has drawn international attention because of the extremes of bias shown by Judge Sabo, bias so blatant that it has been denounced even by the major Philadelphia newspapers. The case was the subject of a recent HBO special and a major analysis in The American Lawyer, journal of the American Bar Association. The railroading of this journalist and political critic of the government has been so blatant that dozens of foreign government officials have now gone on record demanding a new trial for Jamal.
Refuse & Resist! joins its voice in demanding that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturn Sabo's ruling and grant Mumia Abu-Jamal a fair trial for the first time in his 15-years of false imprisonment.
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