Following a long and expensive investigation Veronica Jones, a prostitute who had offered damaging testimony against Mumia in the 1982 trial was located. She readily told the investigators that she had lied during her testimony as the result of coercion by the police and admitted she had, in fact, seen two people run from the scene of the shooting. It had always been the prosecution's that Mumia had to be the shooter since there was no evidence that anyone else had been present. She. signed a sworn statement admitting her trial testimony was untruthful and related the true version of events.
On June 10th, 1996, we filed a motion with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court asking that the case be remanded back to the Court of Common Pleas (any Judge but Sabo) so that her testimony could be taken and added to the appellate record. The District Attorney objected and asked the Court to simply ignore this new development. We filed a reply to the District Attorney's objection noting that the DA. didn't dispute the fact that Veronica was coerced and had lied at trial. As of this writing, we have not yet received the Court's decision on our request.
On June 11th the District Attorney filed a 192 page answering brief to our opening brief in the Supreme Court. The rules allow for only a 70 page brief. but the DA. asked for special permission to file a brief more than twice as large and the Court agreed. Also the rules require the answering brief to be filed within 30 days. The DA. took 70 days, with the Court's permission. We now have till August 5th to respond. We are currently working on ant drafts of the reply and have searched the record to uncover many false representation made in their brief Their document was a particularly nasty piece of writing, blaming Mumia the lawyers the supporters and the media for trying to "manufacture bias" on be part of a beleaguered Judge Sabo. It reminded us of the comment made by a Philadelphia lawyer about an earlier brief filed by that office In the Scarfo case:
"This is the first time in councel's long tenure at the bar that such a throughly scurrilous, unprofessional and vicious attack has been launched under the guise of a legal document."
When the Scarfo case was finally decided in 1992, the Court's opinion contained the following unprecedented observation about the Philly DA.
"We are especially concerned that prosecutorial misconduct seems to arise in Philadelphia County more so than in any other county in this Commonwealth."
The DA was was reminded that "the Commonwealth's client is justice" and asked to take "...a more thoughtful approach to the prosecutorís role in our society." It hasn't. Incidentally, the proscutor in the Scarfo case was none other than Joey Grant, the DA who handled Mumia's post conviction hearing last Summer.
On the executive front It's worth noting that Governor Tom Ridge has now signed over 42 warrants for execution since taking office 15 months ago, exceeding the total number of warrants signed by all the former Governors in the. last 33 years. And the US Supreme Court has recently upheld a part of the "reforms" contained in the Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 which are designed to both restrict and speed up the appeals process of those on death row The major portions of the act which will restrict Murma's ability to get anew trial have yet to be tested but the trend is ominous.
Thank for your continuing support.
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