Mumia's death sentence waived -- for now

On December 18 a federal judge threw out the death sentence imposed on Mumia Abu-Jamal but rejected Mumia's petition for a new trial 20 years after his conviction for killing a cop. U.$. District Judge Yohn based his decision about the death sentence on faulty jury instructions and verdict forms. The state of Philadelphia now has to either conduct a new sentencing hearing within 180 days or Mumia's sentence will default to life in prison.

This represents a small victory for the people but it is not close to the end of the battle. The criminal injustice system refuses to grant Mumia a new trial based on new evidence in the form of a confession by a man named Arnold Beverly who came forward in 1999 to admit that he killed the cop, not Mumia. This is typical of a system that is set up to railroad oppressed-nation men into prison.

Mumia was a member of the Black Panther Party and a vocal critic of Philadelphia police. His trial was a farce. The judge banned him from the court room, removed almost all Blacks from the jury, assigned Mumia an unprepared attorney who was later disbarred, and withheld evidence from the defense. One witness used in the trial against Mumia has since come forward to admit that she lied under police coercion. As part of his arguments for the death penalty, the prosecutor read a ten-year-old interview with Mumia where he quoted Mao's famous dictum, "political power grows from the barrel of a gun."

Of course, the prosecutor did not place this quote in its proper context: Mao was acknowledging the status quo, where the oppressors impose their will on the oppressed by force of arms. Elsewhere, Mao noted: "We are advocates of the abolition of war.

But to get rid of the gun, we must take up the gun." George Bush has said similar things a propos the "war on terrorism." The atom-bomb-wielding imperialists cannot criticize Mao on pacifist grounds, any more than the death-penalty wielding Pennsylvania courts can criticize Mumia. Where imperialism has kept the majority of humynity on the edge of starvation and com close to unleashing nuclear devastation a few times, socialism under Stalin and Mao managed to double the life spans of more than a third of humynity in one generation. We communists have done far more to end real-world violence than the imperialists, for all their interminable boasting. The prosecutor hoped to inflame the chauvinist prejudices of the jury by citing that old Mumia interview. The last thing he wanted was for people to consider that the shooting of the police officer may have been a justified act of self-defense, whether Mumia or somebody else did it. When Mumia arrived on the scene, the cop was beating his brother. Given the history of the Philadelphia police, which occupies the Black community like a conquering army occupies territory.

The focus of our fight is broader than just individuals like Mumia Abu- Jamal. His case is just one example of a criminal injustice system that needs to be brought to an end. It not only targets activists like Mumia but also locks up Blacks in general at a rate higher than was seen in Apartheid South Africa where the whites openly ran the government and the Blacks were second class citizens. Join MIM in the fight against the criminal injustice system. Check out the on- going battles against prisons in the pages of Under Lock and Key.