On 3 March 2021, revolutionary journalist, broadcaster, author and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal was diagnosed with Covid-19, after experiencing severe breathing difficulties since late February. At time of writing his condition is stable after having received treatment for excess fluid on the lungs and congenital heart failure at the infirmary of State Correctional Institute (SCI) Mahanoy. Now aged 66, Mumia has faced declining health after decades of medical neglect at the hands of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections; his liver cirrhosis, hepatitis C and high blood pressure make him especially at risk from Covid-19. His lawsuit against the same SCI Mahanoy for medical neglect that caused his cirrhosis is still pending.
No fair trial in racist courts
Mumia’s case shows the enormous impact of racism in the US legal system. He is serving a life sentence without parole for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. In 1982 he was convicted by a racially biased jury. As Suzanne Ross, spokesperson for the International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal, recently explained: ‘[Judge Albert Sabo] led the prosecution to exclude 11 African American potential jurors, and most important, he refused to share the information available on the racial composition of the jury pool and the prosecution’s now banned use of challenges to select a racially biased jury. Proving such a use of peremptory challenges would have won Mumia a new trial based on what is called the Batson ruling’. [1]
Judge Sabo also assigned Mumia an inept attorney and withheld evidence from the jury indicating that another individual, not Mumia, was the shooter, and that the actual shooter fled the crime scene after the shooting of Officer Faulkner. Sabo was overheard telling the prosecution he wanted to help them ‘fry the n*****’, before sentencing Mumia to death. The threat of execution then hung over Mumia for nearly 30 years, until in 2011, following repeated legal appeals and pressure from a strong international solidarity movement, the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
In 2019, yet more evidence documenting the corruption of the 1982 trial came to light, proving bribery of witnesses by Mumia’s prosecutors. This evidence was released by the office of Pennsylvania District Attorney Larry Krasner. Krasner’s office continues to challenge Mumia’s appeals, despite his having been elected on a progressive, anti-mass incarceration ticket. In March 2020 Krasner declared: ‘There are thousands if not tens of thousands of people in prisons across Pennsylvania who frankly should not be there, including people who are elderly, sick, have mental or physical disabilities, and who pose no threat of violence to the public’, and yet a reprieve issued in April 2020 released only 160 prisoners out of a population of 40,000.
The only treatment is freedom!
As we reported in December, Covid-19 has devastated incarcerated populations across the US with thousands of deaths. Prisoners in Pennsylvania are confined to their cells for 23 hours a day and this population is already blighted by diseases of poverty.
Since the commutation of his death sentence, Mumia has frequently described life imprisonment as ‘slow death row’. This has been sped up by the pandemic. Another Pennsylvania lifer, Bruce Norris, whose sentence was recommended for commutation by the Board of Pardons on 17 December 2020, died of Covid-19 on 30 January, after being incarcerated for 45 years. The paperwork that would have freed him was sitting on Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf’s desk. [2]
Join the movement to free Mumia – Free them all!
There are ongoing mobilisations in Philadelphia and around the world to secure freedom for Mumia.
Go to linktr.ee/Mumia to find resources and updates on the movement.
You can hear Mumia’s broadcasts at PrisonRadio.org and read his articles at workers.org
Send demands for Mumia’s release to:
Governor Tom Wolf: 717-787-2500
Pennsylvania District Attorney Larry Krasner: 267-456-1000; @DA_LarryKrasner
[email protected]
Larry Krasner, Philadelphia DA
3 South Penn Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Prison SCI Mahanoy: 570-773-2158
Pennsylvania DOC Secretary John Wetzel: 717-728-2573
Mumia receives FRFI and we wish him a speedy recovery. Please send messages of support to Mumia using the address:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal AM 8335
SCI Mahanoy
PO Box 33028
St Petersburg, FL 33733
Matt Glass
Break the Chains! North and East London RCG will be holding a street event in support of political prisoners on Saturday 24 April, which is Mumia’s birthday. Venue and details will be posted on our Facebook and Instagram pages
www.instagram.com/frfi_north_east_london/
[1] Freedom Has Never Been So Close: Global Street Meeting for Mumia Abu-Jamal from Youtube via Mumia Campaign
[2] Information from The Philadelphia Inquirer
