After 41 years in prison, most of it on death row, this Friday, the journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal faces what could be his last chance for a new trial to consider newly discovered evidence that casts doubt on his 1982 conviction for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Mumia Abu-Jamal’s lawyers say evidence in boxes discovered in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office by the new DA at the time, Larry Krasner in 2019, show his trial was tainted by judicial bias and police and prosecutorial misconduct, like withholding of evidence, and bribing or coercing witnesses to lie. Evidence in the boxes included notes from one of two key witnesses to prosecutors requesting, quote, “the money owed to me.”
Well, on Tuesday, a United Nations working group submitted an amicus brief urging the judge to grant Mumia Abu-Jamal a new trial to consider the evidence, and also cited evidence of racial bias in the case, quoting the statement by Mumia Abu-Jamal’s original trial judge, Albert Sabo, overheard by a court stenographer, when he said, quote, “I’m going to
— source democracynow.org | Dec 14, 2022