A victory for Mumia

A court rules that Mumia Abu-Jamal can appeal his murder conviction on three separate grounds.

By Dave Lindorff

Dec 8, 2005 | In a major development in the 24-year-old death penalty case of Philadelphia journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, a panel of three judges of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling Tuesday that Abu-Jamal can appeal his murder conviction on three separate grounds.

The court put the case, which has been in legal limbo for several years, on a "fast track," with the defense brief on the three claims scheduled to be filed Jan. 17.

The decision caught both the defense and the Philadelphia district attorney's office by surprise, because the appellate court had been compelled to consider only one possible avenue of appeal by Abu-Jamal. Pending before the same court is the district attorney's appeal of the 2001 lifting of Abu-Jamal's death sentence.

"Today we achieved a great victory in the campaign to win a new trial and the eventual freedom of Mumia," said a jubilant Robert Bryan, of San Francisco, who took over as lead attorney in Abu-Jamal's case in 2004.

Bryan said all three claims accepted for argument by the 3rd Circuit panel "are of enormous constitutional significance and go to the very essence of Mumia's right to a fair trial, due process of law, and equal protection of the law under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution."

A spokeswoman for Philadelphia district attorney Lynn Abraham said her office had no comment on the court's announcement.

Back in December 2001, U.S. District Judge William Yohn overturned Abu-Jamal's death sentence, saying that the jury verdict form used in Abu-Jamal's trial had been flawed and that the judge's instructions to the jury had been confusing. That decision was immediately appealed by the district attorney's office. At the same time, Yohn had rejected all 20 of Abu-Jamal's claims concerning constitutional errors in his trial and state appeal process, certifying only one of those claims for appeal to the 3rd Circuit.

Under federal court rules, an appeals court is not required to consider any appeal from a defendant in a capital, or death penalty, case unless that appeal has been certified by a lower court judge.

The only appeal certified by Yohn for appeal was a claim by Abu-Jamal that the jury selection in his case had been racially biased because the prosecutor rejected 10 or 11 of 15 qualified black jurors, using peremptory challenges, for which no reason had to be given. The jury that ultimately convicted Abu-Jamal had only two black members, in a city that is 44 percent black.

The appellate court has agreed to hear defense arguments on the jury bias issue, which is known as a Batson claim.

But the 3rd Circuit also agreed to consider appeals on two other grounds. The first is a claim, rejected by Yohn and not certified for appeal, that the prosecutor in the case, Joseph McGill, had improperly attempted to reduce jurors' sense of responsibility during the so-called guilt phase of the trial, by telling them that any guilty verdict would be vetted later. As McGill put it in his trial summation, "If you find the defendant guilty, of course there would be appeal after appeal and perhaps there could be a reversal of the case, or whatever, so that may not be final." In other Pennsylvania cases, including one prosecuted by McGill, the 3rd Circuit has overturned capital-case convictions on the basis of the same wording used in trial summations.

Next Page: The ruling is just the latest twist in a case filled with turmoil

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