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Ruling Near on Abu-Jamal Jury

By standdown

That's the headline in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer about the controversial Philadelphia death sentence of Mumia Abu-Jamal.  LINKIn the nearly 26 years since his conviction for the murder of Officer Daniel Faulkner, the international tempest over Mumia Abu-Jamal has fixed primarily on this question: Did he do it, or was he framed by Philadelphia police? Yet inside the chambers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Abu-Jamal's innocence or guilt is not the issue. Since May, three judges have been weighing whether to reinstate his death sentence, overturned in 2001. If they do, his last hope will be the U.S. Supreme Court, which hears fewer than 2 percent of all petitions filed each year. The Third Circuit's decision, expected soon, will be based on knotty constitutional questions relating to the fairness of his 1982 trial in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court and subsequent state appeals: Were the jury instructions confusing? Was the trial judge biased in a later hearing? In addressing the jury, did the prosecutor downplay the likelihood of a capital sentence's ever being carried out? And - a key contention in Abu-Jamal's appeals - were African Americans purposely excluded from the jury? He was convicted by 10 white and two black jurors on July 2, 1982...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on January 28, 2008 (boomark / email).