As South Africa scraps the death penalty, the ANC alliance is fighting to save the life of an American journalist on death row, writes Bruce Cohen
The African National Congress, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions have joined in the fight to halt the execution of an American journalist.
Former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, 40, who has spent 13 years on death row for killing a Philadelphia policeman — a crime he denies — received his death warrant two weeks ago from Pennsylvania Governor Tom
He will be executed by lethal injection on August 17.
On the day Ridge signed the execution order, ANC secretary general Cyril Ramaphosa sent a letter of appeal to the governor. Ramaphosa asked for ”compassionate reconsideration of the sentence … and that (Jamal) be removed from death row and be allowed to appeal his sentence”.
Cosatu, in its letter to Ridge, said it was clear from reports it had received that the trial was ”fraught with bias and prejudice. We are therefore persuaded that his death sentence should be commuted and that the entire record of the trial should be reviewed”.
Jamal, aka Wesley Cook, has been described as America’s own Salman Rushdie. He was a prominent radio journalist and president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Association of Black Journalists. In the 1970s he was information ”minister” for the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party.
Since July 1982 he has been in solitary confinement on death row in Huntington, Pennsylvania after being convicted of killing a police officer on December 9
The night of the shooting, he was driving his cab when he spotted his brother on the side of the road arguing with a policeman. He went to see what was happening, a melee ensued, and both Jamal and the officer were shot. Jamal was also beaten by police. None of the witnesses could testify who had fired the first or the fatal
Throughout his trial, Jamal maintained his innocence. The 12-person jury that convicted him included 11 white
In 1991, the US Supreme Court denied Jamal’s petition for review of his conviction and death sentence.
While in jail Jamal has continued to write articles for a number of newspapers.
Worldwide support for Jamal has come from a variety of individuals and organisations, among them Harry Belafonte and Whoopi Goldberg. Trade unions have been especially active in the campaign. Among the South African unions which have written to Governor Ridge are the National Union of Metalworkers and the Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union.
# Judging the OJ trial from a death row cell
Mumia Abu-Jamal has continued to write columns from death row which have been published in several American newspapers. This one, about the OJ Simpson trial, was written in October 1994
New Item: prosecutors for the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office announced recently that they would not seek the dealth penalty in the highly publicised case, People v OJ Simpson, where the ex-gridiron great is charged in the double murders of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole, and a friend of hers, Ronald Goldman.
If ever there was a case that illustrates who gets capital punishment and who doesn’t, People v Simpson is
Of the estimated 2 800 men and women on US death rows, a relatively small percentage of them, perhaps less than five percent, are on death row for multiple
Furthermore, over a third of the people on death row, over 31 percent, had no prior felony convictions when they were put on death row, according to statistics from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, Washington
How then did Orethal J Simpson, of Buffalo Bills fame, escape the potential, if convicted, of being suffocated by the state in California’s Gas Chamber?
What makes him different in the eyes of the ”law”? (To be sure, the writer isn’t suggesting OJ, or anyone else should be sentenced to death.) The critical difference — is wealth. As a black man charged with a bloody double-homicide of two whites, OJ was certainly eligible. But he differed from the roughly 400 others in California’s death row because of his remarkable financial resources — megabucks culled from a lifetime of pitching corporate products like the Hertz car rental agency.
Simpson has already committed millions of dollars to his defence team. The LA DA’s office knows every action, every inaction, and every motion filed will be fought with rare vigour — something it doesn’t have to contend with when the ”defence” consists of a court- appointed, poorly paid, and poorly prepared lawyer.
In the book Equal Justice and the Death Penalty, legal scholars Baldus, Woodworth and Pulaski write, ”after adjustment for all other legitimate case characteristics and the defendant’s race, defendants with court-appointed attorneys faced odds of receiving a death sentence that were 2,6 times higher than defendants with retained counsel.” (Northeastern University Press-Boston, 1990).
Imagine if OJ Simpson were OJ Jackson, and instead of a millionaire, was a washed-up ex-pro jock with no assets to speak of, with no ”priors”: Would the DA’s office have hesitated one instant before demanding death?
The state’s decision to skip the Death Sentence in People v Simpson is proof positive that money determines who lives and who dies in the biggest lottery game of them all — the criminal justice system’s capital punishment scheme.
In a nutshell:”Them’s that got the capital, don’t get the punishment!”