/ 14 February 1997

Call from death row

Local journalists have been asked to lobby support for US prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Rehana Rossouw reports

SOUTH AFRICAN media workers, academics and journalists have been asked to add their voices to a growing clamour to save a journalist from execution by lethal injection in the United States.

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, president of the Black Journalists Association chapter in Philadelphia, were in South Africa recently to lobby support for the death row prisoner.

They are looking to this country for help as they are inspired by the freedom blacks achieved here, the abolition of the death penalty and the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

To many African-Americans, Abu-Jamal is regarded as a political prisoner. In 1969, at the age of 15, he became a member of the Black Panther Party. This was followed by a career in journalism where he exposed numerous instances of police brutality in Philadelphia.

His sympathetic coverage of the Move organisation in the 1970s and 1980s – a black organisation which preached an alternative lifestyle close to nature – earned him the hatred of the Philadelphia police force which was involved in bloody clashes with the movement.

Just before sentencing, the prosecution told the jury of Abu-Jamal’s membership of the Black Panther Party in an attempt to establish a motive as he had no previous criminal convictions.

Anthropologist and Abu-Jamal supporter Carole Yawney, who addressed a conference in South Africa on the beliefs of the Move organisation, said there was much South Africans could do to support Abu-Jamal. “He represents the revolutionary spirit in America, a spirit that was energised by the freedom blacks achieved in South Africa,” she said.

“The parallels between what is happening in South Africa and Philadelphia are uncanny. Look at the Steve Biko case, how the truth is emerging from police officers years after a brutal murder. This is similar to the investigation into corruption among the Philadelphia police.

“The new African nation in the US supported the South African struggle against apartheid. South Africa abolished the death penalty, while the situation in the US is getting more repressive and the prison industrial complex is developing rapidly.

“Most of the people on death row in the US are black, poor white, indigent, Mexican and Puerto Rican. This is similar to the situation in apartheid South Africa,” Yawney said.

She argued that South African journalists, in particular, could support Abu-Jamal by spreading the message of his imprisonment. In the past year, prison authorities have moved to censor him, refusing to allow him to broadcast from prison and restricting media interviews with him. This followed the successful publication of his book Live from Death Row.

It all began in December 1981 for Abu- Jamal, a radio commentator who was moonlighting as a taxi-driver in Philadelphia.

He witnessed a policeman, Daniel Faulkner, assaulting his brother in the early hours of the morning.

A few minutes later, Faulkner was shot. The policeman died on the pavement and Abu- Jamal lay nearby, grievously wounded from a shot from Faulkner’s service revolver. Six months later, Abu-Jamal was sent to death row by Judge Alfred Sabo – a judge who has sentenced more than twice as many people to death than any other judge in the US.

In June 1995, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge set a date for Abu-Jamal’s execution: August 17 1995. Four days before he was to be executed by lethal injection, a temporary stay was granted after his lawyer petitioned the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for a new trial. The verdict is expected in April this year.

Across the US and the world, there is growing demand for a new trial for Abu- Jamal. His lawyer, Leonard Weinglass, has found significant new evidence which weakens the state’s case.

Weinglass has found new witnesses prepared to testify in a new case. The most significant of them is William Singletary, a black businessman who was never asked to testify although he had given a statement to the police after the shooting. He said he saw a passenger in Abu-Jamal’s brother’s car pulling a handgun. He heard a popping noise and saw the man put the gun in the policeman’s face before running away.

Abu-Jamal arrived, asked what happened, and leaned over the policeman to check his injuries. The policeman then shot Abu- Jamal.

Singletary claimed he was taken to the police station to make a statement. He wrote four pages and was told it wasn’t good enough. He had to rewrite it four more times. Police officers threatened to assault him, see his business destroyed, and his parents harmed.

He changed his statement, signed it and left. “I felt like a lady who had been raped, I felt violated when I left. I couldn’t rest because I knew what was right and wrong,” Singletary said in an interview last year.

Abu-Jamal has had minimal resources for his trial. Judge Sabo refused to allow him to conduct his own defence and a court- appointed lawyer was engaged and given less than $1 000 by the state for his expenses. The jury also had only two black members, in a city where almost half the population is black.

Abu-Jamal’s gun was found lying on the ground near the scene. It was a .38 calibre, but the bullet removed from Faulkner was fired from a .44 calibre weapon. There was no check to see if Abu- Jamal’s gun had been fired, and no check for lead tracings on his hand – both standard police procedures.

Abu-Jamal never testified at the trial, saying the judge was hostile and it would prove no purpose.

In 1995, allegations of police corruption and coercion emerged in the Philadelphia police force and the FBI was called in to investigate. In the months that followed 42 criminal convictions were thrown out when it was proven conclusively that police had fabricated evidence against the accused.

* International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal can be contacted at e-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]. Internet address: www.webcom.com/nattyreb/mumia.html. Postal address: PO Box 19709, Philadelphia, PA 19143