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In recent
years, we have witness torture inflected upon people in the name of terror. In nearly
every city in America African-Americans are victims of abuse at the hands of
the police, vigilantes, and murdered that seems often times to go unnoticed by
justice.
In the last few month’s we’ve witness the assassination of a young
black child – Travon Martin – similar to little Emmett Till over a half century
ago. The Klan is on the rise and most conservative law makers are trying to
turn back the hands of time.
This brings
to mind another American travesty that goes unnoticed. During an Occupy the
Justice Department rally, held recently in Washington DC, I was struck by
something said by Hip-hop duo Dead Prez. This profound statement consumed my
thinking on the subject of what I like to call “Modern Lynching’s”.
The
statement: "Behind me on the wall it says this place is a place of hallowed
justice, it should say this is a place of hollow justice, there's no justice.
We're right in front of the injustice department because for over 40 years
we've seen Mumia Abu Jamal get no justice, we've seen Eddy Conway, we've seen
Mutulu Shakur, we've seen Herman Bell, we've seen Jalil Muntaqim, and countless
other colonial subjects shot down by the police departments inside this
country, no justice,"
This event
began with speakers and entertainment including MOVE member Ramona Africa,
Chuck D of Public Enemy, and M-1 of Dead Prez – all chanting, "Free Jamal.
Free them all". Hundreds of protestors with ages ranging from the 20s to
the 80s, including many parents with small children, rallied outside the U.S.
Department of Justice April 24. They were demanding freedom for Mumia, freedom
for all political prisoners, an end to solitary confinement, and an end to mass
incarceration.
This got
me thinking about a political prisoner whose name is Mumia Abu Jamal who turned
58 that day. Many people may not know or remember his case but he is a casualty
of the short end of the long arm of the law. If you don’t know who Abu Jamal is,
he was convicted in the 1981 for the shooting death of Philadelphia police
officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death row in 1982.
His
supporters maintain his innocence, insisting he was set up by a Philadelphia
police force that was under federal investigation for corruption and widespread
civil rights violations. Abu Jamal was hated for his work with the Black
Panther Party and his reporting in support of MOVE family members who were
often victimized by the Philadelphia cops.
The
Constitution and Western jurisprudence, going back to the Magna Carta and
before, do not require a person accused of a crime to prove his or her
innocence. The burden of proof is on the prosecutors to convince a jury of
one's "peers" to unanimously agree on guilt "beyond a reasonable
doubt." Not so in Abu Jamal's case. The odds were stacked against him from
the beginning.
Fifteen of
the 35 officers involved in the evidence collection in Mumia's case were
themselves convicted and sentenced to jail on a number of misconduct charges.
On top of that, he was victimized by a rigged, racist legal system which
unfairly manipulated evidence, excluded Blacks from the jury, and coerced
witnesses to testify falsely against him. His legal defense was a joke. His
attorney did absolutely no investigation of the circumstances which left
Officer Faulkner dead and Abu Jamal shot and wounded.
In
December 2011, Mumia was removed from death row following a number of court
appeals which went all the way to the Supreme Court. He is now imprisoned for
life without the possibility of parole. After the Third U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals upheld a lower court's vacating his death sentence, prosecutors abandoned
their efforts to reinstate the death penalty rather than go back into court.
Had they gone back in court, evidence of decades of police and prosecutorial
misconduct might have been introduced, possibly leading to a new trial. There
is abundant evidence "proving" Mumia's innocence.
The state
of Pennsylvania could never get a re-conviction. With all the forensic evidence
that has been uncovered, all of the witnesses who have recanted their
testimony, declaring they were forced to lie in the original trial by crooked
cops, if they dared to try to go before a judge again, it would be a wonder if
the prosecutor and cops would not be exposed and themselves prosecuted for
their underhanded tactics.
Right now
the United States represents 5 percent of the world's population but we
incarcerate 25 percent of the world's prisoners. And guess which group of
people is disproportionately represented in the American criminal injustice
system. This group also represents a large number of what I call the incarceration
of the “un-justiced”. We know CONTEL was real, it happened, and it happened to
US.
If nothing
changes – nothing changes! And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…
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