TRUE   DEMOCRACY     SPRING 2001     TABLE OF CONTENTS
Political Prisoners in the U.S.

- Mumia Abu-Jamal
- Imam Jamil Al-Amin (s/n H. Rap Brown)
- Leonard Peltier
- Puerto Rican Political Prisoners
- Philip Berrigan
- The Agenda for African Americans
- Jay Kimball
- Pedro Murillo and nine other Colombian nationals
- Manuel Noriega
- Nuclear Weapons Opponents Found Guilty
- More Prisoners

outside of the U.S.:
- Jewish activists
- Lori Berenson



MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
#AM-8335
on Death Row for a crime he did not commit


   We know that the Black Panther Party was subject to police brutality because the party attempted to help African Americans so it is a foregone conclusion that anyone who is a member is subject to the same persecution yet when Mumia was himself injured with a bullet the night Officer Daniel Faulkner was killed, Mumia was taken away and locked up. Mumia made no statement regarding the case at all but much later the police claimed that he had in an attempt to poison people's minds that he committed the crime. Also an eye witness was coerced to lie under oath because she was terrified that the police would take her child from her if she didn't cooperate with them.
   She would later recant her testimony but do you think that Mumia could obtain a fair trial then? No, he couldn't because the courts wouldn't allow it. Mumia Abu-Jamal has been in prison on death row for 19 years now. Judge Yohn did not even allow the Amicus briefs to be entered into evidence in one court appearance because he knew that they would favor Mumia.
   Mumia was Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia according to an article written by Charles Brooks in The Black Star News dated May 4-10, 1999. Mr. Brooks went on to state that Mumia went on to become "an acclaimed journalist, reporting on social issues including police brutality exacted on Blacks in Philadelphia. The FBI targeted him as part of its COINTELPRO program designed to neutralize Black Nationalist organizations and individuals committed to the Black Liberation Movement in the 1960's. Jamal's lead attorney Leonard Weinglass [Leonard Weinglass is no longer Mumia's attorney as of this writing] told demonstrators, 'Mumia Abu-Jamal was brought handcuffed and shackled to stand before a judge who has put more people on death row than any other judge in the United States.'"
   In a flyer printed by a few of Mumia's supporters in New York City, the following, "Mumia Abu-Jamal was a radio journalist in Philadelphia, known as 'the voice of the voiceless' during the years of the infamous racist mayor, Frank Rizzo. Mumia won a Major Armstrong Award for radio journalism, and was named one of  Philadelphia's 'people to watch' in1981 by Philadelphia magazine. He was president of the Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia, and he had no prior criminal record.
   In December of 1981, Mumia was shot by a Philadelphia cop when he came upon a street incident where the cop was beating his brother with a flashlight. The police officer was also shot and killed, and witnesses saw one or more men run from the scene. Yet when police arrived, they beat the wounded Mumia before taking him to the hospital, and he was charged with murder.
   Mumia's brother and another eyewitness who say Mumia is innocent were harassed by police and driven out of town. Other witnesses changed their stories to implicate Mumia and were rewarded. The dead officer was holding the driver's license application of a third man. But it was Mumia that the cops wanted to get.
   Mumia had been a member of the Black Panther Party, and later a supporter of the MOVE organization. He was a vocal critic of police violence against the minority communities of Philadelphia, a city that was sued by the United States Department of Justice seeking to end the notorious brutality there. The FBI and Philadelphia police had hundreds of pages of surveillance files on Mumia, beginning when he was 15 years old, for his outspoken opposition to racism and police brutality.
   People began to question the charging of Mumia, so two months after the shooting incident the police suddenly put forward the phony claim that Mumia had 'confessed' in the hospital emergency room, but they had forgotten to mention it at the time or write it in their reports. The written reports and the emergency room doctor said Mumia made no statement.
   Mumia was then barred from most of his own trial for protesting an unprepared court-appointed attorney who was later disbarred. Eleven peremptory challenges were used to knock almost all Blacks off the jury. Vital evidence was withheld form the defense, and police were unable to establish that the fatal bullet came from Mumia's gun.
   The politics behind the frame-up were made clear when the prosecutor argued for the death penalty by reading to the jury revolutionary quotations from a published interview with Mumia from ten years earlier. The jury was told this is a dangerous Black revolutionary.
   In hearings for a new trial, a witness used against Mumia in his first trial came forward to say that she lied under police coercion. In retaliation, she was arrested in the courtroom as she stepped off the witness stand on an old warrant from another state. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court (5 of 7 justices endorsed for election by the Fraternal Order of Police) then ruled against a new trial."

The Nation article written by Marc Cooper

   Marc Cooper wrote an article which the Nation published in 2000 approximately in which he stated, "I make no New Years resolution. Instead, I have a simple plea: Oh Lord, please make 2000 a year free of Mumia. That's right. That's no typo. I said free of Mumia. Not Free Mumia."
   The Editor of Z magazine, Michael Albert stated in an Editorial, February 2000 "This is so disgusting that it is hard to comprehend how it can have left the pen of someone who calls himself progressive. It doesn't get better as Cooper calls Mumia 'a flaky cult member,' makes an analogy between Mumia and Charles Manson, and tries to portray those fighting for Mumia as mindless toads in thrall to a 'wigged out' phony, blinded to the plight of others facing the death penalty or other legal injustice, with benefit of comparable counsel."

As Editor of True Democracy (La verdad sobre la democracia) I was so enraged by the article that I read in The Nation that I determined that I would not renew my subscription to the magazine when it came up for renewal. That anyone should be put to death in which there is any chance that the guilty party got away with murder is so egregious to me that there are no words to convey to you how I feel about that situation.
   How many murders have occurred because the real killer was allowed to go free because of the deliberate incarceration of the innocent victim who had nothing to do with the murder? One is too many.
   
C. Clark Kissinger-Mumia activist struggling for Mumia's freedom
Portions from what Mr. Kissinger wrote
    Is Jamal a political prisoner? Well, at the time of his arrest Jamal had been under surveillance by the FBI and Philadelphia police for almost 15 years, though he had no criminal record. All the newspapers at the time of his arrest highlighted his political history in the Black Panther Party and his reporting on the police attack on the MOVE house in 1978. The prosecutor interrogated Jamal at length about a statement he made as a member of the Panther party quoting Mao Tsetung, and argued to the jury that this statement should be weighed as "an aggravating factor" in deciding whether to give him the death penalty (juries in Pennsylvania are supposed to weigh "aggravating" and "mitigating" factors in determining the death penalty). The Pennsylvania Supreme Court concurred, saying that despite his lack of a criminal history Jamal's "disdain for the system" should rightly be counted as an aggravating factor. I don't know, but all that sounds kind of political to me."
   Is Jamal guilty? Cooper agrees that the confession stories were concocted; that the ballistics evidence was "bungled" (actually, there is evidence to suggest suppression); that the witnesses were "unreliable" (in fact, the key ones were either bribed, or coerced, or both); and that the judge was unfair. But for some reason he then runs down the prosecution scenario of events, as quoted by another journalist, as the "best account of the incident." We might reasonably ask why the prosecution felt the need to fabricate confessions, "bungle" the ballistics, corrupt witnesses, and suppress evidence if their case was so airtight.
   I can't go through the entire defense case, which is readily available on the various pro-Jamal web sites. But let me pose two particularly egregious problems with the scenario Cooper found so credible: first, not one prosecution witness testified to seeing Officer Faulkner shoot Jamal, which entered his right chest on a downward trajectory and exited his left lower back. This demonstrates the sheer impossibility of the prosecution scenario that Faulkner fired up at Jamal as he was falling, unless Faulkner was using one of those magic bullets that changes direction in mid-flight. Jamal's lawyers contend with some justification that Faulkner actually shot Jamal first, which at minimum turns "premeditated first degree murder" into a case of self -defense--even if you choose to believe the prosecution story that Jamal shot Faulkner (which itself is by no means as cut-and-dried as Cooper presents it).
   The burden of proof is not on Jamal, but on the prosecution--and it is bad and very destructive when progressive people, and Cooper claims to be such, go along with and even promote the notion that the accused must prove their innocence, especially in a case that reeks of prosecutorial misconduct and judicial bias.

The New York Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition

   At the trial there was one individual, Cynthia White, who testified that she saw Mumia kill Officer Faulkner. There were others who supported aspects of the police account of what happened that night, but no one else testified that they actually saw the shooting.
   Cynthia White was a prostitute. We know that when she testified at Mumia's trial she had a number of outstanding cases against her. However, she was never brought to trial on those pending charges. What's more, she was subsequently protected by the Philadelphia police and allowed to "work her corner" unmolested.
   More recently another prostitute and a friend of Cynthia White's during this period has come forward. Pamela Jenkins has signed a statement for Mumia's attorneys testifying that a Philadelphia police officer, Tom Ryan, offered her the same deal Cynthia White apparently received; if she would testify against Mumia she would be allowed to "work her corner" and enjoy protection from the police. This offer was made despite the act that Jenkins was nowhere near the scene of the shooting that night. What's more, Jenkins states that "during this same period of time [when the police were trying to get Jenkins to testify falsely] Cynthia White told me that she was afraid of the police and that the police were trying to get her to say something about the shooting."
   None of the other eye witnesses remembers seeing Cynthia White at the scene when the shooting occurred. And we know that Cynthia White changed her testimony at the trial from what she said in her first statement to the police. This is also true for the other eyewitnesses who testified for the prosecution during the trial. No fewer than five people gave statements to the police immediately after the shooting indicating that they saw someone fleeing form the scene. (Mumia, however, who had collapsed on the pavement after being shot, was found a short distance from Faulkner.) But only one of the five told the same story to the jury, and one witness whose testimony contradicts that given by all of the others can easily be discounted.
   Why would witnesses change their story and testify falsely at the trial? Well, we have seen how the police attempted to influence Pamela Jenkins and did, apparently, influence Cynthia White. But there are two other witnesses who also give us an indication.
   Veronica Jones testified for the defense at the original trial. She is one of the people who, in her statement to the police that night, said that she saw someone run away. At the trial she did not repeat this story, however. Why not? She has come forward to say that the police threatened her if she testified fully at the trial. Jones, too, was a prostitute with outstanding charges against her. The police assured her that if she said at the trial what she had said in her statement the charges against her would be vigorously pursued, and her young children would be taken away from her.
   Finally we have the case of William Singletary, who tells us that when he made his statement the night of the shooting the police tore it up. When he refused to  corroborate the police version of what happened he was subject to so much harassment that he was forced to flee Philadelphia.
   The alleged confession was probably concocted by the police: Another particularly damaging piece of "evidence" presented by the prosecution at Mumia's trial was an alleged "confession." Here is the story, according to the police and as repeated by those who argue that Mumia's guilt is clearly established:
   Two police officers--one of them Officer Faulkner's partner, the other guarding Mumia in the hospital where both he and Faulkner were taken after the shooting--say that they heard Mumia shout, "I shot the motherfucker and I hope he dies." This statement was also, allegedly, heard by a security guard at the hospital.
   Can we believe this testimony? Every police officer knows that the most damning evidence against any defendant at a trial is a confession. And yet, according to the officers who now say they heard Mumia make this statement, they both "forgot" to mention anything about  it until two months later. Is that possible?
   The hospital security guard does claim to have reported Mumia's statement to a supervisor the next day. But a note that was supposedly written, and which would corroborate this assertion, has somehow "disappeared." So once again all we have is testimony presented well after the fact, and after the police first came up with the "confession" story, not any substantive evidence of a statement by Mumia that night.
   During this investigation witnesses were minutely examined about every aspect of shots they heard and saw. People were urged to remember anything that might even be remotely relevant, and written records were kept by the police of the most trivial comments. But there is no record, in all of these police notes, about this security guard or anyone else saying anything about Mumia's "confession" until two months later.
   What's more, the physician who treated Mumia in the emergency room has stated that he was with him almost continuously from the time that treatment began, but never heard any confession. And the officer who was guarding Mumia (one of those who two months later says he heard him make the statement in question)wrote in his log that "the Negro male made no comments."
   Evidence that could prove Mumia innocent was never gathered, or was "lost" by the police: Three items of evidence that are routine in any murder investigation could prove conclusively that Mumia is not guilty. But in this case that evidence is unavailable.
   No test was made the night of the shooting to see if Mumia had actually fired a gun. This test is always performed when a suspect is apprehended within a short time after a shooting takes place. And no test was made to see if Mumia's gun, the alleged murder weapon, had recently been fired.
   Finally, routine ballistics tests would be able to demonstrate conclusively whether the fatal bullet was, in fact, fired from Mumia's gun. But those tests cannot be done because a fragment of that bullet has, according to the police, been "lost." Yet we know that both of its parts (a large and small fragment) were removed from the skull of Officer Faulkner by the medical examiner. So the whole bullet was in possession of the authorities at that time.
   Is it merely coincidence that these three vital pieces of evidence are missing in this case? Or were certain tests not done, and a piece of the bullet deliberately "mislaid," precisely because the police knew that they might prove Mumia to be innocent?
   There's more with regard to the fatal bullet: There's something else that is curious about the fatal bullet. When he removed it during the autopsy, the medical examiner noted that the bullet was a .44-caliber. Mumia's gun, the alleged murder weapon, was a .38, and could not have fired a .44 -caliber bullet. (Mumia's gun was legally registered and it was routine for cab drivers in Philadelphia to carry such weapons for self-defense.)
   Mumia's trial attorney says he never saw the medical examiner's report, and so never raised this discrepancy at the trial. When confronted with the issue now police and prosecutors claim that the medical examiner was mistaken, that he was not a ballistics expert and was merely guessing about the caliber of the bullet. But if the medical examiner was unsure he was under no obligation to make any statement whatsoever. And of course, we would not have to speculate at all if the entire bullet was still available to be examined.
   Additional questions about forensic evidence: According to the police version of events Mumia fired the first shot into Faulkner's back from point-blank range. But there was no gunpowder residue on Faulkner's clothing. This is impossible if events happened as described to the jury at the trial. Also, it is claimed that Faulkner fired at Mumia when they were both standing, or while Faulkner was falling after being shot. Yet the angle at which the bullet from Faulkner's gun entered Mumia's body is inconsistent with such a story. The defense has no funds from the court to hire a forensics expert in order to prepare for the original trial and, as a result, these facts did not come before the jury.
   The judge was determined to see Mumia convicted: Mumia's case was presided over by hanging judge Albert Sabo who, at the time Mumia came before him for trial, had sentenced more defendants to death than any other judge in the United States. He did his utmost to hamstring the defense and to aid the prosecution. To cite only one example, when the defense discovered during the trial that police Officer Gary Wakshul, who had been guarding Mumia in the hospital, made a note the night of the shooting stating that Mumia "made no comments," the defense wanted to call Wakshul in order to refute the claim of an alleged confession. But the police and prosecution asserted that Wakshul was unavailable to come to court because he was on vacation at the time. The defense asked for a delay in the proceedings until he returned. Judge Sabo denied the motion, saying it was the responsibility of the defense to have potential witnesses available for the trial.    
   Judge Sabo was once denounced by five assistant district attorneys who issued a statement declaring that it was impossible for any defendant to get a fair trial in Sabo's court.
   Blacks were systematically eliminated from the jury by the prosecution: A recent study of ten years of the death penalty in Pennsylvania found in capital cases Black jurors were five times more likely than white jurors to be excused. In Mumia's trial, however, the figure was: 16.5 times more likely.
   Mumia was denied the right to defend himself: The court had appointed an attorney to defend Mumia. But this attorney was, by his own admission, completely unprepared for the trial and asked to be excused from the case. Mumia, however, asked to be allowed to defend himself. Judge Sabo at first granted this request.
   Mumia, though not a lawyer, had worked extensively as a journalist covering the criminal courts and was quite familiar with the legal system. During the early phase of jury selection he showed himself to be intelligent and competent as an advocate in his own behalf. Too much so, perhaps. Judge Sabo apparently feared that if the jurors came to know Mumia as an intelligent and reasonable human being it would undermine the prosecution's case against him--as a deranged Black militant who advocated the indiscriminate shooting of cops. Sabo found a pretext to take away Mumia's right to act as his own attorney and reimposed the original court-appointed lawyer.
   All of the commentaries by police, prosecutors, and others trying to claim that this trial was conducted fairly, assert that Mumia was removed from acting as his own attorney because he was disruptive during the trial. This is untrue. There were times when Mumia openly expressed his hostility to the legal process being used against him, and to Judge Sabo. But all of these incidents occurred after he was disallowed from acting in his own defense.
   During the penalty phase of the trial the prosecution had to convince the jury to vote for a death sentence. Mumia's previous political affiliation with the Black Panther Party played a prominent role in this effort. The prosecution brought out an old interview with Mumia--when he was 16 and still in high school. In this interview he had quote favorably from Mao Tsetung who said, "political power grows from the barrel of a gun." This was presented as "proof" that there was a dangerous killer who had to be put to death. Mumia was not allowed to explain why he had used that quote, nor what it had meant in the context of the interview.
   And so, despite the fact that Mumia had no previous police record of any kind whatsoever, the jury did come back with the maximum sentence. Truly, here is a man who faces execution because of his political ideas--or, more correctly perhaps, because of the political ideas which the prosecuting attorney attributed to him before the jury.
   In a different case the United States Supreme Court has ruled it a violation of First Amendment protections for political views to be used as motivation for a death sentence.
   
Evidence
   The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania claims four eyewitnesses:
Cynthia White (the prostitute who received favorable treatment by law enforcement, according to testimony unexpectedly blurted out by Veronica Jones at the 1982 trial) initially told police that the shooter was "short" (her estimate: "shorter than 5'8""), while Jamal is lean and tall (6'1");
   Robert Chobert (the cab driver on probation and driving without a valid  license who solicited assistance from the trial prosecutor concerning his livelihood) described the shooter as "heavy" - indeed, about fifty five pounds heavier than Mumia (his estimate: 225 pounds);
   Chobert saw that the shooter wore "jeans" and a brown shirt, whereas Jamal was wearing a brightly-colored red and blue ski jacket and khaki flowing "Arab" pants;
   Michael Scanlan (the prosecution's most reliable fact witness) expressed "certain[ty]" that the shooter had an "Afro" hairstyle, while Jamal had [still does] distinctive dreadlocks (perhaps Jamal's most distinctive physical attribute), and he misidentified Jamal as the driver of the Volkswagen (he specifically disavowed that Jamal was the shooter).
   The trial prosecutor admitted that Scanlan "will not be an identification witness, simply because he has said to me that he does not know whether or not he could identify...he is not sure of identification himself." The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania nonetheless argues that Scanlan is an "identification" witness because he saw "all the things the other witnesses saw petitioner doing." This is nonsensical. Scanlan no doubt saw the shooter fire at the slain officer. There has never been a dispute about the fact that there was a shooter who Scanlan and others saw. The fact remains, and the Commonwealth studiously ignores it, Scanlan identified the shooter with "certain[ty]" as having an "Afro" hairstyle. Moreover, the Commonwealth is absolutely correct in claiming that Scanlan had an unobstructed view of the shooter and the shooting (as is evidenced by the fact that he saw the slain officer's body jerk form the impact of the bullet). Scanlan's observations powerfully exculpate Jamal.
   Albert Magilton (the pedestrian crossing the street when shooting erupted) did not see the shooting at all and could provide no description of the shooter. The reality is that the prosecution eyewitnesses offered "mutually corroborating" accounts. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the witnesses contradicted each other on numerous points relating to the flow of events (in addition to the descriptions of the shooter).
   What makes this case so egregious is the fact that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's "truncated narrative omits critical facts." "For example, the Commonwealth states that Chobert's account given at the scene comported with his trial account. This is patent nonsense. Chobert explicitly told authorities that the shooter 'ran away.' Although Jamal was found slouched on a curb within a few feet of the slain officer, Chobert directed the police's attention to the path of the shooter's flight: eastbound on Locust, where a nearby alleyway provided an easy escape route for the actual shooter. Precisely because the shooter 'ran away' after firing at the officer whose quick use of deadly force angered a third civilian, the actual shooter was never shot. Moreover, Chobert felt safe to leave his cab and walk towards the slain officer before the police arrived. Chobert never told police on December 9, 1981, that the shooter walked or stumbled the few feet to the curb where Jamal was ultimately found by arriving officers. He had told police the shooter 'ran away.' That characterization of the shooter's immediate response after the shooting exonerates Jamal, as it is undisputed that Jamal was in no condition to run (and did not run from the scene to any degree). Consequently, Chobert's trial testimony, wherein he recanted this claim that the shooter 'ran away,' was devastating to the defense.
   Significantly, Chobert was never asked to look at Jamal in a standing position (where bulk and girth could be viewed). This is a critical omission by law enforcement because Chobert described the shooter as heavy-set (225 lbs.).
   Dessie Hightower (the young college student called by the defense) told police he saw a person flee in the same direction described by Chobert and stuck with that account at trial, even though he alone had been subject, without cause, to an onerous polygraph examination.
   The Commonwealth defects the analysis towards the irrelevant issue of whether Hightower passed a polygraph examination where flight was never broached as a topic. The fact that Hightower was the only eyewitness subject to a polygraph examination, without explanation, is the relevant point, as it suggests that investigators sought to discredit a witness who was unwilling to retract, or at the least, water down, his account."
   Another eyewitness, Deborah Kordansky (the young woman who was in a hotel room overlooking the scene) also described flight in the same direction as described by Chobert. Kordansky repeatedly resisted the prosecution's suggestion that he was running toward the arriving police, and insisted that her best recollection was that the man was running eastward.
   There was a reason defense counsel at trial desperately wanted Kordansky to appear: she bolstered the defense theory that the shooter had fled immediately after the shooting, a claim that Hightower, Chobert, and Veronica Jones supported in their initial statements to police.
   William Singletary (the bystander who spoke with Highway Patrol Officer Vernon Jones) observed the shooter flee in the same direction as Chobert described.
   The Commonwealth continues its silence regarding the highly suspicious fact that this supposedly irrelevant bystander who saw nothing of consequence received so much police attention at a time when resources were at a premium (again, while a damning confession allegedly fell through the investigative cracks).
   Far from refuting Singletary's account, P. O. Vernon Jones corroborated both that Singletary was present at the scene when Jones arrived 'within two minutes of the assist officer' and that Singletary was sent to police headquarters to be interviewed. The fact that Jones was questioned by homicide detectives a week later for the sole purpose of asserting that Singletary had not seen the shooting was just another step in the police effort to suppress this witness's true account of the shooting. Indeed, at the PCRA hearing Jones maintained that he had no independent recollection of what Singletary said to him, or of the statement he purportedly gave to homicide detectives. Compounding the police misconduct in suppressing Singletary's statement, at trial the prosecution objected when the defense sought to question the investigating detective as to why he had not investigated P. O. Jones's statement that another witness was present at the scene, and the defense was precluded from pursuing this inquiry."
   "Nor has the Commonwealth been able to suggest why this witness, with a stable background, no criminal record and no bias against law enforcement, would inject himself into this case and proffer palpably false testimony. Its own police witness testified that he knew Singletary to be a respectable businessman who had no bias against police, and that there was 'nothing unusual' about Singletary.
   Finally, the Commonwealth has no answer to the fact that Singletary was the only witness who accurately described Jamal's pants as green Arab-style 'harem' pants, 'long and flowing,' with 'elastic in the ankle.' While the Commonwealth insinuates that this description is far-fetched, it is actually accurate (Chobert, by contrast, identified the shooter as wearing jeans, which is patently wrong) [unless one considers that he was referring to the real shooter]--a fact that can be verified by simply examining the pants."
   Lastly, "the Commonwealth blatantly ignores crucial testimony given by a Philadelphia law enforcement witness at the 1996 supplemental PCRA hearing. Det. Daniel Bennett (now retired) testified that he and another detective interviewed Jones at her mother's home six days after the shooting. The visit was unannounced in advance, and Jones appeared to Det. Bennett to be lucid and clear-headed. Det. Bennett memorialized the interview with Jones in a standard police interview form. When asked to explain the thrust of Jones's account during that interview, Det. Bennett explained that Jones had described seeing two persons running away from the scene. Det. Bennett was 'positive' that Jones was describing flight away, not towards, the crime scene.
   The Commonwealth nonetheless insists, without evidentiary support, that Jones's account of what she saw, as memorialized in Det. Bennett's report, indicates that two men were running towards the scene of the shooting. That Det. Bennett, the person who would know best, disavows such an interpretation of Jones's rendition of what she observed figures not at all in the Commonwealth's treatment of the record."
   It is not my intention to usurp the lawyers who diligently adjudicate cases. It is clear that when the United States breaks laws, the law is subverted. It is for that reason alone that True Democracy (La verdad sobre la democracia in Spanish) exists because when the law fails to properly dispense a case, then boycott must bring justice.
   What you have just read is from people who are extremely knowledgeable about this case. This last lengthy quoted information is what lawyers filed to the Court on March 24, 2000.
   In view of the United States Supreme Court enabling George W. Bush to assume the presidency undermining all laws in the United States Constitution, so blatant an act that it reinforces my view that the people who support Mumia Abu-Jamal's innocence which I believe would be everyone who reads this documented information here will believe he is innocent and should be freed and allowed to sue for false arrest. To be on death row for a crime that he didn't commit, is more than egregious; it is preposterous. To know that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania deliberately subverted justice because of the color of a man's skin is going against all logic. Mumia Abu-Jamal is just as much a human being as you or I are. He deserves freedom and safety from ever being harmed again.
   Right now, Mumia is incarcerated at SCI Greene  in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, SCI standing for State Correctional Institute which is a supermaximum security "control unit" in Western Pennsylvania.
   For those who disdain that he is the only person to suffer the indignities of prisoners, allow me to share with you that in his book All Things Censored ©2000 edited by Noelle Hanrahan, published by Seven Stories Press, Mumia shares with readers how much he feels compassion for other prisoners completely ignoring his situation.
   There is no more altruistic individual in my opinion than Mumia Abu-Jamal, a feeling I feel about Leonard Peltier, another victim of the agency called the FBI.
   Please demand that Mumia Abu-Jamal be released to his family and C. Clark Kissinger, his longtime advocate and supporter as well as Mark Clement, another longtime advocate by the Governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge. Gov. Ridge's contact information is as follows: Governor Tom Ridge, 225 Main Capitol, Harrisburg, PA USA 17120, (717) 787-2500, Email: http://sites.state.pa.us/PA_Exec/Governor/govmail.html. Tell Governor Ridge that you will not visit Pennsylvania on vacation or purchase the products Pennsylvania produces until he frees Mumia and allows him to sue for false arrest against the federal government. Do it now please.

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