We need to teach the people of this city the very basics of this case.
Dr. Johanna Fernandez
“What we see emerging is that this lower court is taking as facts and truth the evidence and findings of the original prosecutor, the police and lower courts — corrupt to the core, who concocted, manufactured and hid evidence.
“Because of the laws of this country, this judge is accepting as fact those findings of the lower court. Yet of the 35 police officers involved in this case, 15 were subsequently convicted of manufacturing evidence and framing people the courts convicted. We have the proof in the training tape made by prosecutor Jack McMahon that district attorneys were instructed how to limit participation of Black jurors.
“We saved Mumia in the streets. We need to continue to do that.”
Dr. Johanna Fernandez
Photos Outside the Courthouse.
By Joe Piette,
Reprinted from https://www.flickr.com/photos/109799466@N06/sets/72177720303204634/.
Summary of Mumia’s Court Date by Noelle Hanrahan
Yesterday, at 12:45 pm on October 26, 2022, a proposed order denying Mumia Abu-Jamal’s constitutional claims of jury bias and suppressed evidence was issued by Common Pleas Court Judge Lucretia Clemons.
Abu-Jamal’s defense petition included newly discovered evidence that had been buried in the prosecutor’s own files. This evidence documented key witnesses receiving promises of money for their testimony and evidence of favorable treatment in pending criminal cases. The petition also documented the abhorrent and unconstitutional practice of striking Black jurors during Mumia’s original trial.
Racism remains the ELEPHANT in the room.
“I am going to help them fry the n—word.”
Original trial court Judge Albert Sabo said this in front of court clerk Terri Maurer Carter and fellow Common Pleas Court judge Richard Kline during the first week of Mumia’s 1982 trial.
[Getting] “a competent, fair and impartial jury. Well, that’s ridiculous…You don’t want smart people. But if you’re sitting down and you’re going to take Blacks, you want older Blacks.” https://jerichony.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0aca83ec057f583557dec5ce0&id=786e56ddd8&e=285043de80 Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Jack McMahon in a 1986 training tape.
Yesterday, Judge Lucretia Clemons in her oral statements from the bench continued a common practice of adopting wholesale the Philadelphia District Attorney’s positions. These positions only seek to preserve convictions at all costs. These arguments prevent the defense from putting on the record evidence of discrimination. PCRA procedural rules such as time bar, due diligence, waiver, and previously litigated, all avoid a judicial review of the merits.
If you put thick blinders on that block out all reality and rely on procedural minutia for cover, honestly, it is still impossible to avoid the scorchingly blatant racism of trial judge Albert Sabo, Assistant District Attorney Joseph McGill, Mayor and former police chief Frank Rizzo, District Attorney during Mumia’s trial Ed Rendell, and Ron Castille DA on appeal.
The racism is so transparent and indefensible that the DA is using court-created law to dismiss cases before hearing new suppressed evidence. This is a blatantly dishonest practice routinely used by the prosecution and the courts when everyone knows, and I mean everyone knows, that racism was a hallmark of the original trial.
Striking Blacks from the Jury
Judge Clemons stated that she was dismissing the claim of striking Black jurors on procedural grounds, without addressing the merits of the claim. She suggested that former counsel for the defense had not sought prosecutor McGill’s previously buried notes (notes that highlight his impermissible race-based tracking and discrimination). Clemons adopts the prosecution position that the defense had the opportunity to receive these notes by merely asking the prosecution or cross examining ADA McGill in prior court proceedings. This is a key and deliberate misreading of the record. At no time were these crucial notes and the motivations that guided ADA McGill ever available to the defense. McGill struck Black jurors at a 71% rate, significantly higher than the strike rate for white jurors. His reasons for seating some white jurors and not seating nonwhite jurors were not on the record, they were in his notes.
One only has to look at the McMann training tapes that were made by the Philadelphia DA’s office which instructed district attorney’s how to strike black jurors. These were made after Mumia’s trial but they document the practice which was the norm in the office. This is the context for this ruling which misstates the record and ignores the reality in these Philadelphia courtrooms. Judge Lucretia Clemons and her law clerks complained on the record about how long it took them to find Pennsylvania cites to bolster their opinion. Why is Judge Clemons working so hard to avoid the elephant in the room?
Suborning Perjury: Paying Witnesses
Additionally, at issue is the note from supposed “eye witness” Robert Chobert that asked ADA McGill after the trial “where is the money that is owe to me?” This note was scrubbed from any filings and buried by the prosecution for 40 years. This dramatic “Brady evidence” previously unavailable to the defense, was dismissed by the Judge in her written opinion as not “being material.” Meaning it would not have affected the jury’s verdict. Underlying this is the wholesale adoption of the credibility determinations of the original trial court judge Albert “I am going to help them fry the n—word” Sabo. It allows his racist tainted rulings to stand.
She also dismissed records from ADA McGill that extensively track and monitor another key witness Cynthia White, whose pending criminal cases were ALL were dropped by the prosecution following her testimony.
How can the court ignore the context? Note this information which follows had been previously prevented from being added to the record by Albert Sabo and other judges on appeal:
Noelle Hanrahan, Esq.
nhanrahanlaw@gmail.com 415-793-7958 www. Prisonradio.org
Every act matters. Stand up. Join us as we launch Love Not Phear.
Watch the entire day of speakers outside the courtroom
By the phenominal video artist hate5six. 4 hours.
Abu-Jamal hearing: racism the elephant in the room
Analysis of Mumia’s Court date by Betsey Piette, Worker’s World.
Reprinted from https://workers.org/2022/10/67405/.
It has been just over 40 years since Mumia Abu-Jamal was subjected to a racist frame-up and unjustly sentenced to death row. The Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia held a hearing on his case Oct. 26, where Judge Lucretia Clemons was scheduled to render her decision on whether the new evidence found in December 2018 was sufficient to warrant a new Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) hearing.
Outside the court building, over 100 demonstrators kept up a spirited rally for almost four hours. The atmospheres inside the courtroom and outside were like night and day. Inside the court, it was clear the state’s intent was to bury the truth and continue to suppress evidence of the blatant racism that has permeated this case. Outside, powerful oppressed and working-class speakers, of all nationalities, spoke truth to power — exposing the racist and class-based oppression of the court system and the capitalist state.
Police, prosecutorial and judicial misconduct
A Black Panther Party veteran, community activist and revolutionary journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal was framed for the murder of a Philadelphia cop. As a result of police, prosecutorial and judicial misconduct in a highly contested trial, Abu-Jamal was given the racist death sentence in July 1982. Since 1981, he has been incarcerated under inhumane and illegal imprisonment — including 29 years in solitary confinement on Pennsylvania’s death row.
But the court hearing did not consider any of these points, as Abu-Jamal still sits behind bars.
Judge Clemons only considered three narrow arguments, based on evidence found in 2018 in six hidden file boxes in the District Attorney’s office, which had never been previously disclosed to the defense. A letter from the prosecution’s key witness, Robert Chobert, to Prosecutor Joseph McGill indicated Chobert expected to receive money from the Commonwealth in exchange for his testimony. McGill extensively tracked and monitored another key witness, Cynthia White, whose pending criminal cases were all dropped following her testimony for the prosecution.
The defense petition also documented the abhorrent and unconstitutional practice of striking Black jurors from Abu-Jamal’s original trial in 1982. McGill’s handwritten notes, found in the hidden files, showed he was tracking prospective jurors by race.
Clemons delayed hearing Abu-Jamal’s petition, while she heard several cases involving parole violations. When she finally opened the hearing on Abu-Jamal’s appeal, the defense attorneys and the prosecutor were asked if they had additional points to raise.
Judith Ritter, Sam Spital from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Brett Grote from the Abolitionist Law Center represented Abu-Jamal. Assistant District Attorney Tracey Kavanagh was scheduled to represent the state, but ADA Grady Gervino appeared instead. Gervino has a reputation as a hack who argues for procedural barriers to avoid any claims with merit, which works to prop up corrupt decisions that have enabled decades of police, prosecutorial and judicial misconduct.
Claims evidence not ‘material’!
Judge Clemons dismissed the documented request for money by the state’s eyewitness Chobert as not “being material,” meaning it would not have affected the jury’s verdict. She dismissed all the records showing that McGill had dropped existing cases pending against Cynthia White as irrelevant. In doing so, Clemons is following in the footsteps of her predecessor, “Hanging” Judge Albert Sabo, who prevented evidence questioning Chobert’s and White’s credibility from being heard during Abu-Jamal’s earlier PCRA hearings.
At the time of the shooting that Chobert claims to have witnessed, he was on probation and did not have a license to drive his cab. Photos from the Philadelphia Bulletin, taken by photographer Pedro Polakoff, prove that his cab was not parked directly behind the officer’s car, as he had claimed. But PCRA hearings allow judges to dismiss critical evidence through a time-bar limitation clause.
In 1981, Polakoff offered his photos as evidence to the prosecutor, who never used them. As a result, the photos were never shown in any court hearing. (Polakoff’s photos are available at https://tinyurl.com/yemaszuy.)
At a 1996 PCRA hearing before Judge Sabo, Veronica Jones, a police informant who was working as a sex worker at the crime scene, testified that police had coerced her and Cynthia White to claim they had witnessed the shooting, even though they were nowhere near the scene. Sabo had Jones jailed immediately after the hearing ended.
Striking Black people from the jury
The most disturbing of Clemons’s actions was her dismissal of the claim that Black potential jurors were struck from the jury on procedural grounds, without addressing the merits of the claim. Noelle Hanrahan from Prison Radio stated: “Clemons adopts the prosecution position that the defense had the opportunity to receive these notes by merely asking the prosecution or cross-examining ADA McGill in prior court proceedings.
“This is a key and deliberate misreading of the record. At no time were these crucial notes and the motivations that guided ADA McGill ever available to the defense. McGill struck Black jurors at a 71% rate, significantly higher than the strike rate for white jurors. His reasons for seating some white jurors and not seating nonwhite jurors were not on the record; they were in his notes.”
Clemons ended the hearing by producing a 31-page notice of her intent to dismiss the defense petition. Abu-Jamal’s attorneys were given 20 days to respond, after which the Commonwealth has 10 days to reply. The next court date is set for Dec. 16.
Prohibiting a new hearing denies Abu-Jamal’s attorneys the opportunity to question Chobert and McGill about the newfound evidence. By upholding Sabo’s patently unconstitutional misconduct, Clemons is showing that racism reigns unabated in the U.S. justice system. Her decision exposes how the cops, courts and prosecutors have conspired to make sure the truth in this case doesn’t see the light of day — in particular, the issue of racism in jury selection.
Peoples’ Corner – taking over in the spirit of our people
Meanwhile, outside the courthouse, activists and supporters of Abu-Jamal established a “Peoples’ Corner” and rallied for close to four hours, providing political education to all who listened. Supporters came on buses from New York City and northern New Jersey, while others drove from Washington, D.C., and Detroit. In several U.S. cities and in Mexico and Europe, people held watch parties to view the live stream video provided by Sunny Singh on Mobilization4Mumia’s Facebook page. (https://tinyurl.com/2p7385xh).
The rally ended when those in the hearing came out to give a report. Johanna Fernandez, with the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home, explained what happened inside: “What we see emerging is that this lower court is taking as facts and truth the evidence and findings of the original prosecutor, the police and lower courts — corrupt to the core, who concocted, manufactured and hid evidence.
“Because of the laws of this country, this judge is accepting as fact those findings of the lower court. Yet of the 35 police officers involved in this case, 15 were subsequently convicted of manufacturing evidence and framing people the courts convicted. We have the proof in the training tape made by prosecutor Jack McMahon that district attorneys were instructed how to limit participation of Black jurors.
“We saved Mumia in the streets. We need to continue to do that.”
Judge intends to dismiss Mumia Abu-Jamal request for new trial
Analysis of Mumia’s Court date by The Philadelphia Tribune Staff Report
Reprinted from https://www.phillytrib.com/news/local_news/judge-intends-to-dismiss-mumia-abu-jamal-request-for-new-trial/.
Mumia, Another Denial and The Role of Class Consciousness
By Jared Ball.
Reprinted from imixwhatilike.org video show.
Watch the four hours of footage of speeches from outside the courtroom.
Video by hate5six, thank you! 4 hours.