Mumia - Legal Update re US Supreme Court
From: "Political Prisoner News"
Date: Tue, January 19,
Dear All:
This morning the U.S. Supreme Court issued the
long-awaited ruling in the case of my client,
Mumia Abu-Jamal, which we have been litigating
for 15 months. The decision was as we
expected. Mumia's case has been sent back to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit,
Philadelphia, for further proceedings consistent
with the decision last weak in another case:
"The petition for a writ of certiorari is
granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is
remanded to the United States Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit for further consideration
in light of Smith v. Spisak, 558 U.S. ___ (2010)."
The decision is not bad and was unavoidable in
view of the Spisak case ruling. Now we must
resume litigating the issue of the death penalty
in the lower federal court. It previous ruled
that the trial judge misled the jury and thus
Mumia was entitled to a new jury trial on the
issue of death or life. That is still the issue.
What occurred in Mumia's case is different both
procedurally and factually from the jury
instructions in Spisak. The prosecution disagrees.
Soon I will be posting more information on our
website:
That may be checked regularly for updated information.
Petition for President Barack Obama It is
crucial for people to sign the petition for
President Barack Obama regarding Mumia, which is
in 10 languages ("Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Global
Abolition of the Death Penalty"). Please
circulate the petition as widely as possible and,
of course, sign. The link is:
Over 8,000 people, mostly from Germany, have
signed in the few days since we launched the
petition. These include: Günter Grass, Germany
(Nobel Prize in Literature); Bishop Desmond Tutu,
South Africa (Nobel Peace Prize); Danielle
Mitterrand, Paris (former First Lady of France);
Fatima Bhutto, Pakistan (writer); Noam Chomsky,
MIT (philosopher & author); Ed Asner (actor; Mike
Farrell (actor); and Michael Radford (director of
the Oscar winning film Il Postino).
There is also a Facebook page for Mumia and our
work to save him:
Tax-deductible Donations for Mumia's Legal
Defense The only way to guarantee that donations
in the U.S. go only to the legal defense, is to
make checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild
Foundation (indicate Mumia on the bottom left),
or contact my office
(
The contributions are tax deductible under the
Internal Revenue Code Code, section 501(c)(3), and should be mailed to:
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
Conclusion Mumia remains on death row under a
death judgment. He is in greater danger than at
any time since his arrest over 28 years ago. The
prosecution has said it will continue pursuing
his execution. I win cases, and will not let them kill Mumia.
Yours very truly,
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
A Supreme Court blow to anti-death penalty icon Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/274655
The Supreme Court on Tuesday reversed an appeals
court ruling that would have given Mumia
Abu-Jamal a chance to avoid the dealth penalty.
Some opponents of capital punishment have championed Abu-Jamal's case.
----------
By
Richey Staff writer
posted January 19, 2010 at 2:05 pm EST
Washington
Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose death sentence for killing
a Philadelphia police officer in 1981 has become
an international cause célèbre for opponents of
capital punishment, has suffered a significant
setback at the US Supreme Court.
In a summary order issued on Tuesday, the high
court reversed a 2008 federal appeals court
ruling that had required a new sentencing hearing for Mr. Abu-Jamal.
The Supreme Court action sends the case back to
the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals in
Philadelphia to reconsider the issue in light of
a similar decision handed down last week by the
high court. In that case, with similar facts, the
justices voted 9 to 0 to reverse an order that struck down the death
sentence.
Tuesday’s action by the Supreme Court likely
moves Abu-Jamal significantly closer to execution.
Abu-Jamal’s writings about his legal plight have
attracted widespread attention among human rights
activists and capital punishment opponents in the
US and Europe. He has maintained that the police
coerced witnesses to testify against him and that
racial prejudice and discrimination played a role in his death sentence.
This week, supporters began circulating a
petition to President Obama and Attorney General
Eric Holder calling for an investigation into the
“long history of civil rights and constitutional violations in this case.”
The case against Abu-Jamal
The case stems from a December 1981 traffic stop
in which Philadelphia police officer Daniel
Faulkner pulled over a car driven by Abu-Jamal’s
brother, William Cook. Abu-Jamal was a passenger
in the car. A struggle broke out between Mr. Cook and Officer Faulkner.
According to witnesses, as the struggle continued
Abu-Jamal ran back toward the car from a parking
lot across the street and shot Faulkner in the
back. The officer fell to the ground and returned
fire, striking Abu-Jamal in the chest. Abu-Jamal
then allegedly walked toward the officer, stood
over him, and fired four more shots at close
range. One shot struck Faulkner between the eyes.
He was convicted and sentenced to death. The jury
found one aggravating factor – killing a police
officer who was acting in the line of duty. The
jury considered one mitigating factor,
Abu-Jamal’s lack of a significant criminal record.
It is the sentencing phase of the trial that was
under consideration in the appeal to the Supreme Court.
Confusion in sentencing?
Both a federal judge and a federal appeals court
had ruled that the jury that sentenced Abu-Jamal
to death might have been confused over how to
properly assess mitigating evidence during the penalty phase of the trial.
At issue was whether jurors might have thought
that they had to unanimously agree on each piece
of mitigating evidence being weighed against the
aggravating circumstances justifying a death sentence.
There is no unanimity requirement for jurors
considering mitigating circumstances. They are
free to consider anything that might weigh against a death sentence.
In contrast, all jurors must agree on any
aggravating factors. In addition, jurors must
unanimously decide that the prosecution has
proved beyond a reasonable doubt that those
aggravating factors outweigh any mitigating circumstances.
The 'Mills standard'
In some cases jurors have been given faulty
instructions by the trial judge that jurors must
unanimously agree on the mitigating factors. Such
instructions are inaccurate and unconstitutional
under a 1988 Supreme Court decision called Mills v. Maryland.
In the Mills case the high court ruled that a
defendant must receive a new sentencing hearing
whenever there is a “substantial possibility that
reasonable jurors … well may have thought they
were precluded from considering any mitigating
evidence unless all 12 jurors agreed.”
In the Abu-Jamal case, the federal appeals court
ruled that Abu-Jamal should either receive a new
sentencing hearing or have his death sentence be changed to a life sentence.
Last Tuesday, the high court decided a similar
case, Smith v. Spisak. The case was like
Abu-Jamal’s in that a state court had upheld the
jury instructions and verdict form, but a federal
appeals court overturned that ruling after
concluding that there was a violation of the Mills standard.
Supreme Court's decision
In the Spisak case, the high court reversed the
federal appeals court in a decision that will
make it harder in future cases to argue possible
juror confusion short of a judge actually giving
the wrong instructions to the jury.
“The instructions did not say that the jury must
determine the existence of each individual
mitigating factor unanimously,” Justice Stephen
Breyer wrote in the majority opinion last week.
“Neither the instructions nor the forms said
anything about how – or even whether – the jury
should make individual determinations that each
particular mitigating circumstance existed.”
Justice Breyer added: “In our view the
instructions and verdict forms did not clearly
bring about, either through what they said or
what they implied, the circumstances that Mills found critical.”
It will now be up to the Third Circuit to apply
this new, tougher test to the facts of Abu-Jamal’s case.
The case is
U.S. court sends back Abu-Jamal death penalty case
Vicini
WASHINGTON
Tue Jan 19, 2010 10:53am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60I3GL20100119
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday granted an
appeal by prosecutors and set aside a ruling that invalidated the
death sentence of black political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal for the
1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer.
His case has become a prominent cause for many death penalty opponents.
In a brief order, the Supreme Court sent the case back to a U.S.
appeals court based in Philadelphia for further consideration in view
of the high court's recent decision in an Ohio case that had raised
similar issues.
The Supreme Court in the Ohio case unanimously reinstated the death
sentence of a neo-Nazi convicted of murdering three men. The court's
action, which was not a ruling on the merits of the case, could lead
to Abu-Jamal's death sentence being reinstated, too.
The appeals court had ruled that Abu-Jamal, 55, deserved a new
sentencing hearing because of flawed jury instructions.
Abu-Jamal, a former member of the Black Panthers militant group, was
convicted and sentenced to death in 1982 for murdering white
Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in an early morning
confrontation on December 9, 1981.
The officer was shot after stopping Abu-Jamal's brother for driving
the wrong way down a Philadelphia street. Abu-Jamal, a former radio
reporter who was arrested at the scene, has maintained his innocence.
Abu-Jamal's jailhouse writings about the justice system have drawn
the attention of many people around the world. His case attracted the
support of many death penalty opponents, foreign political leaders
and Hollywood celebrities.
The flaw in the jury instructions related to whether the jurors
understood how to weigh mitigating circumstances that could have
resulted in a sentence other than the death penalty. Under the law,
jurors did not have to agree unanimously on the mitigating circumstances.
Prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court the part of the appeals
court decision that invalidated Abu-Jamal's death sentence. The
Supreme Court last year let stand the part of the decision that
upheld Abu-Jamal's murder conviction.
(Editing by
Dunham)
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org Questions and comments may be sent to
claude@freedomarchives.org
PDF
No comments:
Post a Comment