MUMIA!

fantastic news! mumia abu jamal, a wrongfully convicted death row inmate, has won the right to appeal his case!

mumia is a wonderful writer, having published several books & poems while in prison. Death Blossoms is one of my favorite books. -- look it up!

Mumia is, sadly, just one of the many INNOCENT BLACK MEN on death row. visit www.freemumia.org or www.mumia.org to read about his story.

here's just a bit, which (I hope) is enough for you to investigate this yourself. remember, ANYONE can write a letter in support of someone on death row. please consider it.


Facts about Mumia's 1982 trial:
* The policeman was killed with a 44 caliber gun. Abu-Jamal's gun which he was licensed to carry as a night-time taxi driver, was a 38 caliber.

* The police never tested Abu-Jamal's gun to see if it had been recently fired. They never tested his hands to see if he had fired a gun. They have never shown Abu-Jamal 's gun to be the fatal weapon.

* No police officers present at Abu-Jamal's arrest claimed to have heard Jamal's "confession" until two months after it allegedly occurred. This was right after Abu-Jamal had filed police brutality charges.

* Abu-Jamal's doctor said that Abu-Jamal, who was unconscious, said nothing. He reported that a nurse found police with loaded guns pointed at Mumia as he lay unconscious in his hospital bed.

* William Singletary, a Vietnam veteran and local businessman, saw the whole incident and has testified that Abu-Jamal was not the shooter. However, the police forced him to change his story and intimidated him into leaving Philadelphia.

* Other key witnesses, such as Veronica Jones -- who now testifies in support of Abu-Jamal, were harassed into giving false testimony. Two prosecution witnesses were given special favors, including exemption from criminal prosecution, for their testimony.

Elements in an unfair trial:
* The Judge, Albert Sabo, sentenced more people to death than any other sitting judge in the US.

* The public defender didn't interview a single witness in preparation for the trial, and didn't have funds for defending a capital case.

* The prosecutor removed 11 qualified African Americans from the jury. He also argued for the death penalty because of Mumia's membership in the Black Panther Party, a practice later condemned as unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.

* The racial bias of Philadelphia's courts has resulted in 120 people on death row, all but 13 non-white.




while mumia may yet see freedom, stanley tookie williams will not. he is scheduled for a state-sanctioned killing on December 13th. tookie formed the gang "the crips" in L.A. that's not a good thing. but since he's ben in prison:

* He has been nominated 5 times for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in helping to prevent gang violence.

* He has been nominated four times for the Nobel Literature Prize for his children's books that warn young people about the pitfalls of joining a gang and exposes them to alternatives.

AND...
* He maintains innocence of the crimes he was accused of, and faced racist discrimination throughout his trial. One issue highlighted the fact that the prosecutor in Tookie's original case removed three African-American jurors from the jury. During Stan's trial, this prosecutor made racially-coded remarks during his closing argument, comparing Stan during the trial to a Bengal tiger in the zoo and stating that a black community - South Central Los Angeles - was equivalent to the natural "habitat" of a Bengal Tiger.

there was a movie made about him based on his autobiography, Blue Rage, Black Redemption

www.tookie.com