Comrades of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal are rallying supporters as they trek down to the City of Brotherly Love on Tuesday, November 9 for a critical 2 p.m. hearing at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Court (601 N. Market) regarding his death sentence.
Having exhausted numerous appeals over the course of almost three decades, the Mumia contingent say it is imperative that the Black Panther penman receive mass support this Tuesday in order to again avert execution. Arguments will be made before a three-judge panel.
At stake is whether Jamal will spend the rest of his natural life in the Pennsylvania penitentiary system or if his death sentence will again be reinstated.
Recent revelations by Mumia’s defense team uncovered more crucial evidence that they say will help further prove his innocence.
Last month, during the eighth annual World Day Against the Death Penalty forum in Philly, investigative reporter Linn Washington shared video footage of himself conducting forensic tests demonstrating the amount of damage done to a similar slab of sidewalk as the one that Dan Faulkner was shot on, on the morning of December 9, 1981.
Washington displayed the marks made by similar grade bullets fired from the exact caliber gun at about the same distance that it is assumed that Faulkner was shot from. This was very important information because prosecutors claim that while the cop lay wounded on the ground after being shot in the back, Mumia stood over him and fired four rounds, executioner-style, yet only struck him once.
Therefore, the three other bullets would’ve considerably marked up the underlying concrete.
This, along with the failure by police to produce the gunpowder residue results, which are always administered to suspects who are arrested at or near the scene in murder cases, also brings into question the mishandling of their investigation, whether intentionally or not.Washington laid out the possibility of another man, Ken Freeman, who was a passenger in Mumia’s brother’s car when the journalist arrived at the scene, where his brother was being beaten by Faulkner. According to reports, the trajectory of the bullet that killed Faulkner suggests that it was fired from the proximity of the passenger side, where Freeman sat.
Freeman was mysteriously murdered on May 13, 1985, the same day Philadelphia police firebombed the MOVE Organization’s home on Ossage Avenue.
He was found dead in a parking lot, handcuffed and naked with a hypodermic needle stuck in him.
Michael Schiffman, author of “Race Against Death, Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Black Revolutionary in White America,” stated, “If Freeman was indeed killed by cops, the killing was probably part of a general vendetta of the Philadelphia cops against their ‘enemies’ and the cops killed him because they knew or suspected he had something to do with the killing of Faulkner.
The cops saw the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.”
Visit freemumia.com for more information.
For bus info, call (212) 330-8029
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