Mumia’s Judge on Racism and Justice
Update from December 16, 2022
We are locked in conflict up on the 8th floor of the Common Pleas Courthouse in Philadelphia, arguing over guilt, innocence, and 41 years of unjust imprisonment.
We know that love is courageous, fearless, and transformative.
We understand that we are only here because Mumia Abu-Jamal survived being shot in the chest as he ran across a street to help both his brother and Daniel Faulkner. On December 9, 1981, when police critically wounded Mumia Abu-Jamal, and someone else fatally shot police officer Danny Faulkner, two large and loving families were torn apart.
In the Courtroom
In a shocking reprieve, Judge Lucretia Clemons ordered the District Attorney to open up all of their files to Mumia Abu-Jamal’s defense team. Judge Clemons stayed, for the moment, her “intent to dismiss” notice. She stated she would rule in 60-90 days on Mumia’s request for a new trial.
Please take six minutes of your time to view this video. It is shocking, honest, and it is a way forward.
“I think one of the most important things to focus on is truth and reconciliation. A familiar cry in the street during the social justice protests is ‘No justice, no peace.’ And while I know that many people want peace, they really want quiet. Quiet is not the same as peace. Peace requires justice, and justice requires truth.” – Judge Clemons
Healing the Wounds of Racism: In deed.
Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation require that the racially based discrimination and trauma inflicted by Philadelphia police and prosecutors against Mumia Abu-Jamal be openly acknowledged and addressed.
It is time for the courts of law and the courts of public opinion to acknowledge this historic miscarriage of justice, and right that wrong, by granting Mumia Abu-Jamal relief.
Mumia Abu-Jamal has been in prison for 40 years. In 2019, boxes of evidence were found in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office that had been hidden since Mumia’s 1982 trial: evidence of bribed witnesses and race-based jury selection bias. At this point, Mumia’s Judge, Lucretia Clemons, has not yet allowed this evidence to be heard!
After viewing the 6min video, Healing the Wounds of Racism by Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Lucretia Clemons, we are asking you to send us your response – what you want Judge Lucretia Clemons to hear. Please do not contact Judge Clemons directly.
This is one poignant quote from the message.
“When you are in a position to stop something wrong, you do it.
“I think one of the most important things to focus on is truth and reconciliation. A familiar cry in the street during the social justice protests is ‘No justice, no peace.’ And while I know that many people want peace, they really want quiet. Quiet is not the same as peace. Peace requires justice, and justice requires truth.”
— Judge Clemons, from Healing the Wounds of Racism
Judge Clemons is a member of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s racial justice and healing commission. This video was her statement for the commission. “The purpose of the commission,” Philadelphia Bishop McIntyre said, “is to look at the sin of racism in the light of the Gospel of our Catholic faith, and then see where we’ve succeeded in addressing it and moved forward, and where we haven’t, and where we need to move forward.”
On December 16, 2022, Judge Clemons of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court did NOT modify, reverse, or deny Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Post Conviction Relief Application (PCRA). She gave Mumia Abu-Jamal’s legal defense team notice that she would rule on her “Notice of Intent to Dismiss” within the next 60-90 days, i.e. after Feb 15 2023.
Email your letter to Judge Clemons here.
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MORE DETAILS ON MUMIA’S CURRENT LEGAL SITUATION
On October 26, 2022, Judge Lucretia Clemons of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court adopted procedural arguments put forward by the Philadelphia District Attorney (DA) to deny Mumia Abu-Jamal relief. Judge Clemons noted in her preliminary denial that even if the jury knew that key prosecution witnesses were paid and promised favors to falsely testify against Mumia, they would still have imposed Mumia’s death sentence; thus making the revelations moot or “not material.” In a brilliant reply brief, Mumia’s lawyers skillfully countered this misapplication of law and standards of review while again documenting the extreme racial bias and payments and favors promised by the DA to witnesses for their demonstrably false testimony against Mumia. Included in this dramatic just-revealed evidence is a note from a key witness asking the DA “for his money” after the trial. This letter was buried in District Attorney files for 38 years.
Also prevented from being put in the record by multiple previous PCRA court rulings is documentation of additional extreme racial bias in Mumia’s original trial. Previously Common Pleas Court Judge Pamela Dembe decided that the statement “I am going to help them fry the n—word” by trial court judge Albert F. Sabo was also “not material” – that upon her review she believed that even if he had made such a statement, they did not affect any of his rulings in the original trial. Judge Sabo made that outrageous statement in front of another PCRA judge and a court clerk in the first week of Mumia’s 1982 trial. Specially appointed and sitting in review of his own decisions, Albert Sabo, in a 1995 hearing, ignored the testimony from a witness in Mumia’s trial when she told the court that the DA had promised her a deal to falsely testify against Mumia.