Mumia's Appeal

After decades of legal and political maneuvering, the twenty-year-old death-penalty case of black journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal is entering a critical stage. The former Black Panther activist's case is currently before the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which could decide to grant a new trial or reinstate his death sentence. Last December Federal District Judge William Yohn at least temporarily overturned Abu-Jamal's death sentence while upholding his conviction for the 1981 first-degree murder of white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

Abu-Jamal's best hope for winning such a trial is his claim that the prosecution improperly barred blacks from his jury. Prosecutor Joseph McGill used eleven of his fifteen peremptory challenges to remove blacks otherwise fit to serve, resulting in a panel that had nine whites, three blacks and four white alternates. (After the replacement of one black, the final jury had ten whites and two blacks.) Judge Yohn last December rejected this claim, ruling that Abu-Jamal had not made a "prima facie case" of racial bias. In reaching that decision, Yohn declined to consider several defense studies. One showed that during the 1977-86 period covering the two terms of District Attorney Edward Rendell (now governor-elect of Pennsylvania), local prosecutors used peremptory challenges to bar 61 percent of otherwise qualified black jurors. Another showed that McGill, over the course of six capital trials, removed 74 percent of qualified black jurors.

The problem is that in rejecting those damning studies, Yohn made several serious factual errors. He claimed that both covered periods after Abu-Jamal's trial, and that they were thus not relevant. In fact, however, a close examination of his ruling shows that he was confusing them with two other studies submitted by the defense. The two studies he rejected not only cover periods that bracket Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial, they both include his trial in their data sets. Although Yohn granted the defense a certification of appealability on the jury selection issue, Abu-Jamal's attorneys for at least eight months failed to notice the errors and have yet to file any appeal based upon them.

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