Attempt made to exclude Mumia case from death-penalty movement

According to a recent exposé, a small group of U.S. death penalty abolitionist leaders tried to exclude the case of death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal from the Fourth World Congress Against the Death Penalty, held in March in Geneva, Switzerland.

In June, ThisCantBeHappening.net wrote that some U.S. abolitionists, led by Renny Cushing, executive director of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, walked out of the hall when a phone call from Abu-Jamal on Pennsylvania’s death row was being broadcast to the congress participants.

Unbeknownst at the time, Cushing and other U.S. members of the steering committee of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty had sent the French organizers of the World Congress a letter in December 2009 titled “Involvement of Mumia Abu-Jamal endangers the U.S. coalition for abolition of the death penalty,” in which they objected to having Abu-Jamal speak.

According to ThisCantBeHappening, the letter stated, “The Abu-Jamal case, regardless of its merits, acts as a lightning rod that galvanizes opponents of abolition and neutralizes key constituencies in the cause of abolition. Continuing to give Abu-Jamal focused attention unnecessarily attracts our strongest opponents and alienates coalition partners at a time when we need to build alliances, not foster hatred and enmity.”

Just who are the “coalition partners” that signers of this letter hope to “build alliances” with?

The letter states that since the Fraternal Order of Police, an ultraconservative and staunchly pro-death penalty organization, advocates the execution of Abu-Jamal and all other prisoners convicted of killing police officers, anything done by the World Congress to aid Abu-Jamal’s cause would be “dangerously counterproductive to the abolition movement in the U.S.”

The letter concludes, “The support of law enforcement officials is essential to achieving abolition in the United States. It is essential to the national abolition strategy of U.S. abolition activists and attorneys that we cultivate the voices of police, prosecutors and law enforcement experts to support our call for an end to the death penalty.”

The letter was signed by Elizabeth Zitrin with Death Penalty Focus, Renny Cushing and Kate Lowenstein of the MVFHR, Speedy Rice of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, Kritsin Houle of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and Juan Matos de Juan of the Puerto Rican Bar Association.

That any group of abolitionists in the U.S. would seek an alliance with elements like the FOP raises serious concerns. Furthermore, once the secret letter came to light in late June, several other board members of organizations whose officers or individual board members had signed it said they had been unaware of the letter’s existence.

Robert Meeropol, son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were vindictively executed as spies during the McCarthy period, and Bill Babbitt, brother of a Vietnam vet suffering from acute post-traumatic stress disorder who was executed in California, expressed concern over the letter. Both are members of the board of MVFHR.

Meeropol told ThisCantBeHappening.net that he stands “fully in support of a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal.” Babbitt commented, “I think throwing Mumia under the bus is not the way to go in the abolitionist movement. You don’t make bargains with a wolf whose motive is to devour.”

The secret attempt to exclude Abu-Jamal’s case from the world event was also condemned by actor Michael Farrell, president of the California abolitionist group Death Penalty Focus, who was unaware that a member of the DPF board had signed the letter. Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, was also not informed about the letter despite the fact that the NLG is a member organization of the World Congress.

The letter reveals the latest in a long and sordid history of attempts by the FOP to vilify Abu-Jamal and pressure activists not to support him. Boghosian told ThisCantBeHappening that Abu-Jamal’s arrest, trial and appeals process has been “a textbook case of police and prosecutor corruption, malfeasance and abuse.”

Albert Sabo, the presiding judge in Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial and his subsequent post-conviction relief act appeal in 1995, had been a member of the FOP before his appointment to the bench. Many legal precedents, on both state and federal levels, that should have opened the door to a new trial for Abu-Jamal were reversed when his case came before these courts, causing journalist Linn Washington Jr. to coin the phrase, “the Mumia exception.”

Abu-Jamal attorney Robert Bryan told ThisCantBeHappening, “In all my years as an activist opposing the death penalty, I have never heard of any individual or group in that fight singling out anyone as an exception to our campaign to abolish capital punishment. ... To single someone out and say they don’t count is chilling.”

Abu-Jamal, in an interview from his cell on death row at SCI-Greene with journalist Dave Lindorff, said, “They are really making deals with the devil. ... My instinct, being from Philadelphia, is that money was passed, though I have no evidence to prove it. ... This secret action is a threat to the entire abolitionist movement.”