Anonymous Comrade writes, "Here's an update from the New York Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition":

June 30, 2002

1. We are still waiting for a response in the US Court of Appeals to both
sides' appeals of federal Judge William Yohn's December 2001 ruling, in
which he set aside Mumia's death sentence -- though he gave the state of
Pennsylvania the option of conducting a new hearing at which Mumia could be
sentenced to death again. If that hearing is not held, and Yohn's decision
is upheld, then Mumia would serve life in prison without parole.Mumia's status is unchanged given these appeals. He remains on Death Row,
locked up 23 hours a day as before, with Plexiglas barriers between him and
all visitors and all the other deadly restrictions. The Court of Appeals
can respond in numerous ways to the appeals by both sides, ranging from
overturning Yohn and reimposing the original death sentence to upholding
Yohn and leaving the question of a new sentencing hearing up to the state,
to setting aside the guilty verdict in Mumia's original trial.

2. Mumia's current attorneys filed for a reopening of the Post Conviction
Relief Appeal (PCRA) hearings -- held initially in 1995-'96 -- claiming
that Mumia's former attorneys failed to represent him properly by never
arguing for his innocence and by never presenting key evidence pointing to
Mumia's innocence. They filed this petition both in Pennsylvania Supreme
Court and in the Third Circuit of the US Court of Appeals. On June 11, the
Third Circuit stated that it would take no action in the case pending the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court's final decision. This appears to be primarily a
procedural ruling, without major significance, but points to a potentially
long process before us.

3. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania State Supreme Court a very important
challenge is being waged by Mumia's attorneys to expose the true story of
systematic bias in excluding African-Americans from Mumia's jury. The
attorneys have asked to depose (take sworn testimony from) Supreme Court
Justice Ronald Castille, about whom there have been recurrent charges of
conflict of interest since at least 1987. And now there are additional
charges, flowing from a ruling by the US Supreme Court (in the 1986
"Batson" case) which states that the exclusion of jurors based on race is
grounds for the reversal of a conviction.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court based its rejection of Mumia's motion to
depose Castille on three of its prior decisions. But a closer examination
of all three actually support the legitimacy of deposing Castille. In one
(Commonwealth v Basemore, 2000) -- the only decision in which Castille did
not participate -- the court actually granted Basemore a new hearing.

Here's the story: Before he was elected to the Supreme Court, Castille was
a District Attorney in the County of Philadelphia. During an initial appeal
of Mumia's original conviction, Castille, as District Attorney, signed the
papers filed for the prosecution, arguing against Mumia's appeal. Clearly
this raises a serious question about his ability to rule impartially
regarding Mumia's case whenever it comes up before the State Supreme Court.

In 1996, when Mumia's appeal of Albert Sabo's denial of post-conviction
relief reached the Court, Mumia's attorneys asked Castille to recuse
himself -- that is, recognize that he had a conflict of interest and choose
not to participate in the deliberations or in the decision. Castille -- the
only one who has the power to take such action -- rejected this request.
Now, new and more damning evidence of Castille's conflict of interest and
his active participation in the dissemination of a videotape aimed at
teaching Assistant DA's in Philadelphia how to exclude African-Americans
from juries, has emerged.

One of the key issues in all of Mumia's legal proceedings has been the
racist character of the jury selection at his original trial. In a city
that is overwhelmingly Black, only two Blacks were selected to participate
in his jury. Judge Sabo consistently allowed the prosecution to challenge
Blacks and remove them during the jury-selection process. In his ruling
last December on Mumia's federal Habeas Corpus petition, Federal District
Court Judge William Yohn identified the question of racist jury selection
and the instructions given to the jury as the two issues that he (that is,
Judge Yohn) considered worthy of review by the Federal Court of Appeals.
(Mumia's attorneys are asking the higher court to consider a wide range of
questions.)

Since 1998, one of the items of evidence which Mumia and his attorneys have
been trying to enter into the record is a videotape prepared by one Jack
MacMahon. It is a training tape, used to educate Assistant District
Attorneys in Philadelphia on how to exclude Black jurors without making it
obvious that the basis of exclusion was racial in nature. This tape was
produced in 1986, several years after Mumia's trial, but also the same year
that the U.S. Supreme Court issued its "Batson" ruling (see above). The
court declared that a demonstrable pattern of racial discrimination in jury
selection was grounds for overturning a conviction.

This is precisely what the MacMahon tape does demonstrate a pattern of
racial discrimination adding to the weight of overwhelming statistical
evidence that Black jurors were consciously excluded during Mumia's 1982
trial. The videotape is clear evidence of an attempt to maintain the
traditional racist practices of the Philadelphia DA's office, while
camouflaging those practices in order to circumvent the protections newly
offered to defendants by the Batson decision. Specifically, with regard to
Mumia, the MacMahon tape takes the evidence that there was a racist
exclusion of jurors out of the realm of mere statistics and demonstrates
that a conscious plan lay behind those statistics.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied Mumia's request to allow this
videotape into the record. Justice Castille participated in that denial.
The court justified its rejection of Mumia's motion on the grounds that the
tape could not be shown to reflect general practices of the Philadelphia
DA's office, since it was only a presentation by a single individual,
MacMahon. It now comes to light, however, that the tape has the official
insignia of the city of Philadelphia on it -- along with the name of Ronald
Castille as District Attorney.

And so we have evidence of still another conflict of interest by Justice
Castille. Not only did he participate in a court decision on a matter in
which he had been personally involved, he actually knew for certain that
the basis cited by the court for denying Mumia's motion was completely
false. The videotape was an official document of the District Attorneys
office, not some random production by a lone individual. And Castille's
failure to reveal his personal participation in the production and
dissemination of this videotape, when the issue came up before the Supreme
Court where he was sitting as a judge, constitutes a serious violation of
professional ethics.

The Supreme Court as a whole rejected Mumia's motion to take a deposition
on these questions from Justice Castille. But Mumia's attorneys are
attempting to reargue the point before the court, partly based on the fact
that Judge Castille should not have participated in that discussion and
decision.

This issue of systematic racial bias in jury selection, and the court
exchanges surrounding it, are potentially explosive if they become widely
known. The facts here reveal in a particularly stark way the racist,
frame-up nature of the original prosecution and death-sentence imposed on
Mumia. The issue of racial bias was also recently highlighted when Terri
Maurer-Carter, a court stenographer during the time of Mumia's original
trial, stated in an affidavit that she overhead trial Judge Albert Sabo
say, referring to Mumia: "I'm going to help them fry the nigger."

Implications For Activists

1. We should be waging a campaign to have Castille recuse himself, and to
force the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to grant Mumia's motion to depose
Castille on the use of the MacMahon tape, thus entering the MacMahon video
into the record. This could make a tremendous difference, as racial bias in
jury selection constitutes a basis for overturning Mumia's conviction, and
could then be reviewed by the federal courts. Additionally, given the
current climate in the courts of vulnerability on this issue, we could put
a lot of pressure on various officials and the courts themselves to address
the racial bias in the selection of Mumia's jury.

2. We must point to the contradiction between Federal Judge Yohn's ruling
that Mumia may appeal on the issue of racial bias in the selection of his
jury, and the Castille/Pennsylvania Supreme Court suppressing the
investigation of this issue.

3. We must popularize the fact that in the case of Basemore, the use of the
MacMahon videotape was considered a "highly flagrant violation of the US
Constitution." Basemore was granted the right to appeal. There was (unlike
in Mumia's case) considerable evidence of his guilt. He nonetheless won the
right to an evidentiary hearing on a claim he had not raised at all before
-- something Mumia has been fighting for in the federal courts.

4. We need to circulate and get signatures on the petition to current
Pennsylvania governor Schweiker. (For information contact the NY Free Mumia
Coalition, see below.)

5. We must force the candidates in the present election for Pennsylvania
Governor -- and particularly the likely winner, Democratic Party leader, Ed
Rendell, who was the DA for Philadelphia during the early '80s when Mumia
was prosecuted, found guilty, and sentenced to death -- to take
responsibility for "their" Supreme Court's "irregularities." Rendell is
campaigning on a pro-death penalty platform and specifically in support of
Mumia's execution, with a totally fabricated version of what happened on
the night of December 9th 1981. Rendell and Castille share a long history
of involvement in the effort to frame-up and murder Mumia Abu-Jamal.

This information brought to you by the New York Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
Coalition:

P.O. Box 650


212-330-8029