Judith Ritter: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. Thank you for this really just wonderful outpouring of support and interest in this case after a very, very long time, and I know that. I feel a little bit, like the lawyer in the program, like the fine print, you know, on the form that nobody wants to read. So I’ll try to make this, you know, an interesting legal story. It’s a very long legal story. I’m not going to go through the entire legal story, but it’s kind of a mind blowing legal story actually.
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I am so grateful for being here, especially at this time, because this is really a very hopeful time in the long legal story in this case. And as most of you know, and some of you are new to this story, but you will certainly have heard that most of this story has not been a happy story by any means, and we are now at a hopeful time in this story, and that’s why it’s so great that this is organized, that there’s so many people here interested in learning about what’s going on now, what has gone on, because it’s important time to get people talking about this case, especially in its current situation. And there’s really new hope that there is a path to freedom for Mumia, and that’s pretty amazing to be able to say and really mean it and believe it. So, it’s a perfect time for this gathering, I have to thank Jeff Mackler for doing this, for inviting me here, for putting this together. I know he didn’t do it alone, but he has had wonderful help in doing this. But thank you, Jeff, and thank you for being such a long, long, longer than I have been involved in this – supporter in this case, and of Mumia and your devotion, and it’s wonderful. Thank you. Thanks to the other speakers for being here. (Applause)
I wish Mumia could see this room. You know, it’s very heartwarming turnout here, and he doesn’t take that for granted, so it’s great. So before I get to the legal story, I have to congratulate you on your death penalty moratorium. (Applause) And I want you to know that even though it’s, you know, it’s one state, it’s a really important state for the abolitionist movement, because you got a lot of people on death row here, and so this is a very significant development in trying to do away with the death penalty once and for all. And I think it’s going to happen, and it’s happening in a lot of states, but it’s very significant. And I hope the moratorium holds up. We’ve got one also in Pennsylvania now that has been held up. So, that’s great.
Okay, so the story, the legal story, as I said, it’s a sad story, but it’s getting a lot happier. I could talk all night telling you about the story. I will not do that, but I want to just start, you know. So, it’s from 1981 this story starts — at the end of the year 1981. You know that Mumia was sentenced to death. You know that he spent 29 years on death row. His death penalty — and you know, you should also know that he spent 29 years on death row — his death penalty was set aside a good number of years before he got off death row. And you might think “How could that happen?” That happens because if the government appeals that win that Mumia got, then he stays on death row until the government’s appeals are all done, and that took years. So, he stayed on death row, long after a federal court said he shouldn’t be on death row. It was a federal court that said that, and he’s now serving life without any chance of parole, which is the only sentence that you can get for this in Pennsylvania.
So, I’m going to talk because I know you’re really interested in what’s going on right now, and so that’s what I want to focus on. And I think the best way for me to sort of frame it is to say it’s sort of a tale of two judges. So, let me talk to you about Judge #1, right? Judge #1 – this is an incredible story – if it weren’t true, you’d say it couldn’t possibly be true. Judge #1 started out as a prosecutor in Philadelphia. He was a prosecuting trial attorney, and then he became the elected prosecutor for the city of Philadelphia. And when he became the elected prosecutor for Philadelphia, it was at the same time that Mumia’s first round of appeals were happening, and he was the boss of the office, and he oversaw that office’s defending the death sentence for Mumia and making sure, doing everything it could, to make sure that that death sentence not only was upheld on appeal, but that it got carried out as soon as possible.
And then that judge decided that he wanted to be a judge — That DA decided he wanted to be a judge on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. And you know, while he was the DA, not only did he preside over the DA’s office when this super high profile case was going on, with people in the streets demanding justice from Mumia, and he was fighting this. He also took a hugely active role in trying to get the death penalty implemented quickly, more quickly. You know, at the time, what was going on in Pennsylvania was that we had a governor at the time who didn’t really believe in the death penalty, and he wouldn’t sign death warrants, and he wouldn’t set execution dates. And folks like this district attorney was very, very frustrated by that. And so, he and some other people in the legislature really launched a campaign to try to force the governor to get these executions going. And he wrote letters about it, and he drafted legislation to try to force the governor’s hand, because there were so many people on death row and no one was getting executed. And he specifically said that he wanted the governor to start sending warrants, most particularly to send a message to police killers that the death penalty means something in Pennsylvania.
And at that time, Mumia was the only one of only three people from Philadelphia who were sentenced to death for allegedly killing a police officer, all right. Well then this DA, who was the head DA of that office during Mumia’s first round of appeals, decided to run for Supreme Court Justice in Pennsylvania. And he campaigned very strongly on a pro death penalty platform, and he talked about how he was responsible for sending some of the most notorious killers to death row, and he spoke to the press about it, and it was his campaign speeches about it. And he won that election, and he got on to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. And what should come up to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court not long after was Mumia’s second and third and fourth rounds of appeals. So there he was, the person who prosecuted the first round of appeals, fighting to keep that death sentence alive and implemented, now becomes the judge on the appellate court reviewing later rounds of appeals.
And you know, you don’t have to go to law school to know that that’s crazy, right, that there’s no way that could be fair. There’s no way that that makes any sense. And he was asked to recuse himself, to take himself off the case. And he said, “No.” He said, “I was just the boss. I didn’t really — couldn’t keep track of what was going on with all the cases in the office. This was just one of many cases.” So, that seems virtually impossible to believe that Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case was not front and center in his work, running that DA’s office, but that’s what he said. And not only was, you know, this was a case, and I don’t have to tell you, this was a case involving police and race with international cries for justice for Mumia. And he said, “No, I really wasn’t paying attention to that case. It was just one case amongst many.” And he said, “I’m not taking myself off the case.” And no one gets to review when the judge says that, and you’re in the highest court in the state.”
So, he sat on the cases. There were about four rounds of appeals spaced out over a bunch of years. And guess what happened? The appeals were denied. Now he wasn’t the only Justice, but he first was an Associate Justice. He became the chief. The appeals were all denied. And then time went by, and in 2016 the US Supreme Court decided a case called Williams v. Pennsylvania. And it wasn’t a Mumia case, but it was also about this same judge who wouldn’t take himself off other cases that came out of Philadelphia, and the Supreme Court said he should have. He should have taken himself off that case, and they said that it’s a due process violation if you’ve had a significant personal involvement with a case while you’re a prosecutor, when you become a judge, you have to recuse yourself. You know, you don’t have to be a Supreme Court justice, really, to figure that out, but, but we needed a Supreme Court to say that, and that’s what they said. And they said this is a fundamental right to an impartial tribunal, which, of course, it is, and that’s what happened.
So, that’s when we went back into court, which brings us to the second judge in my tale of two judges, and that’s a judge in the lower court in Pennsylvania, where we filed a new petition, and we said, “You know that William’s case was just decided? That should apply to Mumia too. He should get to redo those old appeals,” and we got randomly assigned to a judge. And the judge, first of all, said — We said to the judge, “You know, we have to prove, we know, that he was involved in this case when he was a DA,” Of course, we all know he was but you know, in a courtroom, that’s not good enough,”so grant us discovery. Grant us the ability to get some data from their files, get some old files,” which is how we found this letter to the governor saying it’s time to kill people on death row. And the judge let us do discovery. And let me just tell you, in that stage of a case, that’s really rare. The judge let us do it. And we embarked on a year or so of doing that. And then the judge did something that nobody in — no judge in the state system of Pennsylvania ever did for Mumia, it granted him relief. And we won. (Applause)
And this was just before the end of the year, on my birthday it just so happened. It just before the end of the year, and we won. And what we won was the right to go back and redo four different appeals with numbers of different legal claims. And again, I could speak all night about what those claims are — about all the constitutional violations that occurred during Mumias trial. I won’t, but I’m going to give you just a quick sample. Right? There’s prosecutor tampering with witnesses. There’s faulty forensic evidence. There’s ineffective assistance of his trial lawyer. There’s lack of funds for expert witnesses. And let me tell you, that’s a teensy sample of what the issues are that we will now get to re-argue in an appellate court in Pennsylvania.
And we got pretty lucky, because we got this case in front of a judge who actually has integrity, who cares about fairness, who has the courage, which I know that Pam will certainly back me up and say that in Philadelphia, this is a big deal, right, that we got a judge to rule our way, given many things about the history of this case. I’m not suggesting you run home and do this, but if you ever feel like it, you could read Judge Tucker’s opinion. It’s not long, and you will see what I mean. This is a judge who really gets it and who’s not, you know, it’s not like he’s a major political activist, but he is trying to do the right thing.
So, that’s where we were at the end of December. This case, though, is a little bit also more about — It’s a tale of two judges and a district attorney, because there is a new DA in town in Philadelphia, about a year or so now, and he’s ran on a very progressive platform. I think he is a progressive guy, but he’s not really applying those principles in Mumia’s case. He’s not applying those principles in Mumia’s case, and he’s appealing our victory. We were very disappointed to learn that, but he’s doing that, so we have to overcome that obstacle before we can start relitigating those old appeals. But I think that we’ll be successful. We will defend our win. I think the law is very much on our side, and then we’ll move ahead to do these old appeals, with of course, the goal being a new trial and ultimately, freedom from Mumia. (Applause)
All right, so that’s the tale. Right, that’s the tale. Mumia is more optimistic about his legal situation than I ever remember him being. I’ve been his lawyer for 17 years now, and before I sit down, I just want to add a personal note about why I thought — Sometimes people ask me, “Oh, my God, you’re doing this case for so long” — and the main reason really, that I love this stuff; I’m a law professor, I like some of these issues, it’s stuff that I thrive on, but that’s not it. It’s because of Mumia and who he is, and what he stands for, and the kind of person he is. That’s the reason, that’s what keeps me going, and that’s what I know keeps all of you interested in putting the pressure on. (Applause)
There was an investigator testified at an earlier hearing. He was hired by the defense counsel, a trial lawyer, to do investigation. He wasn’t an activist. He wasn’t a political person. He was an investigator who worked on cases, and he went to see Mumia. And when he was on the witness stand in this one of these appeal hearings, the prosecutor was trying to get him to say that Mumia wouldn’t let his lawyer do anything, that he was trying to run the show, and he can’t complain that his lawyer was not good. And he was trying to get him to say that. And finally, this is what the guy said. (Audience response) He said, “You know, my impression of Mumia was that he was probably the most gentle person I’d ever met.” And he is! And he really is.
You know, Mumia is a fighter, he’s a revolutionary, he’s courageous, he’s a genius, but he is also one of the most gentle people I have ever known. And you know, he probably deserves to be free more than any prisoner in this country, and because he’s got, he’s got supporters everywhere, all over the world, and there are all kinds of folks doing all kinds of things that mean a lot to this movement, young people, old people, people just learning about it. I have co-counsel, brilliant Sam Spital from NAACP Legal Defense Fund, is my co-counsel. And you know, we’ve got a lot of hope right now, and I think we really can make this happen. There’s a legal path to freedom. And you know, we’re all really hopeful that we can really make it happen. Thank you for inviting me to tell you about it.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio
