DOES NEITHER INNOCENCE NOR GUILT MATTER ANYMORE?

PRESS RELEASE BY MUMIA'S ATTORNEYS ON 2 AUGUST 20001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 2, 2001
DOES NEITHER INNOCENCE NOR GUILT MATTER ANYMORE?

Mumia Abu-Jamal's attorneys, filed a 130-page motion in federal court on Monday, July 30, 2001, asking Judge William H. Yohn, Jr. to reconsider his denial of their request to take the deposition (testimony under oath) of Arnold Beverly.

Arnold Beverly has confessed to the killing of Daniel Faulkner and in his sworn affidavit he details how he was hired by the mob and corrupt elements in the Philadelphia police force.

The motion begins: "With all due respect to the District Court, it is preposterous to suppose that any reasonable jury would possibly have found Mumia Abu-Jamal guilty of the murder of Police Officer Faulkner beyond a reasonable doubt after having heard the testimony under oath of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed the officer." Mumia's attorneys ask: " In what case, in what court, anywhere in this country, has any jury ever convicted a defendant of a crime after the true perpetrator voluntarily came into court and testified under oath that he, rather than the defendant, was the guilty party?"

Disagreeing with Judge Yohn's ruling that Mumia's innocence is no reason to stop his execution and throw out his conviction, his attorneys argue: "To interpret [the Supreme Court decision in] Herrera [Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390] to foreclose innocence being a basis for habeas relief in a death penalty case would be to place a judicial seal of approval upon what the average citizen unimpressed with legalistic sophistries -- and the rest of the world -- would inevitably see as nothing other than a legalized lynching."

Mumia's attorneys point out that Arnold Beverly's signed confession which describes in detail how he shot Officer Faulkner and how he fled -- is directly relevant to proving that numerous witnesses to the incident were right when they reported seeing the shooter flee and that this evidence was suppressed as part of a frame-up/cover-up by the Philadelphia Police and District Attorneys' Office.

Mumia's attorneys also filed a sworn affidavit by Rachel Wolkenstein, a former member of Mumia's legal team, in support of the motion for reconsideration.

Mumia himself will be in court for the first time since 1997 on August 17, 2001, at 9:30 a.m., at the Criminal Justice Center, in downtown Philadelphia, to appear before Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe on his new state post-conviction petition which charges he was deprived of due process of law when his prior attorneys, Weinglass and Williams, failed to present Arnold Beverly's signed confession to the state court in 1999.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Marlene Kamish, Esq. (412) 264-6686
Eliot Lee Grossman, Esq. (626) 943-1945