MUMIA ABU-JAMAL'S ATTORNEYS APPEAL TO PENNSYLVANIA
SUPREME COURT STATE JUDGE'S REFUSAL TO HEAR CONFESSION OF REAL KILLER!
Attorneys for death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal will file on
Wednesday, January 9, 2002, an appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court asking
it to order Common Pleas Court Judge Pamela Dembe to hear the testimony
of ex-mob hit man, Arnold Beverly, about how he killed Police
Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, on behalf of corrupt elements in the
Philadelphia Police Department and organized crime, because the officer was an
obstacle to the "protection racket" corrupt officers were running in center
city Philadelphia.
According to Beverly's written and videotaped confession,
recently featured on NBC's "Today Show," Mumia Abu-Jamal had nothing to do with
the shooting and did not arrive on the scene until after the officer was shot.
Dembe refused to let Arnold Beverly testify, claiming that she lacked
"jurisdiction" to stop the execution of an innocent man because of a previous
Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling in the case of Otis Peterkin which set strict
time deadlines for presenting new evidence. Mumia's attorneys will ask the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court to overturn the Peterkin decision in the wake of the
major scandal which surfaced when a Federal Judge recently reversed
Peterkin's conviction and death sentence because, not only did he not have a
fair trial, there was not enough evidence to convict him in the first place.
Mumia's attorneys will argue to the Supreme Court, as they did in
legal documents filed before Judge Dembe, that the delay in presenting Arnold
Beverly's June 8, 1999, signed confession to the court was due solely to
conflicts of interest by his previous attorneys, Leonard Weinglass and Daniel
R. Williams, who suppressed the confession - and the lie detector test results
which prove Beverly is telling the truth - because of death threats they
received to deter them from going forward with any evidence or legal claims
that might uncover the identities of the real killers.
Mumia's appeal is also based on Court Reporter Terri
Maurer-Carter's testimony that she overheard Judge Sabo say, at the time of
Mumia's trial, that he was "going to help 'em fry the nigger."
"Since Judge Dembe ruled that Judge Sabo's racism was irrelevant
to whether Mumia got a fair trial, I suppose that means a Jewish defendant
could get a fair trial before a judge wearing a swastika and a 'Hitler was
Right' button on his robes," commented Mumia's Los Angeles attorney, Eliot Lee
Grossman.
"Although Mumia's death sentence was recently overturned by a
federal judge, and there is a mountain of evidence which proves that Arnold
Beverly is telling the truth and Mumia is innocent, the 'powers that be'
in Philadelphia still want Mumia "Dead or Alive," according to Mumia's Chicago
attorney, Marlene Kamish. "It's outrageous that the D.A. is appealing Judge
Yohn's overturning of the death sentence and is continuing to demand the blood
of an innocent man, while nothing is being done to uncover the identity of
those who planned and organized the murder of Officer Faulkner," attorney
Kamish noted. "Just as bad is the Philadelphia Inquirer's scurrilous editorial
demanding that Mumia be locked up for life for a crime he didn't commit," added
attorney Grossman.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: CONTACT J.MICHAEL FARRELL, ESQ. (215)
925-1105 OR ELIOT LEE GROSSMAN, ESQ., (626) 943-1945. |