As he approaches the 45th anniversary of his incarceration in December, the Black radical writer and prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is taking his claim that he has been subjected to arbitrary imprisonment for a crime that he did not commit to a new tribunal: the United Nations in Geneva. On Tuesday, Abu-Jamal, 72, filed a petition with the UN’s working group on arbitrary detention, a body within the Human Rights Council, marking the latest attempt by the internationally renowned prisoner and prolific author to seek relief after exhausting all domestic channels through state and federal courts.
In a telephone interview with from Mahanoy correctional institution in Pennsylvania, where he is being held on a life sentence with no chance of parole, he said the appeal to the UN was part of his personal and legal efforts to keep hope alive.
“Hope is an element of struggle, is it not,”
“As we used to say in the old days, ‘La luta continua’.”
The hope that this former political prisoner might one day walk free from Mahanoy is slim. He is serving a life sentence without any possibility of parole. In Pennsylvania, life without parole means just that: there is no accounting for rehabilitation, age or health, and any prisoner serving it will die behind bars no matter his or her circumstances.
Abu-Jamal was convicted in 1982 of a crime for which he has always protested his innocence – the first degree murder of a police officer, Daniel Faulkner, in Philadelphia. Since then, he has become a lightning rod for both left and right. For progressives, he is arguably the most celebrated political prisoner in America today. For the law and order crowd, led by the Fraternal Order of Police that has pushed relentlessly for his maximum punishment, he is nothing other than a cop killer.
Despite the long odds, Abu-Jamal is doing all he can to stay upbeat.
“I’ve rarely, if ever, placed my hope in courts of law,”
“But I do trust in people, as people are the ones who build movements and make change.”
Tuesday’s newly lodged petition calls on the UN to take a stance over what it says are the many injustices against Abu-Jamal during his original trial and in the decades of unsuccessful appeals that have followed. His legal team – led by Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center, joined by the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights – argues that he has endured multiple violations of international law.
The document describes how the prosecutor excluded almost all Black jurors from his 1982 trial. During jury selection the prosecutor scrawled in his notebook the letters “B” and “W” over jurors’ names, to denote Black and white. He then threw out 71% of all potential Black jurors, and just 20% of all non-Black candidates. The result was a jury of 12 that had only two Black members – in a county that was almost 40% African American.
The trial judge, Albert Sabo, the petition goes on, was perhaps the most prolific death penalty judge in the country. He presided over 31 capital cases ending with death row, all but two of the defendants from minorities. Shortly before trial he was overheard saying:
“I’m going to help them fry the nigger.”
The UN’s rapporteur on arbitrary detention is also being asked to consider how new evidence only disclosed to Abu-Jamal’s defense team in 2018 raises serious doubts about the credibility of the state’s main eyewitness, Robert Chobert. Weeks after the trial concluded, Chobert wrote to the chief prosecutor inquiring about
“the money own to me”.
One of the main thrusts of the petition is that Abu-Jamal’s current sentence, life without parole, is in itself a form of arbitrary detention in breach of international rules. The sentence has been dubbed “”, but Abu-Jamal thinks of it as “slow death row”.
“It is death row without a specific date of execution. Or execution through time.”
He said he was struck by the contrast between America’s fondness for life sentences – more than are on them, about one in seven of all prisoners – and the approach of other advanced countries such as Norway. When committed the deadliest mass shooting by a single person in modern times in Oslo in 2011, killing 77 people, he was sentenced to the country’s maximum penalty – 21 years, extendable on review every five years thereafter.
Breivik is unlikely ever to be released, but the system has not irrevocably slammed the door on him.
“Such a response would be impossible, unthinkable in any of our 50 states,”
The UN working party has no direct enforcement powers within the US. But his legal team are calculating that a strong condemnation from the world body would support the push back home for a retrial or a commutation of his sentence. At the very least, Abu-Jamal welcomes the chance to present the facts of his case to experts who have not come under the intense political pressure faced by elected judges (all Pennsylvania’s judges are elected). He remembers being “flabbergasted” in 1995 when he learnt that four out of the seven justices on the state supreme court had been endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police.
“Presenting my claims to the UN will be one of the first times that judges will be hearing them without a vested interest,”
Abu-Jamal was 14 when he was literally booted into the Black liberation struggle. It was 1968 and he was at a protest in Philadelphia against the segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace when a Philadelphia police officer kicked him in the face. A year later he co-founded the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther party and became a regular contributor to the party’s newspaper. From there he built a successful career as a writer and broadcaster, serving as president of Philadelphia’s Association of Black Journalists.
All that came crashing down when he was arrested in the early hours of 9 December 1981. He was supplementing his income by cab driving, and happened to be passing the corner of 13th and Locust Streets just when his brother William Cook was being detained in a traffic stop by police officer Faulkner. A shootout ensued. Abu-Jamal was shot in the chest. Faulkner was struck multiple times and died in hospital hours later.
At trial, the state accused Abu-Jamal of murdering Faulkner. The prosecutor presented the jury with samples of his Black Panther writings to suggest an antipathy towards police, and on the back of that plus the questionable testimony of Chobert and other state witnesses he was convicted and sentenced to death. He remained on death row for 28 years before he was switched to life without parole after a court found his original capital sentence unconstitutional.
As has been the case throughout his incarceration, he did not discuss the specifics of the charges leveled against him with . But he did talk about the toll that decades behind bars has had on him and on his family. There has been the toll of distance, of separation, from his burgeoning family of four generations.
How many great grandchildren does he have?
“I don’t even know, but it’s quite a few.”
Being Abu-Jamal, he puts the pain of forced isolation in a political context.
“The state creates a system of solitary confinement for people on death row to dehumanize them to the people who love them. You cannot touch this person.”
In one of his best known books, Live From Death Row, he recounts the agonising prison visit from his young daughter Samiya early on in his incarceration. He recalls that moment again during our conversation, speaking in a voice that is at times so soft it is barely audible.
“She rushed in, her eyes lit up, and she looked at me, and she was confused because of the glass between us. She ran to the glass, this little girl, and began hitting it, shouting: ‘Break it! Break it!’ It tore my heart.”
Since then he has had time to develop strategies for overcoming the barriers to human contact.
“What I learned, you know, over these long years, is how to make people kind of feel you without being able to touch you.”
“I just talk to people as earnestly and as deeply as I can, to make contact with them without making physical contact. It’s a way to defeat the dehumanization process.”
One thing that buoyed him up over the years was the avalanche of global support from people concerned about his plight. When he was facing execution, the reported that he was the “world’s best known death-row inmate”, and his cause was adopted by a slew of celebrities such as Maya Angelou, Spike Lee and Paul Newman. He routinely received from supporters each week. Now that number has dwindled, he said, to 10 or 12. He thinks the slump is partly because the prison mail system has become more restrictive.
But it’s also because the shift from the death penalty to life without parole has to some degree taken him out of the limelight.
“Some people seem to believe that because I’m off death row, now I’m home. They don’t know. They don’t get it.”
Though his international profile may have receded, last month he was still made an honorary citizen of the Paris suburb Saint-Denis. A road there was named after him at the height of his death row ordeal in 2006.
Were he ever to be released, that would be one of his first ambitions.
“I’d like to walk on my street in Saint-Denis. And I’d like to visit Ghana. And I’d like to teach somewhere,”
After a pause, he added that he would also make a beeline to the graves of his mother Edith and wife Wadiya, both of whom have died during his time behind bars.
Books – reading and writing them – have been his prime survival tool throughout the near half century of his imprisonment.
“Books have been my closest friends for decades,”
“Most of what I’ve done in prison is read, and you have to read in order to write – to cultivate ideas and produce works.”
Even that has now become a struggle. For most of last year he was functionally blind as a result of his eyesight deteriorating over the past eight years. It is one facet of the immense physical toll that 28 years in solitary confinement on death row has extracted.
He puts his fading sight down to a series of health crises that began with a severe skin rash, led to diabetes brought on by heavy steroids, and culminated in a diabetic coma. At every step he has had to fight for even basic medical care. That included a two-year struggle to get medication for hepatitis C which was withheld on grounds that he was “not sick enough”.
It took him most of last year to wrestle the prison authorities into having his cataracts removed. During the two spells in which he was hospitalised for congestive heart failure, he was shackled for days to his medical bed.
Whatever you think of Abu-Jamal – whether you place him in the political prisoner or the cop killer category – his punishment does not include the annihilation of his health. Nor does it require the deprivation of the one activity in captivity that he holds most dear.
“When you cannot read, that is extremely painful,”
It’s a form of punishment in itself.
“Yes,”
“The very nature of imprisonment is punishment on all levels. It may not be written in an order from a court, but it is the practice – these are cruel places.”
Despite his impaired vision, he is compelled to finish his latest book which he is submitting for a PhD. It is an exploration of the writings of the Algerian revolutionary Frantz Fanon, focusing on his treatise on anti-colonialism, The Wretched of the Earth.
“I must finish it. I am determined to finish it. And I am closing in.”
It must be difficult, producing such a complex work with blurred vision on top of the daily burdens of incarceration.
“Yes it is,”
“But difficult is not impossible. You do what you must do.”
What is Abu-Jamal asking the UN to do?
He is asking the UN working group on arbitrary detention to review his detention and to take a stance on the injustices his legal team says occurred at his trial and during decades of appeals. The petition argues that his original trial and current sentence violate international law.
Why does the petition focus on the 1982 trial?
It says the prosecutor excluded almost all Black jurors, using “B” and “W” notations in a notebook to mark jurors by race. The petition says 71% of potential Black jurors were struck, compared with 20% of non-Black candidates, leaving a jury of 12 with only two Black members in a county that was almost 40% African American.
How does the petition describe the judge and key witness?
It says the trial judge, Albert Sabo, was perhaps the most prolific death penalty judge in the country and had presided over 31 capital cases ending with death row, all but two involving defendants from minorities. It also says newly disclosed evidence from 2018 raises doubts about the credibility of the state’s main eyewitness, Robert Chobert, who asked about “the money own to me” shortly after the trial.
How does Abu-Jamal view his sentence?
He says life without parole is itself arbitrary detention in breach of international rules and calls it “slow death row”. He describes it as “death row without a specific date of execution” and says it is “execution through time.”
What does he hope the UN review could change?
His legal team says a strong condemnation from the UN could help support efforts in the US for a retrial or a commutation of his sentence. Abu-Jamal says that, at minimum, the review offers a forum where judges can hear his claims without the political pressure he says affects Pennsylvania’s elected judiciary.
What shaped his political life and imprisonment?
Abu-Jamal says he was drawn into the Black liberation struggle at 14, after a Philadelphia police officer kicked him in the face during a 1968 protest against George Wallace. In 1969 he co-founded the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther party, wrote for the party newspaper, and later became a writer, broadcaster and president of Philadelphia’s Association of Black Journalists.
He was arrested in the early hours of 9 December 1981 while cab driving. He was near 13th and Locust Streets when his brother William Cook was being detained during a traffic stop by Faulkner. A shootout followed, Abu-Jamal was shot in the chest, and Faulkner later died in hospital. Abu-Jamal was convicted of murder at trial and sentenced to death before his sentence was later changed to life without parole after a court found the capital sentence unconstitutional.
How has imprisonment affected his family and health?
He says decades behind bars have meant prolonged separation from four generations of family, including great-grandchildren he says he does not even know how many he has. He also describes the dehumanizing effect of solitary confinement, saying the state uses it to separate prisoners from the people who love them.
His health has also deteriorated significantly. He says he was functionally blind for most of last year as his eyesight worsened over eight years, following a severe skin rash, diabetes brought on by heavy steroids and a diabetic coma. He also fought for years to obtain basic treatment, including medication for hepatitis C that was withheld because he was considered “not sick enough”, and cataract surgery that took most of last year to secure. During two hospitalizations for congestive heart failure, he was shackled to his medical bed for days.
What keeps him going now?
He says books have been his closest friends for decades and remain central to his survival. He is finishing a book for a PhD on the writings of Frantz Fanon, especially The Wretched of the Earth, and says he is determined to complete it despite blurred vision and the burdens of incarceration.
He also points to continued, though reduced, support from around the world. He was once described as the “world’s best known death-row inmate”, and his supporters included Maya Angelou, Spike Lee and Paul Newman. He once received many letters each week, but now says the number has fallen to 10 or 12, partly because of tighter prison mail rules and partly because his move from death row to life without parole has taken him out of the spotlight.
What would he do if released?
He says he would first walk on his street in Saint-Denis, visit Ghana and teach somewhere. He would also go to the graves of his mother Edith and his wife Wadiya, both of whom died while he was imprisoned.
Key Facts
- Mumia Abu-Jamal, 72, filed a petition on Tuesday with the UN working group on arbitrary detention in Geneva.
- He has been imprisoned since 9 December 1981 and was convicted in 1982 of murdering police officer Daniel Faulkner, a charge he denies.
- He is serving life without parole in Pennsylvania after 28 years on death row.
- His legal team includes Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center, with the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
- The petition says the prosecutor excluded almost all Black jurors and raises concerns about eyewitness Robert Chobert and Judge Albert Sabo.
