Appeals court to review cop killer’s sentence

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA

A U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia, acting on orders from the Supreme Court, will again review the death sentence of death-row inmate Mumia Abu Jamal.

The Nov. 9 hearing could prove a setback for the convicted police killer who has become an international cause celebr as he awaits execution.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2008 granted the one-time radio reporter and former Black Panther a new sentencing hearing based on what it deemed were flawed jury instructions. But the Supreme Court this year upheld a death sentence in an Ohio case with similar jury issues — and ordered the Philadelphia court to revisit its Abu-Jamal ruling.

Defense lawyer Robert Bryan does not believe the Ohio case seals Abu-Jamal’s fate. He argues that they involve different facts that will enable the three-judge appeals panel to reach a different conclusion.

The appeals court on Tuesday agreed to hear arguments again on the issue, a decision Bryan saw as positive. The judges could have ruled solely based on written briefs.

Abu-Jamal has argued in numerous appeals that racism by the trial judge and prosecutors corrupted his 1982 conviction at the hands of a mostly white jury. Those appeals have failed so far.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, have fought a federal judge’s 2001 decision to grant Abu-Jamal a new sentencing hearing because of the flawed jury instructions.

The flaw relates to whether jurors understood how to weigh mitigating circumstances that might have kept Abu-Jamal from being executed. Under state law, jurors did not have to unanimously agree on a mitigating circumstance.

Abu-Jamal, 56, has been on death row since his 1982 conviction for killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner the year before.

The white 25-year-old patrolman had pulled over Abu-Jamal’s brother on a darkened downtown street. Prosecutors say Abu-Jamal saw the traffic stop and shot Faulkner, who managed to shoot back. A wounded Abu-Jamal, his own gun nearby, was still at the scene when police arrived.