Death Blossoms: Reflections From a Prisoner of Conscience

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mumia Abu-Jamal was born April 24, 1954, in Philadelphia. At the time of his arrest there on December 9, 1981, on charges of the murder of a police officer, he was a leading broadcast journalist and president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Association of Black Journalists. Widely acclaimed for his award-winning work with NPR, Mutual Black Network, National Black Network, WUHY (now WHYY), and other stations, he was known in the city as Philly's "voice for the voiceless."

At the age of fourteen, Jamal was beaten and arrested for protesting at a presidential rally for George Wallace. In the fall of 1968, he became a founding member and lieutenant minister of information of the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party. During the summer of 1970, he worked for the Party newspaper in Oakland, California, returning to Philadelphia shortly before the city police raided all three offices of the Panther Party there.

Throughout the following decade, Jamal's hard-hitting criticism of the Philadelphia Police Department and the Rizzo administration marked him as a journalist "to watch" His unyielding rejection of Mayor Rizzo's version of the city's 1978 siege of the MOVE organization (in the Powelton Village neighborhood of West Philadelphia) in particular incensed the establishment, and eventually his advocacy cost him his broadcast job. In order to support his growing family, Jamal began to work night shifts as a cabdriver.

In the early morning hours of December 9, 1981, Jamal was critically shot and beaten by police and charged with the murder of officer Daniel Faulkner. Put on trial before Philadelphia's notorious "hanging judge," Albert Sabo, he was convicted and sentenced to death on July 3, 1982.

Jamal's appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was denied in March 1989, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused review of his case. In June 1995, Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge signed Jamal's death warrant. Jamal filed a petition for post conviction relief in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, alleging 22 separate violations of rights and procedures that occurred during his first trial, and seeking a reversal of his death sentence and murder conviction. Hearings were held throughout July and August 1995; during the same months large rallies were held around the world in Jamal's support. The death warrant was vacated a few days before his scheduled execution (August 17, 1995).

Although Jamal's petition was denied by Judge Sabo, new evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and of the defendant's innocence has been presented to the appeals court. His appeals process continues as of this date (November 1996).

Despite fifteen years on death row, Jamal continues to speak out. His commentaries on racism, politics, and the American judicial system have been printed in dozens of newspapers throughout the United States and Europe. He has also been published in the Yale Law Journal and The Nation.

In 1994, a series of commentaries scheduled for broadcast on NPR's "All Things Considered," which described life behind bars, caused such controversy that it was abruptly canceled, sparking intense debates about censorship and the death penalty. A year later, despite considerable pressure to stifle their publication, Addison-Wesley released them in print under the title Live from Death Row. The book has since been translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian; an interactive CD-Rom version is also available.

Mumia was moved to SCI Greene, Pennsylvania's supermaximum security unit in Waynesburg, in the southwestern corner of the state, in January 1995. He remains incarcerated there.

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INFORMATION

International Concerned Friends & Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO. Box 19709, Philadelphia, PA 19143
Tel 215-476-8812 Fax: 215-476-7551

Equal Justice USA, A Project of the Quixote Center
P.O. Box 5206, Hyattsville, MD 20782
Tel: 301-699-0042 Fax: 301-864-2182

Partisan Defense Committee
PO. Box 99, Canal St Station
New York, NY 10013-0099
212-406-4252

Western PA Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO. Box 8906, Pittsburgh, PA 15221
Tel/Fax: 412-734-8315

Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
163 Amsterdam Ave., Suite 115
New York, NY 10023-5001
212-580-1022

Freedom Now Network!
2420 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110
415-648-4505

Comite de Southien aux Prisonniers Politiques aux Etats-Unis (es.p.p.)
c/o Librairie Le Point du Jour
58 rue Gay-Lussac, 75005 Paris FRANCE
Tel. / Fax: 33 1 45 79 88 44

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition
P.O.650, New York, NY 10009
212-330-8029

Refuse & Resist!
305 Madison Ave., Suite 1166
New York, NY 10165
212-713-5657

RESOURCES

Live from Death Row by Mumia Abu-Jamal
Addison-Wesley, 1995; Avon Paperbacks, 1996

First Person: Mumia Abu-Jamal (CD-Rom) Voyager, 1995

Race for Justice by Leonard Weinglass
Common Courage Press, 1995

In Defense of Mumia (anthology)
Writers and Readers Press, 1996

Jamal Journal (newsletter), Jamal Summit (magazine)
First Day (the MOVE newspaper)
Subscriptions available from Int'l Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal

From Death Row: This is Mumia-Abu-Jamal
26 Radio Commentaries on Audiocassette
Available from Equal Justice USA