Mumia Abu-Jamal Will Not Be Executed

After a 30-year-long legal battle, the fate of Mumia Abu-Jamal, one of America’s most famous death row inmates, has been sealed: He will not be executed, but will spend the rest of his life in prison.

On Wednesday, Dec. 7, Seth Williams, the district attorney for Philadelphia, announced that Mumia Abu-Jamal would not be executed. The former radio reporter who was involved with the Black Panthers, a revolutionary African-American group, was convicted of killing a white police officer, Daniel Faulkner, on Dec. 9, 1981.

“While Abu-Jamal will no longer be facing the death penalty, he will remain behind bars for the rest of his life, and that is exactly where he belongs,” Williams said of his decision. The sentence may have been modified, but nothing has really changed: For the American justice system, Mumia Abu-Jamal’s guilt is beyond doubt. Therefore, any hope for his liberation is unimaginable under the current law in the state of Pennsylvania.

The NAACP, the largest civil rights organization for black Americans, enthusiastically welcomed the news. “Thirty years later, the district attorney’s decision not to seek a new death sentence […] furthers the interests of justice,” said Judith Ritter, who represented Abu-Jamal. “There is no question that justice is served when a death sentence from a misinformed jury is overturned,” she added.

Last spring, a federal appeals court ordered a new sentencing hearing for Abu-Jamal because the instructions given to juries during his 1982 trial had been unclear.

Condemned to death by an all-white jury, Mumia Abu-Jamal had become the symbol of a racist legal system for his supporters. The claim of discrimination in jury selection was upheld by the NAACP, who contributed to Abu-Jamal’s defense.

An Internet site is even devoted to him (FreeMumia.com) where the various supporters of the former journalist called for a day of action in Philadelphia on Dec. 9, the anniversary of the murder and his imprisonment.

In January 2010, an international petition was launched on the Internet to demand that the American President, Barack Obama, speak out against Mumia Abu-Jamal’s condemnation to death row. The petition has gathered numerous celebrity signatures, including the former first lady of France, Danielle Mitterand, and the German writer Günter Grass.

As for Daniel Faulkner’s widow, she has declared that, “The time remaining before Abu-Jamal stands before his ultimate judge […] doesn’t seem quite so far off as it once did when I was younger,” and that she “look[s] forward to that day.”