Datum: Sonntag, 11. Oktober 2009 17:23
From: Hans Bennett/Mumia NYC —
Remember to check out Pam Africatomorrow (Monday) from 8-9AM at WWW.900AMWURD.COM
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We have been saying that there is a strong possibility that the USSupreme Court will reinstate the Death Penalty for Mumia. This whilethe leading candidate running to replace Lynne Abraham as AttorneyGeneral is calling for Mumia’s execution and a new hit piece film byTigre Hill „The Barrel of a Gun“ is scheduled to be released aroundDecember 9th, the 28th anniversary of Mumia’s arrest and the beginningof the subsequent conspiracy to have him executed. Now this article.Please pay close attention and stay tuned for our messages.
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Suzanne Ross, for the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition This is most alarming news: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202434453364&Ohio_Death_Penalty_Case_Might_Determine_AbuJamals_Fate Ohio Death Penalty Case Might Determine Abu-Jamal’s Fate Shannon P. DuffyThe Legal IntelligencerOctober 12, 2009 Lawyers for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal will be watchingclosely on Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court takes up an Ohio deathpenalty case because its outcome may very well decide whether Abu-Jamal’s death sentence will be reinstated. In April, Abu-Jamal lost his final appeal seeking a new trial for theDecember 1981 murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulknerwhen the justices refused to take up the issue of whether blacks wereunfairly excluded from the jury. But, at the time, the justices took no action on a companion petitionfiled by the Philadelphia district attorney’s office demandingreinstatement of Abu-Jamal’s death sentence despite having discussedit weeks before. Now it appears certain that the high court has decided to hold thePhiladelphia prosecutors‘ petition in abeyance pending the outcome ofSmith v. Spisak — an Ohio case that raises strikingly similar issuesto those in Abu-Jamal’s case. If the prosecutors in that case are successful and win reinstatementof the death sentence imposed on Frank G. Spisak, the justices maythen see no need to take up Abu-Jamal’s case. Instead, at that point, it’s likely that the justices would simplyissue a one-page order in Abu-Jamal’s case that would summarilyreverse the decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals andorder the appellate court to reconsider whether Abu-Jamal’s deathsentence should be reinstated.
Why is Abu-Jamal’s case so similar to Spisak’s? Both were on death rowfor notorious murders, but both won rulings in federal court thatgranted them partial new trials limited to the penalty phase. In both cases, the federal courts‘ decisions to overturn the deathsentences hinged on Mills v. Maryland — a 1988 U.S. Supreme Courtdecision that governs how juries should deliberate during the penaltyphase of a capital trial. The Mills ruling struck down a Maryland statute that said juries incapital cases must be unanimous on any aggravating or mitigatingfactor. Voting 5-4, the justices declared that unanimity was properlyrequired for any aggravating factor, but that mitigating factors —those that weigh against imposing a death sentence — must be handledmore liberally, with each juror free to find on his or her own. Since then, Mills has proven to be a powerful tool for defense lawyersaiming to overturn death sentences in numerous other states.
The question now before the courts is whether Mills truly requiresthat death sentences in other states be overturned if the juries inthose states might have been confused by faulty instructions orverdict forms and led to believe that mitigating factors requireunanimity. Perhaps even more important to the justices is a corollary question offederalism: Is it fair for the federal courts to overturn a statecourt’s decision on how to interpretMills by imposing its owninterpretation that extends Mills beyond its original scope? It’s possible that the justices will provide the answers to thosequestions in Spisak’s case that will be immediately applied to Abu-Jamal’s case — with Abu-Jamal and his lawyers forced to simply watchand wait until that happens. Spisak, 57, was sentenced to death in 1983 for a killing spree atCleveland State University after a monthlong trial that reportedlyincluded testimony that he was a neo-Nazi and cross-dresser. According to briefs in the case, Spisak killed Horace T. Rickerson,Timothy Sheehan and Brian Warford and also shot at John Hardaway andColetta Dartt.
Hardaway was shot seven times but survived andidentified Spisak as the shooter. After his arrest, Spisak confessed to all five shootings and declaredthat his actions were motivated by his hatred of gay people, blacksand Jews. As Ohio prosecutors argued in their Supreme Court brief, Spisak„proudly testified at length as to his neo-Nazi beliefs and told thejury that those beliefs had motivated the murders.“ In 2006, the 6th Circuit overturned Spisak’s death sentence based on aMills violation as well as findings that his lawyers were ineffectiveand had „demonized“ Spisak during the trial. The Supreme Court overturned the ruling and ordered the 6th Circuit tostudy the case again in light of two other decisions by the high court. But the 6th Circuit in 2008 reinstated its prior decisions, findingthey were correct. Now the Supreme Court has taken the Spisak case up a second time totackle the question of whether the 6th Circuit failed to give properdeference to the Ohio state courts „when it applied Mills v. Marylandto resolve … questions that were not decided or addressed in Mills.“
Abu-Jamal’s lead lawyer, Robert R. Bryan of San Francisco, said inApril that the issue in Spisak is „very similar“ to the issue raisedin the prosecutors‘ petition in Abu-Jamal’s case. „The question we’ve got,“ Bryan said at the time, „is whether we’ll beleft dangling in the wind until Spisak is decided.“ In the prosecutor’s petition in Abu-Jamal’s case, Deputy DistrictAttorney Ronald Eisenberg argued that the 3rd Circuit failed to givethe proper deference to the rulings of the Pennsylvania Supreme Courtwhich had addressed the Mills issue in 1995 and — relying on a 3rdCircuit decision — concluded that the Pennsylvania jury instructionsdid not run afoul of Mills. But by the time Abu-Jamal’s case made its way into the federal courts,the 3rd Circuit „had changed its mind,“ Eisenberg argued, with aseries of decisions that said the Pennsylvania courts‘ analysis ofMills was not only wrong but unreasonable. Eisenberg urged the justices to see a difference between Mills —where the Maryland jury was specifically instructed that it had to beunanimous on mitigating factors — and the situation in states likePennsylvania, where the issue is much subtler and hinges onspeculation by the federal courts that the jury might have beenconfused. „The difficulty with the 3rd Circuit’s ‚risk of confusion‘ view isthat Mills, quite simply, stated no such rule,“ Eisenberg argues.