Journalist and Black revolutionary figure Mumia Abu Jamal could get a new trial after 41 years in prison. A Philadelphia judge said on Friday she would issue her decision within three months, after being presented with new evidence.
Abu Jamal’s legal team presented the judge with six boxes of what they called “highly significant evidence” found in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, which they claim will prove the 1981 trial that led to his conviction was fouled. The evidence was found by accident in 2019 by the then-new district attorney, Larry Krasner, while looking for office furniture. It had never been shown to Abu Jamal’s team before and was not used in the trial.
Mumia was imprisoned on charges that he shot and killed Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner on December 9, 1981, during a traffic stop. He was also sentenced to death, which was withdrawn in 2011 after an appeals court threw out the earlier sentencing. However, the court did not throw out his conviction.
Among the evidence found in the boxes were a series of notes and letters by the prosecution that highly suggest it was involved in the systematic exclusion of Black people from the jury and paying off witnesses who testified against Abu Jamal.
The 68-year-old Abu Jamal was well-known as a journalist at the time of his arrest, reporting for National Public Radio on the “tough on crime” administrations of mayors Frank Rizzo and William Green, which ravaged the city’s Black and working-class communities.
He gained notoriety for covering the trials of the MOVE Nine, who were members of a Black liberation group whose conflict with police later included police dropping two firebombs on their rowhouse from a helicopter in 1985, sparking a fire that killed 11 people and destroyed the homes of 250 others.
He had previously been a member of the Black Panther Party for a short time, from 1968 until 1970.