1
1
1
The prosecutor during Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial used 10 of 15 preemptory challenges to purge potential Black jurors -- more than twice the exclusion rate expected statistically with race-neutral procedures.
That newly created legal standard advanced by two 3rd Circuit judges to reject voluminous evidence documenting racist jury selection practices by Abu-Jamal's trial prosecutor erected procedures far in excess of those then required by existing 3rd Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
The third member of that three-judge 3rd Circuit panel issued a stinging 41-page dissent that repeatedly criticized his panel colleagues for radically changing jury discrimination standards applied by their circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Incredibly, the ruling by that panel's two-judge majority -- later backed by the full 3rd Circuit -- faults Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial attorney for not strictly following procedures the U.S. Supreme Court didn't adopt until 1986 " four years after Abu-Jamal's trial.
Curiously, just days before that March 2008 3rd Circuit ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a Louisiana death row inmate a new hearing after finding race tainted jury selection practices during that inmate's trial.
That U.S. Supreme Court ruling employed preemptory challenge standards less stringent than those the 3rd Circuit created in its Abu-Jamal ruling.
The author of that 2008 Supreme Court ruling, Justice Samuel Alito, formerly served on the 3rd Circuit where he participated in rulings granting relief to inmates victimized by prosecutorial jury selection improprieties less onerous than those in the Abu-Jamal case.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Abu-Jamal's appeal of the 3rd Circuit ruling.
American law is an "instrument of the powerful," Abu-Jamal stated in his latest book released earlier this year, his sixth book written from death row. "For the weak, the powerless, the oppressed, the law is more often a hindrance than a help."
Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and supporter of Philadelphia's MOVE organization, is a harsh critic of America's racially inequitable society, a posture enraging many powerful people.
Fundamental Issue
In 1959, when Abu-Jamal was 4-years-old, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a ruling that goes to the heart of the most important yet frequently downplayed aspect of Abu-Jamal's conviction -- a fair trial.
Pennsylvania's highest court proclaimed that defendants are entitled "to all the safeguards of a fair trial " even if the evidence of guilt piles as high as Mt. Everest."
Defendants retain fair trial safeguards irrespective of whether judges or prosecutors are convinced of the defendant's guilt before trial.
That 1959 ruling prohibiting judges and prosecutors from failing to follow fair trial procedures came in a Philadelphia murder case where the defendant pleaded guilty.
Abu-Jamal has always maintained his innocence.
