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The failures of federal and state courts to correct the gross violations in Abu-Jamal's case, compounding the illegal conduct of police and prosecutors, cries out for an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department requested by organizations and individuals concerned about America's bedrock principal of equal justice under law.
It is true that courts enjoy wide discretion in interpreting law as those courts deemed appropriate.
However, the fact that state and federal courts have rejected every evidentiary issue and all but one procedural error issue presented in the Abu-Jamal case raises real questions about courts acting in accordance with the principle of equal-justice-under-law.
To accept the assertion that the Abu-Jamal case is one of open-&-shut guilt free of any error requires embracing scenarios that defy logic, law and the proven official misconduct in those other 1981 Philadelphia homicide arrests.
--Linn Washington Jr. is a Yale Law Journalism Fellowship graduate and Philadelphia Tribune columnist who has investigated the Abu-Jamal case since December 9, 1981 the day of Abu-Jamal's arrest.
