Three cheers for the feds standing up for safeguards under-girding the legal system.
However, there’s a not so small problem here.
For some people, authorities willfully toss aside legal safeguards like the sanctity of attorney-client privacy when advancing schemes to sabotage legal rights. And designated protectors of the legal system – like prosecutors and judges – turn blind eyes to these assaults.
Enter Mumia Abu-Jamal – a case that provokes criticisms internationally because it is riddled with sabotage schemes by police, prosecutors and judges.
Shortly before a critical 1995 court proceeding for Abu-Jamal, a bevy of Pennsylvania authorities including ranking members of the Pa Governor’s Office willfully violated his attorney-client privacy right by illegally opening mail from his lawyers.
This improper mail opening alerted then Gov. Tom Ridge to the date lawyers planned to file an appeal thus enabling Ridge to use this improperly obtained information to issue a death warrant a few days before that filing.
Ridge’s warrant torpedoed the legal safeguard of fairness in that appeal proceeding by, among many things, forcing Abu-Jamal’s lawyers to fight the sand-bagging execution date instead of focusing solely on finalizing preparations for that important hearing.
That warrant enabled a notoriously pro-prosecution judge to further decimate Abu-Jamal’s rights by unnecessarily rushing the hearing – claiming he had to expedite the hearing because of the pending execution warrant. (The warrant itself was illegal because Pa law permits death row inmates to exhaust all appeals before an execution can take place.)
That ’95 appeal hearing ended with that bigoted judge rejecting all of Abu-Jamal’s evidence – incredible proof destroying core elements of the prosecution’s case.
An August 1998 Third Circuit federal appeals court ruling declared Pa authorities invaded “the privacy” of Abu-Jamal’s protected legal mail “thus directly” interfering with his ability to “communicate with” his lawyers.
Unlike the Larry Mendte email invasion, however, no prosecutor or judge took any action against Ridge or offending Pa state lawyers for violating Abu-Jamal’s attorney-client privacy rights.
Remember, attorney/client privacy violations against Abu-Jamal occurred during a death penalty case – not some ego spat between pampered, highly paid TV personalities. Apparently, federal prosecutors are more moved by privacy invasions against a self-destroyed damsel than invasions against a self-declared radical facing the death penalty.
When the Third Circuit upheld Abu-Jamal’s murder conviction earlier this year, that ruling blithely brushed off numerous instances of outrageous skullduggery during that 1995 appeal hearing as lawful grounds for a new hearing.
The day after Mendte’s indictment – July 22 – the Third Circuit rejected a request to reconsider its rejection of Abu-Jamal’s request for a new hearing. That earlier rejection chucked existing legal standards by creating new, stricter standards exceeding those ordered by even the US Supreme Court.
That initial rejection, for example, faulted Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial attorney for not following legal standards that the US Supreme Court did not create until 1986 – four full years after that trial. That rejection faulted Abu-Jamal’s 1995 lawyers for not presenting certain evidence of jury selection discrimination that the ’95 hearing judge blocked lawyers from presenting even to the point of briefly jailing one lawyer for objecting to this judge’s obstruction.
Interestingly, the Third Circuit recently ordered a new hearing for a member of a murderous drug gang that robbed drug dealers to buy guns to rob other drug dealers. This new hearing resulted from that Circuit Court scrupulously adhering to legal standards…which courts are supposed to do.
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