McGill prosecuted Abu-Jamal in a 1982 trial presided over by Judge Sabo.
Abu-Jamal’s attorneys had alleged that McGill engaged in jury selection discrimination – a claim documented by evidence but a claim that the Third Circuit panel’s majority rejected. Sabo’s rulings during that 1982 trail aided this documentable discrimination.
During Abu-Jamal’s ’82 trial, McGill made the same comments to the jury that the Pa high court faulted in its 1986 ruling. But when the Court upheld Abu-Jamal’s conviction in 1989 it refused to find any fault with McGill making the same comments it had faulted him for in its ruling three years before.
Then, in 1990, the Pa Supreme Court reinstated its 1986 standard regarding prosecutors making improper comments like McGill made.
The Pa Supreme Court’s flip-flopping on this form of prosecutorial misconduct led Amnesty International to state in its 2001 report that: “This contradictory series of precedents leaves the disturbing impression that the Court invented a new standard of procedure to apply it to one case only: that of Mumia Abu-Jamal.”
McGill’s improper comments to the jury faulted by the Pa Supreme Court in 1986 were an appeal issue before the Third Circuit Court. That federal court panel found no fault in McGill’s comments, denying Abu-Jamal relief he should have received if those federal appeals judges fairly followed established law.
The Third Circuit panel also rejected allegations that Judge Sabo was biased during a major 1995 appeals hearing.
Sabo’s biased antics during that 1995 proceeding were so outrageous this misconduct provoked strong, caustic criticisms from even Philadelphia’s normally anti-Abu-Jamal media. An August 1995 editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer blasted Sabo’s “injudicious conduct” that included verbally badgering Abu-Jamal’s attorneys and even briefly jailing one of those attorneys for objecting to one of his improper rulings.
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