Mumia Abu-Jamal was born on Wesley Cook; April 24,1954 and is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.
57 Facts About Mumia Abu-Jamal
2.
Mumia Abu-Jamal entered the general prison population early the following year.
3.
Mumia Abu-Jamal eventually served as president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.
4.
Mumia Abu-Jamal supported the Philadelphia organization MOVE and covered the 1978 confrontation in which one police officer was killed.
5.
Since 1982, the murder trial of Mumia Abu-Jamal has been seriously criticized for constitutional failings; some have claimed that he is innocent, and many opposed his death sentence.
6.
The Faulkner family, politicians, and other groups involved with law enforcement, state and city governments argue that Mumia Abu-Jamal's trial was fair, his guilt beyond question, and his death sentence justified.
7.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was born Wesley Cook in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he grew up.
8.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was appointed as the chapter's "Lieutenant of Information," responsible for writing information and news communications.
9.
Mumia Abu-Jamal spent late 1969 in New York City and early 1970 in Oakland, living and working with BPP colleagues in those cities; the party had been founded in Oakland.
10.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was a party member from May 1969 until October 1970.
11.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was suspended for distributing literature calling for "black revolutionary student power".
12.
Mumia Abu-Jamal led unsuccessful protests to change the school name to Malcolm X High, to honor the major African-American leader who had been killed in New York by political opponents.
13.
Mumia Abu-Jamal married Jamal's mother Biba in 1973, but they did not stay together long.
14.
In 1977 Mumia Abu-Jamal married again, to his second wife, Marilyn.
15.
Mumia Abu-Jamal worked for brief periods at radio station WPEN.
16.
Mumia Abu-Jamal became active in the local chapter of the Marijuana Users Association of America.
17.
Mumia Abu-Jamal had several high-profile interviews, including with Julius Erving, Bob Marley and Alex Haley.
18.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was elected president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.
19.
In December 1981, Mumia Abu-Jamal was working as a taxicab driver in Philadelphia two nights a week to supplement his income.
20.
Mumia Abu-Jamal had been working part-time as a reporter for WDAS, then an African-American-oriented and minority-owned radio station.
21.
Police arrived and arrested Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was found to be wearing a shoulder holster.
22.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was taken directly from the scene of the shooting to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he received treatment for his wound.
23.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was next taken to Police Headquarters, where he was charged and held for trial in the first-degree murder of Officer Faulkner.
24.
Cynthia White testified that Mumia Abu-Jamal emerged from a nearby parking lot and shot Faulkner.
25.
Michael Scanlan, a motorist, testified that from two car lengths away he saw a man matching Mumia Abu-Jamal's description run across the street from a parking lot and shoot Faulkner.
26.
Tests to confirm that Mumia Abu-Jamal had handled and fired the weapon were not performed.
27.
The defense maintained that Mumia Abu-Jamal was innocent, and that the prosecution witnesses were unreliable.
28.
The defense presented nine character witnesses, including poet Sonia Sanchez, who testified that Mumia Abu-Jamal was "viewed by the black community as a creative, articulate, peaceful, genial man".
29.
Mumia Abu-Jamal did not testify in his own defense, nor did his brother, William Cook.
30.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was cross-examined about issues relevant to the assessment of his character by Joseph McGill, the prosecuting attorney.
31.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death by the unanimous decision of the jury.
32.
The six judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled unanimously that all issues raised by Mumia Abu-Jamal, including the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, were without merit.
33.
In 1999, Arnold Beverly claimed that he and an unnamed assailant, not Mumia Abu-Jamal, shot Daniel Faulkner as part of a contract killing because Faulkner was interfering with graft and payoff to corrupt police.
34.
The Free Mumia Coalition has claimed that White was a police informant and that she falsified her testimony against Abu-Jamal.
35.
The hospital doctors said that Mumia Abu-Jamal was "on the verge of fainting" when brought in, and they did not hear any such confession.
36.
Mumia Abu-Jamal's defense had asserted, based on a 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences, that forensic evidence presented by the prosecution and accepted into evidence in the original trial was unreliable.
37.
The Free Mumia Coalition published statements by William Cook and his brother Abu-Jamal in the spring of 2001.
38.
Mumia Abu-Jamal did not make any public statements about Faulkner's murder until May 4,2001.
39.
Mumia Abu-Jamal vacated the sentence of death on December 18,2001, citing irregularities in the penalty phase of the trial and the original process of sentencing.
40.
Eliot Grossman and Marlene Kamish, attorneys for Mumia Abu-Jamal, criticized the ruling on the grounds that it denied the possibility of a trial de novo, at which they could introduce evidence that their client had been framed.
41.
The prosecution said that the Batson claim was invalid because Mumia Abu-Jamal made no complaints during the original jury selection.
42.
The resulting jury was racially mixed, with 2 blacks and 10 whites at the time of the unanimous conviction, but defense counsel told the Third Circuit Court that Mumia Abu-Jamal did not get a fair trial because the jury was racially biased, misinformed, and the judge was a racist.
43.
Mumia Abu-Jamal noted that the prosecution used eleven out of fourteen peremptory challenges to eliminate prospective black jurors.
44.
Mumia Abu-Jamal understood that it would be extremely difficult to present the case against Abu-Jamal again, after the passage of 30 years and the deaths of several key witnesses.
45.
Mumia Abu-Jamal reiterated her belief that Abu-Jamal will be punished further after death.
46.
In 1991, Mumia Abu-Jamal published an essay in the Yale Law Journal, on the death penalty and his death row experience.
47.
In May 1994, Mumia Abu-Jamal was engaged by National Public Radio's All Things Considered program to deliver a series of monthly three-minute commentaries on crime and punishment.
48.
Mumia Abu-Jamal sued NPR for not airing his work, but a federal judge dismissed the suit.
49.
Mumia Abu-Jamal has been invited as commencement speaker by a number of colleges, and has participated via recordings.
50.
In 1999, Mumia Abu-Jamal was invited to record a keynote address for the graduating class at Evergreen State College in Washington State.
51.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is published as a regular columnist for Junge Welt, a Marxist newspaper in Germany.
52.
In 1995, Mumia Abu-Jamal was punished with solitary confinement for engaging in entrepreneurship contrary to prison regulations.
53.
In litigation before the US Court of Appeals, in 1998 Mumia Abu-Jamal successfully established his right while in prison to write for financial gain.
54.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was later allowed to resume his broadcasts, and hundreds of his broadcasts have been aired on Pacifica Radio.
55.
Amnesty International neither takes a position on the guilt or innocence of Mumia Abu-Jamal nor classifies him as a political prisoner.
56.
Many such groups operate within the Prison-Industrial Complex, a system which Mumia Abu-Jamal has frequently criticized.
57.
Mumia Abu-Jamal had worked on Abu-Jamal's case, and his nomination was rejected by the US Senate on a bipartisan basis because of that.