Mumia Update

From the Philadelphia Enquirer:

On July 3, 1982, a Philadelphia jury took just four hours to sentence Mumia
Abu-Jamal to death for murdering Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Nearly a quarter-century later, Abu-Jamal has remained alive through a series of appeals. His bid to escape the death penalty is now at a critical stage.

The man who murdered Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner is perhaps finally hearing the approaching footsteps of his executioner. His rightful execution has been denied for twenty-five years.

The case will be argued this week in the region's federal appeals court, and if Abu-Jamal loses, Philadelphia's most controversial death-row inmate will be in imminent peril of lethal injection.

"He realizes that death is just a few doors away," said his attorney, Robert R. Bryan, a San Francisco lawyer who specializes in death-penalty appeals.

Still not close enough for my liking but then again I'm not a particularly patient man. This Mumia is a waste of oxygen and needs to have a good long talk with the worms.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia will hear legal argument on whether the death sentence should be upheld, or whether Abu-Jamal should get a new trial or a new sentencing hearing.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia will hear legal argument on whether the death sentence should be upheld, or whether Abu-Jamal should get a new trial or a new sentencing hearing.

There isn't a question of whether or not Mumia committed the murder. He did it. The reason why Mumia isn't composting right now is that an idiot federal judge, U.S. District Judge William H. Yohn Jr.

... rejected all but one of the 29 legal points raised by the defense.

Yohn overturned the death sentence, ruling that the jury may have mistakenly believed it had to agree unanimously on any "mitigating" circumstance - a factor that might have caused the jury to opt for life.

The jury "may have" believed something or other. That was in 2001.