Photos from 9-15-06 Oakland Mumia Rally

Mumia is now a world famous journalist and commentator on death row in Pennsylvania after being convicted of the Dec 9, 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. It is believed by many of Mumia's supporters that his trial was a racist frame up of a black journalist who was a thorn in the side of the authorities. In particular, in 2001, it was learned that a hit man named Arnold Beverly had confessed to the murder of officer Faulkner. The courts have refused to hear Arnold Beverly's testimony.

Mumia's case is currently on appeal, and 4 points are currently allowed to be litigated in court:

1) The bias of the trial judge, Judge Sabo, during the post conviction relief act (PCRA) hearings in 1995-97. I'm not sure if this exact point can be litigated since it occurred during the trial, not during the appeal, but one of the court reporters overheard Judge Sabo comment "Yeah and I'm going to help them fry the n***er".

2) Batson issue: There were several black jurors who were kept off the jury for spurious reasons.

3) The prosecutor told the jury that it wouldn't matter so much if they convicted Mumia because he would have "appeal after appeal".

4) The death sentence. Judge Yohn suspended Mumia's death sentence in 2001 because the jury was given incorrect instructions that they would have to all agree on the same reason(s) why Mumia should not get the death penalty if he was to not be sentenced to death.


Point #1 needs to be expanded to include Judge Sabo's miss-handling of the ballistics evidence in the appeal. He allowed the prosecution to have unsupervised access to the physical evidence in the case for a 24 hour period during the appeal. If he did anything else to suppress this evidence , that should be brought to light also. This is important because Rachel Wolkenstein's affidavit, point #30 reads

( http://www.pagesincolor.com/RachelW.html )

'30. There was also ample evidence that Jamal's gun had not been fired that night and that police knew this. To begin with, no lead or gunshot residue testing was reportedly performed on Jamal's hand, or if such testing was done, the results were suppressed. Nor is there any police report as to whether Jamal's gun was warm or smelled of burnt gunpowder from being recently fired. Moreover, the police ballistics report states that the bullet taken from Faulkner's head wound is extremely mutilated and distorted. ..destroying the major portion of the rifling markings" such that even its general characteristics are "indeterminable." The ballistics report, which was unsigned, concluded that a comparative examination of the evidence bullet against test-fired bullets "has shown insufficient characteristic markings to permit a positive comparison." However, a photograph taken of this bullet discloses a largely intact lead bullet with pronounced filing impressions indicating that a comparative analysis with original exemplar bullets fired from it could have resulted in a determination as to whether the bullet was fired from Jamal's Charter Arms revolver. Additionally the relative width of the lands to the grooves on the bullet reportedly taken from Faulkner's head wound is the opposite of all but a few percent of the Charter Arms revolvers produced. Thus the prosecution's ballistics evidence (or lack thereof) itself raises a strong likelihood that the bullet in evidence from Faulkner's head wound was not fired from Jamal's Charter Arms revolver, and that police ballistics tests were "inconclusive" because properly and competently performed ballistics would exclude Jamal's gun as the murder weapon.'

There is no gaurantee that if this evidence is re-examined in court that it will win Mumia's freedom. Leonard Peltier has simillar evidence exhonorating him of the crimes he was convicted of but he is still in prison. But it is worth a try at least.

The Speaker identified only as '' Gerald ' is actually Gerald Sanders . Peace and Freedom party candidate for California State Treasurer .
The speaker identified only as '' Speaker 10'' is Marsha Feinland , Peace and Freedom Party candidate for U.S . Senate . Please ad to captions . THANKS .

Sorry about the captions folks. I didn't ask for or record names as people were speaking. Gerald Sanders has had his name recorded on some programs with a different last name, so I wasn't sure if I should use his whole name. Since he's running for office I suppose he should have his whole name displayed. Usually I take pictures of the back of people's heads, as in the immigrant marches. Not much sense in making Homeland Security's job any easier, at least when it comes to monitoring otherwise law abiding citizens or immigrants. If people in the pictures want to identify themselves, let them post that info here.