November 21

Mumia Abu-Jamal's New Trial Rejected

By DAVID B. CARUSO

PHILADELPHIA  - A judge on Wednesday rejected a plea for a new trial from Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther and journalist sentenced to death for killing a police officer in 1981.

Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe said she does not have jurisdiction over Abu-Jamal's petition for a new trial, scuttling his hopes for another round of state-court appeals.

 Abu-Jamal argued that his former lawyers did a poor job and that he has new evidence that could clear him.

 Still pending is his federal appeal in the slaying of Officer Daniel Faulkner, 25, who was killed after he pulled over Abu-Jamal's brother in a downtown traffic stop.

 Celebrities, death-penalty opponents and foreign politicians have rallied to Abu-Jamal's cause, calling him a political prisoner and saying he was railroaded by a racist justice system.

 ``The only thing that (the judge) has done is expose the conspiracy by this government to commit cold-blooded, premeditated murder,'' said Philadelphia activist Pam Africa.

 Assistant District Attorney Hugh Burns praised Dembe's decision, but said other Abu-Jamal appeals will keep the case tied up in court.

 ``It never ends,'' Burns said.

 Abu-Jamal exhausted his state appeals two years ago, but a petition filed in September argued his lawyers have new evidence to clear him, including a confession by a man named Arnold Beverly.

 In a 1999 affidavit, Beverly claimed he was hired by the mob to kill Faulkner because the officer had interfered with mob payoffs to police.

 Abu-Jamal's former lawyers, Leonard Weinglass and Daniel R. Williams, said they thought the confession was not credible and a federal judge refused to order Beverly to testify on Abu-Jamal's behalf.

 Abu-Jamal argued he should be entitled to another state appeal because the attorneys denied him the right to effective counsel.

 Dembe dismissed the value of the confession.

 ``Aggrandizing themselves by confessing to participation in high-profile cases is not unusual,'' she wrote. ``Witnesses who recant and witnesses who mysteriously appear long after trial are regarded with suspicion by the courts.''

 Prosecutors had argued that Abu-Jamal's request for a new state appeal was not filed in time because he knew about the Beverly petition two years ago.