The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruling in Abu-Jamal v. Beard is availble in Adobe .pdf format.
"US court grants new sentencing for Mumia Abu-Jamal," is the AP report, via Google News. Here's an extended excerpt:
A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered a new sentencing hearing for convicted police killer and death-row activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, finding for a second time that the death-penalty instructions given to the jury at his 1982 trial were potentially misleading.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals told prosecutors to conduct the new sentencing hearing for the former Black Panther within six months or agree to a life sentence. Abu-Jamal's first-degree murder conviction still stands in the fatal shooting of Officer Daniel Faulkner, who was white.
District Attorney Seth Williams pledged to mount another appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, at the urging of Faulkner's widow, Maureen.
"Yes, the criminal justice system in Philadelphia, the criminal justice system in America, have had a history of problems and racism," said Williams, the city's first black district attorney. "(But) this is not a whodunit."
Abu-Jamal's worldwide followers "don't know the facts," Williams said.
Defense lawyers said the ruling addresses "an unfortunate chapter in Pennsylvania history."
"Pennsylvania long ago abandoned the confusing and misleading instructions and verdict slip that were relied on in Mr. Abu-Jamal's trial in order to prevent unfair and unjust death sentences," said Widener University law professor Judith Ritter, who argued the most recent appeal in November. "Mr. Abu-Jamal is entitled to no less constitutional protection."
Tuesday's ruling is the latest in Abu-Jamal's long-running legal saga.
A federal judge in 2001 first granted him a new sentencing hearing because of the trial judge's instructions on aggravating and mitigating factors. Philadelphia prosecutors have been fighting the order since, but the 3rd Circuit ruled against them in a pivotal 2008 decision.
In rejecting a similar claim in an Ohio death-penalty case last year, the Supreme Court ordered the Philadelphia appeals court to revisit its Abu-Jamal decision.
On Tuesday, the 3rd Circuit judges stood their ground and noted differences in the two cases.
Under Pennsylvania law, Abu-Jamal should have received a life sentence if a single juror found the mitigating circumstances outweighed the aggravating factors in Faulkner's slaying. The three-judge appeals panel found the verdict form confusing, given its repeated use of the word "unanimous," even in the section on mitigating circumstances.
"The Pennsylvania Supreme Court failed to evaluate whether the complete text of the verdict form, together with the jury instructions, would create a substantial probability the jury believed both aggravating and mitigating circumstances must be found unanimously," Judge Anthony J. Scirica wrote in the 32-page ruling.
The decision upholds the 2001 ruling by U.S. District Judge William H. Yohn Jr., who first ruled that the flawed jury instructions warranted a new sentencing hearing. While prosecutors were fighting that ruling, Abu-Jamal has been trying unsuccessfully to have his conviction overturned.
"Federal appeals court orders a new sentencing hearing for Mumia Abu-Jamal," is the title of Nathan Gorenstein's report for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said he kept a campaign promise Tuesday. He made a telephone call to Maureen Faulkner and asked her what to do about Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Leave him to spend life in prison, he asked, or keep seeking the death penalty for the murder of her husband, Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, in 1981?
She chose the death penalty, Williams said.
It means the case of Abu-Jamal, now 57 and perhaps the best-known death-row inmate in the world, is headed back to the U.S. Supreme Court. So intricate is the legal wrangling that any final resolution is likely years away.
Williams' early-morning conversation was prompted by a federal appeals court's just-released decision that a new jury should be impaneled to reconsider whether Abu-Jamal receives a death sentence or life in prison.
It was the second time the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit had ruled for Abu-Jamal on the issue, both times citing confusing language in the 1982 jury instructions. The first decision, in 2008, was overturned by the Supreme Court, which told the Third Circuit Court to reconsider in light of a more recent ruling by the high court.
It did, and it came to the same conclusion.
Now, Williams will ask the Supreme Court to overturn the appellate court again.
He could have done otherwise.
He said the 32-page Third Circuit ruling left him with three choices: Drop the legal battle and leave Abu-Jamal to serve a life sentence; impanel a new jury and again seek the death penalty; or appeal to the Supreme Court to uphold the death sentence.
"D.A. to appeal court ruling for Abu-Jamal resentencing," in the Philadelphia Daily News, written by Michael Hinkelman.
Yesterday's ruling was the result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that ordered the appeals court to review its 2008 ruling that ordered a new sentencing hearing for the former Black Panther. Both yesterday and in 2008, the appeals court ruled that Abu-Jamal's murder conviction should stand but called for a new sentencing hearing because death-penalty jury instructions were misleading.
The Supreme Court ordered the review because of a related case out of Ohio regarding jury instructions in a death-penalty trial.
But the three-judge panel on the appeals court said Abu-Jamal's case was different from the Ohio case because the verdict form was confusing and repeatedly used the word "unanimous," even in the section on mitigating circumstances. Under state law, Abu-Jamal should have received a life sentence if a single juror found that mitigating factors outweighed aggravating factors.
Judge Anthony Scirica, writing in yesterday's 32-page opinion, said the ultimate responsibility for the dispute over jury instructions lay with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which repeatedly upheld Abu-Jamal's death sentence since the late 1980s.
That court "failed to evaluate whether the complete text of the verdict form, together with the jury instructions, would create a substantial probability the jury believed both aggravating and mitigating circumstances must be found unanimously," Scirica wrote.
Judith Ritter, a Widener University law professor who represents Abu-Jamal, said yesterday that the state had "long ago abandoned the confusing and misleading instructions and verdict slip" that were relied on at Abu-Jamal's trial in order to "prevent unfair and unjust death sentences."
Law.com's Legal Intelligencer carries, "Abu-Jamal Wins Round in Challenge to Death Sentence." It's written by Shannon P. Duffy.
Assistant District Attorney Hugh J. Burns Jr. had argued that the issues in Abu-Jamal's case were "virtually identical" to the issues addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Smith v. Spisak , and that the 3rd Circuit was therefore compelled to reinstate Abu-Jamal's death sentence.
But Scirica, who was joined by Judges Thomas L. Ambro and Robert E. Cowen, disagreed.
"Unlike the jury in Spisak ," Scirica wrote, "the jury here was required to specify not only the aggravating circumstances it found but also mitigating circumstances, to do so simultaneously, to choose aggravating and mitigating circumstances from visually identical lists, and to represent its findings as to each in an identical manner."
In the Spisak case, Scirica noted, the jury had already deliberated on aggravating factors in the first phase of the trial.
But in Abu-Jamal's case, the jury considered aggravating and mitigating factors at the same time and filled out a verdict form that suggested unanimity was required for both, Scirica found.
"The parallel structure of the form in relation to aggravating and mitigating circumstances reads that findings as to each should be made similarly," Scirica wrote in the 32-page opinion in Abu-Jamal v. Pennsylvania Department of Corrections .
"There is a substantial probability the word 'unanimously' was understood by the jury to modify and refer to the finding of both aggravating and mitigating circumstances," Scirica wrote.
Both Abu-Jamal's case and Frank G. Spisak's case hinged on how the courts should apply Mills v. Maryland — a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that governs how juries should deliberate during the penalty phase of a capital trial.
In Mills , the justices held that juries in capital cases must be unanimous in finding any aggravating factor that supports a death sentence, but that unanimity cannot be required for mitigating factors — those that weigh against imposing a death sentence — so that any individual juror would be free to vote against death.
In response to Mills , the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in February 1989 adopted a uniform sentencing verdict form for capital cases that makes it explicit that unanimity is not required in determining the existence of mitigating factors.
But dozens of inmates on Pennsylvania's and other states' death rows whose convictions predated Mills have argued that the jury instructions and verdict forms in their trials were ambiguous and confusing.
In Spisak , the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a decision by the 6th Circuit that overturned a death sentence because of a Mills violation.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer found that Spisak's jury would not have been confused because "neither the instructions nor the forms said anything about how — or even whether — the jury should make individual determinations that each particular mitigating circumstance existed."
Now Scirica has concluded that Breyer's reasoning cannot be applied to Abu-Jamal's case.
"In light of what the form and instructions both said and implied, and the repeated emphasis on unanimous findings, it is notable that neither the verdict form nor the judge's charge indicated in any manner that the jury should apply the unanimity requirement to its finding of aggravating but not mitigating circumstances," Scirica wrote.
The fact that Pennsylvania courts altered the verdict forms used in capital cases immediately after Mills is evidence that the previous forms were flawed, Scirica found.
"These clarifications highlight the ambiguity at issue in this case and on their own serve at least to suggest the substantial probability that some jurors were prevented from considering factors which may call for a less severe penalty," Scirica wrote.
In her syndicated column, Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman writes, "Capital punishment: America's worst crime." It's via the Guardian.
The death penalty case of Mumia Abu-Jamal took a surprising turn this week, as a federal appeals court declared, for the second time, that Abu-Jamal's death sentence was unconstitutional. The third US circuit court of appeals, in Philadelphia, found that the sentencing instructions the jury received, and the verdict form they had to use in the sentencing, were unclear. While the disputes surrounding Abu-Jamal's guilt or innocence were not addressed, the case highlights inherent problems with the death penalty and the criminal justice system, especially the role played by race.
Early on 9 December 1981, Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner pulled over a car driven by William Cook, Abu-Jamal's brother. What happened next is in dispute. Shots were fired, and both Officer Faulkner and Abu-Jamal were shot. Faulkner died, and Abu-Jamal was found guilty of his murder in a court case presided over by Judge Albert Sabo, who was widely considered to be a racist. In just one of too many painful examples, a court stenographer said in an affidavit that she heard Sabo say, in the courtroom antechamber, "I'm going to help them fry the n****r."
This latest decision by the court of appeals relates directly to Sabo's conduct of the sentencing phase of Abu-Jamal's court case. The Pennsylvania supreme court is considering separate arguments surrounding whether or not Abu-Jamal received a fair trial at all. What the court of appeals unanimously found this week is that he did not receive a fair sentencing.
And:
Despite his solitary confinement, Abu-Jamal has continued his work as a journalist. His weekly radio commentaries are broadcast from coast to coast. He is the author of six books. He was recently invited to present to a conference on racial imprisonment at Princeton University. He said (through a cellphone held up to a microphone):
"Vast numbers of men, women and juveniles … populate the prison industrial complex here in America. As many of you know, the US, with barely 5% of the world's population, imprisons 25% of the world's prisoners … the numbers of imprisoned blacks here rivals and exceeds South Africa's hated apartheid system during its height."The United States clings to the death penalty, alone in the industrialised world. In fact, it stands with China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Yemen as the world's most frequent executioners. This week's decision in Mumia Abu-Jamal's case stands as one more clear reason why the death penalty should be abolished.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund issued the news release, "Mumia Abu-Jamal's 1982 Death Sentence is Again Declared Unconstitutional."
The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has unanimously declared that Mumia Abu-Jamal’s death sentence is unconstitutional. In today’s decision, the Court of Appeals reaffirmed its 2008 finding that Mr. Abu-Jamal’s sentencing jury was misled about the process for considering evidence supporting a life sentence. The Court found that, in violation of the United States Supreme Court’s 1988 decision in Mills v. Maryland, the jury was improperly led to believe that that it could only consider unanimously agreed upon evidence favoring a life verdict. This mistake rendered Mr. Abu-Jamal’s death sentence fundamentally unfair. The NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) and Professor Judy Ritter of Widener Law School represent Mr. Abu-Jamal in this appeal of his 1982 conviction and death sentence for the murder of a police officer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
“This decision marks an important step forward in the struggle to correct the mistakes of an unfortunate chapter in Pennsylvania history,” said John Payton, Director-Counsel of LDF. “Again acknowledging the existence of clear constitutional error in Mr. Abu-Jamal’s trial, the Court of Appeals’ decision enhances confidence in the criminal justice system and helps to relegate the kind of unfairness on which this death sentence rested to the distant past.”
Prof. Ritter noted that, “Pennsylvania long ago abandoned the confusing and misleading instructions and verdict slip that were relied on in Mr. Abu-Jamal’s trial in order to prevent unfair and unjust death sentences. Courts now use clear and unambiguous language to advise sentencing juries about their ability to consider evidence that favors a life verdict. Mr. Abu-Jamal is entitled to no less constitutional protection.”
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