In Defense Of Mumia

A collection of prose, poetry, and art in support of award-winning journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing a Philadephia police officer and sentenced to death after a questionable trial.

More than 75 essays—many freshly composed by Mumia with the cartridge of a ball-point pen, the only implement he is allowed in his death-row cell—embody the calm and powerful words of humanity spoken by a man on Death Row. Abu-Jamal writes on many different topics, including the ironies that abound within the U.S. prison system and the consequences of those ironies, and his own case. Mumia's composure, humor, and connection to the living world around him represents an irrefutable victory over the "corrections" system that has for two decades sought to isolate and silence him. The title, All Things Censored, refers to Mumia's hiring as an on-air columnist by National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," and subsequent banning from that venue under pressure from law and order groups.

Sentenced to death in 1982 for allegedly killing a police officer named Daniel Faulkner, Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most famous death row inmate in the United States, if not the world. This book is the first to convincingly show how the Philadelphia Police Department and District Attorney's Office efficiently and methodically framed him. It takes you step-by-step through what actually transpired on the night Faulkner was shot, including positioning each of the witnesses at the scene and revealing the identity of the killer. It also details the entire trial and fully covers the tortuous appeals process. The author, a seasoned crime reporter, writes in the language of hard facts, without hyperbole or exaggeration, unfounded accusation or finger-pointing, to reveal the truth about one of the most hotly debated cases of the twentieth century.

In his youth Mumia Abu-Jamal helped found the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party, wrote for the national newspaper, and began his life-long work of exposing the violence of the state as it manifests in entrenched poverty, endemic racism, and unending police brutality and celebrating a people's unending quest for freedom. In We Want Freedom, Mumia combines personal experience with extensive research to provide a compelling history of the Black Panther Party--what it was, where it came from, and what rose from its ashes. Mumia also pays special attention to the U.S. government's disruption of the organization through COINTELPRO and similar operations. While Abu-Jamal is a prolific writer and probably the world's most famous political prisoner, this book is unlike any of Mumia's previous works. In We Want Freedom, Abu-Jamal applies his sharp critical faculties to an examination of one of the U.S.'s most revolutionary and most misrepresented groups. A subject previously explored by various historians and forever ripe for "insider" accounts, the Black Panther Party has not yet been addressed by a writer with the well-earned international acclaim of Abu-Jamal, nor with his unique combination of a powerful, even poetic, voice and an unsparing critical gaze. Abu-Jamal is able to make his own Black Panther Party days come alive as well as help situate the organization within its historical context, a context that included both great revolutionary fervor and hope, and great repression. In this era, when the US PATRIOT Act dismantles some of the same rights and freedoms violated by the FBI in their attack on the Black Panther Party, the story of how the Party grew and matured while combating such invasions is a welcome and essential lesson.

Mumia Abu-Jamal's defense attorney provides an account of his client's struggle for justice as he describes the 1982 conviction of the award-winning journalist for the killing of a police officer.

Mumia Abu Jamal’s essential perspectives on black experience, race relations, freedom, justice, social change, and the future of American society.

Sometimes raw, always vivid and forthright, this is the life story of Veronica Jones, a witness in the murder trial of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. She saw two other men run from the scene of the shooting death of police officer Daniel Faulkner—she was a witness for Mumia ́s innocence. Unbeknownst to anyone but her younger sister, Veronica’s life was also entwined with Faulkner’s. Before she could testify, police detectives threatened her with 10-15 years in prison and separation from her young children if she did not falsely name Mumia as the shooter. At Mumia ́s trial she recanted her original and true witness statement and denied that she saw anyone run from the scene. This gave the prosecution evidence for conviction. In 1996 when Veronica courageously came forward to redeem herself and correct a fourteen year old lie, notorious Judge Albert Sabo, “king of death row,” and the prosecution retaliated and had her handcuffed and arrested off the witness stand! With intimidation tactics like this in an open courtroom, one can only imagine what happens behind closed doors.... This story of a courageous women also contains a Forward and Commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal and a Legal Afterword by attorney Rachel Wolkenstein on the legal significance of Veronica’s testimony.

From the knowledgeable perspective of 25 years as a criminal lawyer (mostly appeals like murder, rape, robbery, etc.), a former co-editor of Gilbert's Criminal Law & Procedure, and a free lance writer for over a decade, the author writes incisively about the remorseless cop killer described by America's newspaper of record as: "Perhaps the best known Death-Row prisoner in the world." (Page 1, New York Times, Dec. 19, 2001, the day after a federal court nullified a racially mixed jury's July 3, 1982 unanimous sentence of death.) Mumia Abu Jamal - The Patron Saint of American Cop Killers exposes the Hollywood backed "Free Mumia! Free All Political Prisoners!" movement's claims of "racism" in jury selection, "police frame-up," and "police intimidation of defense witnesses" as a transparent fraud. With the same precision and insight he devoted to a three part article in the East Hampton Independent (and the Southampton Independent) on the tragic carbon monoxide death of his friend, tennis star, and CBS TV commentator, Vitas Gerulaitis, Hayden takes the reader through the pre-trial, trial, and absurdly lengthy post conviction proceedings. Now that the chances of the cop hating ex Black Panther ever being executed for killing a 25 year old cop are about the same as his chances of ever being found "innocent," Hayden predicts that the middle aged Death-Row prisoner will, like Dr. Martin Luther King's cowardly assassin, racist James Earl Ray, die of old age in a 6 X 9 steel cage in a super max prison somewhere in rural America.