Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Journey Through the American Death Penalty System

Mumia Abu-Jamal’s journey through the American death penalty system began on December 9, 1981, when he was arrested and charged with capital murder in the shooting death of a police officer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Six months later, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death for this crime. In the years that followed, Abu-Jamal’s case attracted national and international attention; recorded remarkable victories and painful losses; and came to symbolize the failure of the American capital punishment system. A review of this historic case offers a glimpse into the evolution of the American death penalty over three decades.

In 1981, the death penalty was new again. Nine years earlier, the United States Supreme Court cleared the nation’s death rows by declaring the country’s capital punishment laws unconstitutionally arbitrary. States promptly developed “guided discretion” statutes to address the Court’s concerns and in 1976 the Supreme Court concluded that these new laws eliminated the unfairness that had characterized the previous system. With the Court’s imprimatur, the death penalty machine was revived.

Public support for the death penalty rose from less than 50 percent in the early 1970s to 66 percent in 1981. That same year, 223 death sentences were handed down in the United States. It was in this context that Abu-Jamal – a man with no criminal convictions, no history of violence, an engaged family, and a growing notoriety as a freelance reporter – was condemned to die. Although Abu-Jamal’s background and the shortcomings of the prosecution’s case – including an absence of forensic evidence tying Abu-Jamal to the crime – left ample reason for doubt, the contemporary enthusiasm for capital punishment and the promise of a reformed system surely helped to allay juror concerns.

Between 1982 and 1995, Abu-Jamal’s case wound its way through the state appellate process. In 1990, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld his conviction and death sentence and in 1995, Abu-Jamal began litigating his state post-conviction appeal. Represented by new counsel, backed by compelling evidence – including police and prosecutorial misconduct, witness unreliability and racial discrimination – and buoyed by a large network of supporters, Abu-Jamal launched a serious challenge to his conviction and sentence. While this appeal should have offered Abu-Jamal a real opportunity for relief, the times were against him. By 1995, support for the death penalty had mushroomed: with fear of crime at its height, 77 percent of Americans supported capital punishment; 300 people were sentenced to death; and 56 people were executed. This public fervor for capital punishment surely emboldened the pro-prosecution, pro-death penalty judge that presided over Abu-Jamal’s hearing. Notwithstanding the compelling evidence of error, Abu-Jamal’s appeal was denied.

As the years wore on, the national discourse around the death penalty began to change. Between 1995 and 2003, 58 people were released from death row with evidence of innocence. These widely publicized exonerations undermined confidence in the accuracy of the system, exposed the unreliability of evidence previously deemed inviolate, and highlighted the inadequacies of capital defense services. Thus, people across the political spectrum began voicing serious concerns about the fairness of the death penalty: in 2001, United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor noted that “the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed,” and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg observed that she “ha[d] yet to see a death case among the dozens coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial.” In the midst of this cultural shift, Abu-Jamal’s death sentence was vacated. In 2001, a federal court concluded that the instructions and verdict slip given to Abu-Jamal’s sentencing jury misled jurors about when and how they could consider evidence favoring a life sentence.

Since 2001, the pendulum has continued to swing away from the death penalty. With fiscal concerns compounding the anxiety caused by the continuing exonerations, only 112 people were sentenced to death in 2009. Execution rates plummeted from 98 in 1999 to 46 in 2010. And this year, public support for the death penalty hit a 39-year low, with only 61 percent of Americans favoring it. Abu-Jamal’s case continued to follow the arc of the American death penalty as the decision vacating his death sentence was affirmed in 2008 and 2011; and in 2011, the United States Supreme Court refused to review that decision and the District Attorney announced he would not seek another death sentence for Abu-Jamal.

In joining Abu-Jamal’s defense team, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund [an Open Society Foundations grantee] recognized that his case has the power to influence public dialogue and, indirectly, support countless other capital cases around the country. It is our hope that the decision to forego a death sentence in this high profile, hotly contested case will give other prosecutors the space to make similar decisions.