Judge Pamela Dembe has canceled a court hearing in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal that was scheduled for February 11, 2005. The LAC views this cancellation as ominous.
Judge Dembe had ruled previously that a comment made by Mumia’s original trial judge, Albert Sabo, at the time of the trial, that he (Sabo) was “going to help ’em fry the n—-r,” did not in any way prove bias as to Sabo’s rulings! Dembe’s ruling held that Mumia had no rights that were infringed by the trial judge’s use of the most heinous of racist epithets, nor by his clear statement of complicity with the prosecution to frame a death sentence before hearing any evidence in the case. This is essentially a restatement of the infamous Dred Scott decision–the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which held that, “The Black man in America has no rights that a white man is bound to respect.”