Philadelphia, PA. Attorneys for death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal submitted an unusual motion to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on May 7, 2003, asking the court to order its “prothonotary” (court clerk) to file a “remand motion” they had previously submitted on April 24, 2003, but which the clerk had refused to file. According to Mumia’s attorneys, the clerk’s refusal to file the motion was “an unlawful act of bureaucratic usurpation” which violated Mumia’s rights under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The remand motion requests that Mumia’s case be ordered back to a lower court to take testimony from Kenneth Pate who states in a sworn declaration that, in a telephone conversation with his half-sister, Priscilla Durham, in 1983 or 1984 she repudiated her testimony for the prosecution at Mumia’s 1981 trial for the murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

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Philadelphia, PA. Yet another witness has come forward to expose the police frame-up which has kept celebrated journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal on death row for over 20 years. In a declaration filed last week in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit by Jamal’s attorneys, Kenneth Pate swears that his half-sister, Priscilla Durham, in a telephone conversation with Pate in 1983 or 1984, repudiated her testimony against Jamal at his 1982 trial for the murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Durham, a security guard, was on duty at Jefferson Hospital on December 9, 1981, when Jamal and Faulkner were brought into the emergency room with gunshot wounds. According to Pate, Durham told him that the only statement Jamal made at the hospital was, “Get off me, get off me, they’re killing me”, when the police were interfering with his medical treatment. This directly –contradicts– Durham’s testimony at Jamal’s trial that she heard
him yell out, while surrounded by numerous police, “I shot the motherf—er and I hope he dies.” Continue reading →

In 2002, Six Unions Demanded: Let the Evidence of Mumia’s Innocence Be Heard!
Their Amicus Brief Supported Labor’s Principle: An Injury To One Is An Injury To All
Now: Joinders Filed Adding New Signatories to the Union Amicus Brief
Also: Green Party USA Signs Joinder

        A Report To the Movement, Feb 05, 2003:
Labor friends of Mumia have now received stamped copies of two joinder filings, indicating that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, after months of foot-dragging and attempted sabotage, has finally acknowledged receipt of documents in which individuals and organizations have added their names to a very compelling amicus (or “friend-of-the-court”) brief proclaiming the innocence of journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. The amicus brief–submitted by six unions–and joinders were in support of Jamal’s 2002 appeal, which is still pending before Pennsylvania’s top court. Continue reading →

Attorney Bryan is a member of the Calif.ornia and New York bars, served as Chair of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (Washington, DC), has specialized in death penalty litigation since the return of capital punish in the 1970s, has handled numerous murder cases (including over 100 trials).  Since 1994 he has been the legal commentator for ABC in San Francisco, and has spoken at various universities on human rights abuses and the death penalty, etc.

Attorney Robert R. Bryan’s associate, Jill Culbert, also specializes in death penalty litigation.  She is a native of the Philadelphia area, attended college on academic scholarship at Fordham University, New York, and then went, also on academic scholarship, to the Univ. of San Francisco Law school. She is an honors graduate of both schools.  She was hired by atty Bryan  on the recommendation of a professor who teaches death penalty law. He said she was the top student in his class. In 2001 Jill was at the Human Rights Commission, Geneva, Switzerland, where she lobbied for an international prohibition against the execution of juvenile offenders. Continue reading →