Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook April 24, 1954) a journalist and political activist, was convicted of the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner, which took place on December 9th, 1981. He received the death sentence from a jury. He is most famous for the subsequent mass campaigns for and against his conviction. Jamal had been awaiting execution in Pennsylvania from 1982 until December 2001 when Federal District Court judge William Yohn overturned his death sentence. However, Yohn reaffirmed Jamal's conviction, ruling that he will remain in custody indefinitely.
Abu-Jamal's case has become a popular cause on the political left, within the anti-globalization movement, and among anti-death penalty activists as well as the black nationalist movement. Saving Mumia Abu-Jamal from the death penalty is a popular cause among people and org
anizations who insist he is innocent. Others, without concern for whether he is factually innocent, still believe that he did not receive a fair trial. A third group of supporters simply oppose the death penalty in general. A fourth group object to harsher penalties for killing a police officer than for killing an ordinary citizen. Many supporters have called for a new trial, his release from prison, or the commutation of his sentence to life in prison.
The Philadelphia Office of the District Attorney, Daniel Faulkner's family, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the jury that heard the case believe that Abu-Jamal killed Faulkner while Faulkner was engaged in a legal, justified arrest. In August 1999, the FOP's national biennial general meeting passed a resolution calling for an economic boycott of all individuals and businesses that had expressed support for freeing Abu-Jamal.
In his book "Dude, Where’s My Country?", filmmaker Michael Moore has stated that he believes that Abu-Jamal is "probably" guilty of the Faulkner murder, and that “those defending him may have overlooked the fact that he did indeed kill that cop”. However, Moore is against sentencing Abu-Jamal to death due to what he believes was an unfair trial proceeding and his stance against the death penalty in general.
Jamal's supporters say that since Jamal had taken a high profile position with the Black Panther Party (BPP) as a teenager, he could have been a target of the FBI's COINTELPRO program, whose purpose was to harass, disrupt and destroy political groups such as the BPP. Several other Black Panthers who were convicted of various crimes, including murder, have been released when it was learned that the FBI withheld evidence which would have acquitted them, such as Geronimo Pratt.
Jamal's detractors say that the critics of the trial amass numerous small errors to build their case for a larger conspiracy, and that the supporters of Jamal are unable to make a convincing case about the overall crime and Jamal's involvement with the murder of a police officer.
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