Occupy The Justice
Department Implicates Obama Administration Integrity
Created 04/23/2012 - 13:55
by Linn Washington Jr.
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1136
One of the issues driving protesters participating in the April 24, 2012
Occupy The Justice Department demonstration is an issue that U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder knows well – prosecutorial misconduct.
Holder knows this misconduct issue well because he has criticized it during
congressional testimony, as recently as March 2012 when commenting on a special
prosecutor’s report castigating the wrongdoing of federal prosecutors.
That wrongdoing, Holder acknowledged, unlawfully tainted the corruption
investigation and 2008 trial of the late U.S. Senator Ted Stevens – convicted
of corruption in his home state of Alaska.
Protesters, including fiery Philadelphia activist Pam Africa, want Holder to
take action against the prosecutorial misconduct evident in scores of unjust
convictions improperly imprisoning political prisoners across America, most of
them jailed for two or more decades.
Those political prisoners – ignored domestically while exalted abroad – include
Native American activist Leonard Peltier, Puerto Rican Nationalist Oscar Lopez
Rivera, the Cuban 5, author/activist Mumia Abu-Jamal and other former Black
Panther Party members like the Omaha Two (Ed Poindexter and Mondo W. Langa).
Demands of the Occupy The Justice Department protesters include the immediate
release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, freeing all political prisoners, ending the racist
death penalty and ending solitary confinement and torture.
Individuals and incidents underlying those demands are within the purview of
USAG Holder to investigate and/or to act immediately to resolve.
April 24th is the birthday of Mumia Abu-Jamal, perhaps the most recognized U.S.
political prisoner worldwide.
Abu-Jamal, for example, was the subject of two demonstrations held recently
outside the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, Germany, one of which included extending a
2,200-foot banner around that embassy building.
Pam Africa is the head of International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia
Abu-Jamal – the Philadelphia-based organization at the center of the
international movement seeking Abu-Jamal’s release.
Africa is the dynamo who most Philadelphia police, prosecutors, politicians and
many pastors love to hate because of her strident advocacy on behalf of
imprisoned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal and MOVE members sentenced for a fatal
1978 shootout.
The advocacy of Pam Africa on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal – helping construct
support networks while confronting incessant opposition – contributed to the
climate where U.S. federal courts late last year finally killed the death
sentence Abu-Jamal received following his controversial 1982 conviction for
killing a policeman.
Abu-Jamal is now fighting against a life-without-parole sentence.
That elimination of Abu-Jamal’s government-endorsed death chagrined powerful
figures across Pennsylvania and around America who had shamefully
bent-&-broken laws (deliberately sabotaging court proceedings) in their
various efforts to execute Abu-Jamal, known as the Voice-of-the-Voiceless.
While winning freedom for Abu-Jamal and the MOVE 9 is a definitive focus of Pam
Africa’s advocacy she is frequently found on ‘front-lines’ nationwide fighting
for ending mistreatment of people regardless of their color and creed.
“Pam Africa is in each and every struggle for social justice in Philadelphia,
the U.S. and abroad. It’s not just Mumia,” said Latino activist/writer Berta
Joubert-Ceci while chairing a recent program featuring former U.S.
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney in West Philadelphia.
Dr. Claude Guillaumaud, a professor in France whose known Africa for 20-years,
said she's “had time to appreciate her warm personality and total commitment to
the cause of Mumia and the fight against racial discrimination and the
barbarian death penalty.”
Temple University African-American history professor Dr. Tony Monteiro first
met Pam Africa during an ugly June 1979 incident in South Philadelphia where
local police beat Africa. Philadelphia police pummeled Africa with nightsticks
with one stick-strike knocking out some of her teeth.
The scholar in Dr. Monteiro sees Pam Africa as a unique figure whose
contributions locally, nationally and internationally merit both examination
and recognition.
“She’s made history but she didn’t set out to make history. She started
initially just to do the right thing,” Monteiro said during a recent interview.
“I see her as one of the most significant rights leaders in the past
forty-years. Where other black leaders have sought acceptance from ‘the system’
she never left the battlefield. She never retreated. She was never broken.”
Monteiro is a force behind two recent events honoring Pam Africa’s
accomplishments. He has initiated a process for what he envisions as a study of
Africa’s life works.
Prosecutorial misconduct is a core element in the Abu-Jamal case albeit a
festering injustice ignored by state and federal courts that have refused to
grant legal relief to Abu-Jamal despite granting new trials to others citing
evidence of prosecutorial misconduct far less grievous than that evident in the
Abu-Jamal case.
One example of prosecutorial misconduct in the Abu-Jamal case occurred during
his 1982 murder trial when the prosecutor perverted a comment Abu-Jamal made
over a decade earlier when responding to a reporter’s question about the
December 1969 murder of Chicago Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton.
The Chicago police assassination of Hampton, later linked to the FBI’s infamous
COINTELPRO outraged many at the time including leaders as diverse as the then
head of the NAACP, Roy Wilkins and former U.S. United Nations Ambassador Arthur
Goldberg.
Hampton’s assassination, later documented by congressional and other
investigations, was a part of a police-FBI campaign to slay BPP members – 28
BPP deaths between January 1968 and December 1969.
A teenaged BBP member Abu-Jamal told that reporter that Hampton’s murder proved
that “power” comes from the barrel of a gun.
But the 1982 trial prosecutor shifted the context of Abu-Jamal’s comment from
applying it to police killing Black Panthers to proclaiming Abu-Jamal’s intent
to kill police – one of many factual mischaracterizations that millions
worldwide constantly cite when charging Abu-Jamal received an unfair trial.
That improper perversion of Abu-Jamal’s comment helped sway jurors to send the
award-winning journalist with no criminal record to death row. That prosecutor
had improperly excluded blacks from Abu-Jamal’s trial jury.
Not only was the prosecutor twisting Abu-Jamal’s comment an improper tactic it
violated associational rights granted under the First Amendment.
The U.S. Supreme Court gave new hearings in the early 1990s to two convicted
murderers – a white racist prisoner gang member in Delaware and a white devil
worshipper in Nevada – while denying comparable relief to former BPP member
Abu-Jamal three times.
USAG Eric Holder, shortly after taking office in January 2009, went to court
successfully requesting dismissal of Sen. Stevens’ conviction after finding
that federal prosecutor withheld evidence of innocence from Stevens’ defense
team plus tampered with witnesses and documents.
The recent release of the special prosecutor’s report in the Stevens case
confirmed that prosecutorial misconduct – wrongdoing also abundant in the case
of Abu-Jamal and other U.S. political prisoners.
The Occupy The Justice Department demonstrators are raising the issue of
Holder’s credibility and the ethical integrity of the Obama Administration in
acting to dismiss the wrongful conviction of ex-Senator Stevens while ignoring
the continued imprisonment of U.S. political prisoners that involves misconduct
by police and prosecutors.
On December 9, 2011 – one day before the U.N. annual Human Rights Day – Noble
Peace Prize winning anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu asked
America to “rise to the challenge of reconciliation, human rights and justice”
in calling for the “immediate release” of Abu-Jamal.
Source URL: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1136
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