..  ..Mumia Abu-Jamal ...No AM-8335 ...State Correctional Institution at Huntington ...Huntington, Pennsylvania ...Year of Birth 1954 ...Marital Status married ...Children eight children, three grandchildren ...Date of offense December 9, 1981 ...Sentenced to death July 2, 1982 ...Status under appeal . Click on the image to view a larger version. Scroll below for an account of the session.

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At 3:55AM on December 9, 1981, a Philadelphia police officer stopped a Volkwagen Beetle that had been traveling the wrong way down a one-way street. The car was driven by Mumia Abu-Jamal's brother, William Cook. Jamal, who was driving a taxicab nearby, stopped his vehicle & approached the scene. Minutes later, the police officer, Daniel Faulkner, lay dying of 4 bullet wounds. Jamal's pistol was found at the scene. At trial, eyewitnesses pointed the finger at him. Forensic experts testified that the bullets that killed Faulkner could have been fired from Jamal's gun. But later investigation challenged their conclusion and the testimony of the eyewitnesses was called into question when several new witnesses claimed they had seen an unidentified man fleeing the scene. Born Wesley Cook, Mumia Abu-Jamal was raised in Philadelphia and graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School. He co-founded the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party & served as its minister of information. A respected newspaperman, he later became the president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. To supplement his income, he moonlighted as a cab driver. Many organizations & publications call Mumia a political prisoner. "First of all, let me begin with the proposition...my firm belief that every African American prisoner in American prisons is a political prisoner. By that I mean that it is a policy decision at the highest levels & the lowest levels of this system to incriminate, to incarcerate, to harass Black life through this system." Mumia adheres to the teachings of John Africa, who founded the controversial MOVE sect based in Philadelphia. His Black-militant stance is evident in his actions, his oratory, & his writings. And was surely a factor in his sentencing. Jamal's religion is manifested in his long dreadlocks. His assertion that cutting his hair would violate his religious beliefs continues to confound the Department of Corrections, which had placed him in disciplinary confinement. Mumia took his time with us. His attentiveness & commitment paralleled ours. He was very honest & uncompromising about his situation, but it was very hard to distinguish the rhetoric from what was sincere. A known agitator, Mumia was a firebrand in the Philadelphia press, constantly antagonizing the political powers. He disliked the police; the police returned the sentiment. His editorials appeared during one of the city's darkest political periods.

When he was arrested, tried, & convicted, the press that had once at least tolerated him turned on him. At the time of our interview, Jamal had spent over the 15 years fighting his conviction. His appeals are based on the charge that Philadelphia court are racist. Nationwide, only in Los Angeles & Harris County, Texas, have more people been sentenced to death. Only 9 percent of Pennsylvania's population, African Americans account for over 60 percent of those on death row. The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office sought the death penalty in 50% of all homicide cases at the time of Mumia's conviction. Jamal probably has more media visibility than anyone else on death row in the US. From his cell he has written for the Yale Law Journal & the Philadelphia Inquirer. His comments have been broadcast on over a 100 radio stations around the nation. Recently Jamal published a collection of essays, Live from Death Row, which has evoked a storm of controversy over convicts' rights. Jamal's face now appears in the bookstore windows, on graffiti-covered walls, & in mimeographed fliers all over the world. Many serious observers believe in his innocence, or at least that justice has not been served. Celebrities have rallied to his cause, among them Norman Mailer, Oliver Stone, Alice Walker, Paul Newman, Sting, Roger Ebert, Susan Sarandon, & Maya Angelou. For Jamal, our project was a rare opportunity for personal contact. It sparked some inner turmoil. "This is the first time I've met another human being other than a guard since July of 1983 without handcuffs or shackles....I don't know what my children, my wife, my brother, I don't know what they feel like anymore. Because, were we to meet...It would be a Plexiglas shield down here & a little steel-mesh, wire-mesh area down here where sound can travel through but where no touching is permitted. Frankly, I'm a little uncomfortable. I've been shackled for so long I feel uncomfortable right now...in the sense that the prison administrators agreed to allow us to do this project but would forbid me to hug my wife, or my children, or my grandchildren at this stage." Since our meeting with Jamal, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has been holding him incommunicado-no visits from anyone except his family & lawyers.