MOVE still looking for Philadelphia justice
Robert Zaller
Issue date: 8/22/08 Section: Ed-Op
How and by whom Ramp was killed remains a matter of dispute. Nonetheless, nine of the 12 adults in the compound were convicted of third-degree murder and given sentences of 30 years to life. For two others, the charges were dismissed when they renounced MOVE, thus underscoring the arbitrary and essentially political nature of the indictment.
Even if a MOVE bullet had killed Ramp, at least eight innocent persons had been sent to jail for life for his slaying.
This judicial arithmetic contrasts with the consequences of the Osage Avenue bombing seven years later. For the death of one policeman in 1978, nine civilians were convicted. For the deaths of 11 civilians in the bombing, five of them children, no indictment was handed down against anyone except the sole survivor of the attack, Ramona Africa, who, scarred for life by fire, was convicted of riot and conspiracy and spent seven years in prison. A jury awarded her $500,000 in a 1996 civil suit against the city and two former commissioners.
The case of Abu-Jamal is different. He was a MOVE sympathizer when he had his encounter with Faulkner, but not a declared member of the group until his trial, when he demanded that Africa serve as his counsel. He had, however, been publicly threatened by Rizzo while covering the Powelton shootout as a journalist and was clearly a marked man.
You don't have to be persuaded of Mumia's factual innocence in the shooting of Faulkner-which occurred under murky circumstances at 4 a.m. while Faulkner was detaining Mumia's brother, Billy Cook-to recognize his trial as among the most outrageous miscarriages of justice in American history. A prisoner shot and bleeding, beaten on his way to the hospital, and left unattended on the floor; an arresting officer notorious for corruption in one of the most corrupt police forces in the country; a jury selected by racially biased methods later thrown out by the U. S. Supreme Court (and retroactively applied to overturn verdicts across the country in every case except Abu Jamal's); blatantly false, coerced and perjured testimony; the mysterious failure to conduct routine ballistics tests on the alleged murder weapon; the suppression of evidence by the prosecution, the intimidation of potential witnesses and the refusal to hear available defense testimony by the court; a presiding judge whose bias was so manifest that it was commented on by the prosecutor himself, and who allegedly expressed his personal determination to "fry the nigger": even Mississippi could not have outdone the City of Brotherly Love in the Commonwealth v. Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Even if a MOVE bullet had killed Ramp, at least eight innocent persons had been sent to jail for life for his slaying.
This judicial arithmetic contrasts with the consequences of the Osage Avenue bombing seven years later. For the death of one policeman in 1978, nine civilians were convicted. For the deaths of 11 civilians in the bombing, five of them children, no indictment was handed down against anyone except the sole survivor of the attack, Ramona Africa, who, scarred for life by fire, was convicted of riot and conspiracy and spent seven years in prison. A jury awarded her $500,000 in a 1996 civil suit against the city and two former commissioners.
The case of Abu-Jamal is different. He was a MOVE sympathizer when he had his encounter with Faulkner, but not a declared member of the group until his trial, when he demanded that Africa serve as his counsel. He had, however, been publicly threatened by Rizzo while covering the Powelton shootout as a journalist and was clearly a marked man.
You don't have to be persuaded of Mumia's factual innocence in the shooting of Faulkner-which occurred under murky circumstances at 4 a.m. while Faulkner was detaining Mumia's brother, Billy Cook-to recognize his trial as among the most outrageous miscarriages of justice in American history. A prisoner shot and bleeding, beaten on his way to the hospital, and left unattended on the floor; an arresting officer notorious for corruption in one of the most corrupt police forces in the country; a jury selected by racially biased methods later thrown out by the U. S. Supreme Court (and retroactively applied to overturn verdicts across the country in every case except Abu Jamal's); blatantly false, coerced and perjured testimony; the mysterious failure to conduct routine ballistics tests on the alleged murder weapon; the suppression of evidence by the prosecution, the intimidation of potential witnesses and the refusal to hear available defense testimony by the court; a presiding judge whose bias was so manifest that it was commented on by the prosecutor himself, and who allegedly expressed his personal determination to "fry the nigger": even Mississippi could not have outdone the City of Brotherly Love in the Commonwealth v. Mumia Abu-Jamal.
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J. J. Hohenstein
posted 8/22/08 @ 9:32 AM EST
Professor Zaller you need to grow up.
MOVE was a health hazard and hypocritical. The were back to nature but had electric bull horns and the biggest hoagie consumers in the neighborhood. (Continued…)
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