Kez
19th May 2002, 16:19
By Imani Henry
On May 8, Judge Albert F. Sabo, who helped railroad African
American journalist and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal
to Pennsylvania's death row, died of heart failure at age
81. Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther framed for the murder
of white police officer Daniel Faulkner, has spent the last
20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
Sabo, a notoriously racist judge, leaves behind the legacy
of having sentenced more people to death row than any other
judge in the history of the United States. According to the
Philadelphia Inquirer, one in every six people sentenced to
die in Pennsylvania was condemned in Sabo's courtroom.
Statistics gathered for 2000 show that 225 prisoners,
including 221 men and four women, reside on Pennsylvania's
death row, the fourth-largest number of any state in the
U.S. Ninety percent of them were unable to afford a private
attorney at their original trial. One hundred fifty-five are
people of color.
For the anti-death-penalty movement Sabo symbolized the
racist character of the U.S. "injustice" system. Sabo's
racist record helped expose the terror that the cops, courts
and the prison-industrial complex wield against people of
color and the poor across the country. His home was the
target of anti-death-penalty demonstrations on several
occasions.
SABO'S RECORD OF RACISM
Sabo was a card-carrying member of the racist Fraternal
Order of Police. He also made securing a death-penalty
conviction against Mumia Abu-Jamal his personal vendetta.
During the original sham of a trial in 1982, ballistics
evidence proved that the gun used to kill Faulkner shot a
different caliber bullet than the gun Abu-Jamal owned. Sabo
dismissed this crucial ballistics evidence.
In 1995 and 1996, Sabo was illegally brought out of
retirement in order to preside over--and and ultimately
throw out all the new evidence and testimony presented at--
Abu-Jamal's Post Conviction Relief Act Hearing.
In August 2000, when Federal Court Judge William Yohn denied
four amicus curiae briefs, the world learned to what lengths
Sabo had gone during the 1982 trial to seek the death-
penalty conviction against Mumia Abu-Jamal, and how the
capitalist court system had given him the green light to do
so and get away with it.
A Chicana/Chicano Studies Foundation brief exposed the
conspiracy among Abu-Jamal's court-appointed defense
attorney Anthony Jackson, Sabo and prosecutor Joseph McGill
to convict him. The brief outlined their strategies for
getting a conviction that would be protected from appeal;
this showed how Abu-Jamal was a victim of the breach of
attorney-client confidentiality.
These legal violations, among many others, were all grounds
on which the original trial should have been thrown out and
Abu-Jamal freed.
And then there is the taped confession of Arnold Beverly,
who in 1999 admitted to being hired by the police-run mob to
kill Faulkner.
On Aug. 28, 2001, another bombshell was dropped, exposing
Sabo's racist venom. An affidavit was submitted to the state
appeals court by Terri Maurer-Carter, a court stenographer.
She said that in 1982 she overheard Judge Sabo say in
reference to Abu-Jamal, "Yeah, and I'm going to help them
fry the n----r."
Neither Sabo's racist and devious actions nor any single
agent of state-sanctioned terror has stopped the rising
momentum of the anti-death penalty movement in the United
States. With more and more people questioning the racist,
anti-poor death penalty, coupled with international
pressure, there have been significant breakthroughs in the
struggle to abolish the death penalty within the bourgeois
political arena.
Just last month, Ray Krone, originally from Pennsylvania,
was exonerated and released from Arizona's death row after
DNA tests revealed that he was innocent of a 1991 murder. On
May 3, death-row prisoner Thomas H. Kimbell Jr., who spent
four years on Pennsylvania's death row, became the 101st
exonerated death-row prisoner in the United States and the
fourth person to walk free from Pennsylvania's death row.
According to the anti-death-penalty group Pennsylvania
Abolitionists, in the past 26 months eight Pennsylvania
municipalities have called on the state government to impose
a moratorium on executions.
On May 9, one day after Sabo died, Maryland Gov. Parris
Glendening declared a moratorium on all executions in his
state pending the release of a study documenting the racist
nature of the death penalty. Glendening joins Illinois Gov.
George Ryan in instituting a moratorium on executions.
While there are no tears to shed for this racist bigot who
rained terror on the oppressed, as one Philadelphia activist
put it, "The people have been robbed of our opportunity to
put Sabo on trial and bring him to justice."
[The writer is a co-founder of Rainbow Flags for Mumia.]
Comrade Kamo
On May 8, Judge Albert F. Sabo, who helped railroad African
American journalist and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal
to Pennsylvania's death row, died of heart failure at age
81. Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther framed for the murder
of white police officer Daniel Faulkner, has spent the last
20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
Sabo, a notoriously racist judge, leaves behind the legacy
of having sentenced more people to death row than any other
judge in the history of the United States. According to the
Philadelphia Inquirer, one in every six people sentenced to
die in Pennsylvania was condemned in Sabo's courtroom.
Statistics gathered for 2000 show that 225 prisoners,
including 221 men and four women, reside on Pennsylvania's
death row, the fourth-largest number of any state in the
U.S. Ninety percent of them were unable to afford a private
attorney at their original trial. One hundred fifty-five are
people of color.
For the anti-death-penalty movement Sabo symbolized the
racist character of the U.S. "injustice" system. Sabo's
racist record helped expose the terror that the cops, courts
and the prison-industrial complex wield against people of
color and the poor across the country. His home was the
target of anti-death-penalty demonstrations on several
occasions.
SABO'S RECORD OF RACISM
Sabo was a card-carrying member of the racist Fraternal
Order of Police. He also made securing a death-penalty
conviction against Mumia Abu-Jamal his personal vendetta.
During the original sham of a trial in 1982, ballistics
evidence proved that the gun used to kill Faulkner shot a
different caliber bullet than the gun Abu-Jamal owned. Sabo
dismissed this crucial ballistics evidence.
In 1995 and 1996, Sabo was illegally brought out of
retirement in order to preside over--and and ultimately
throw out all the new evidence and testimony presented at--
Abu-Jamal's Post Conviction Relief Act Hearing.
In August 2000, when Federal Court Judge William Yohn denied
four amicus curiae briefs, the world learned to what lengths
Sabo had gone during the 1982 trial to seek the death-
penalty conviction against Mumia Abu-Jamal, and how the
capitalist court system had given him the green light to do
so and get away with it.
A Chicana/Chicano Studies Foundation brief exposed the
conspiracy among Abu-Jamal's court-appointed defense
attorney Anthony Jackson, Sabo and prosecutor Joseph McGill
to convict him. The brief outlined their strategies for
getting a conviction that would be protected from appeal;
this showed how Abu-Jamal was a victim of the breach of
attorney-client confidentiality.
These legal violations, among many others, were all grounds
on which the original trial should have been thrown out and
Abu-Jamal freed.
And then there is the taped confession of Arnold Beverly,
who in 1999 admitted to being hired by the police-run mob to
kill Faulkner.
On Aug. 28, 2001, another bombshell was dropped, exposing
Sabo's racist venom. An affidavit was submitted to the state
appeals court by Terri Maurer-Carter, a court stenographer.
She said that in 1982 she overheard Judge Sabo say in
reference to Abu-Jamal, "Yeah, and I'm going to help them
fry the n----r."
Neither Sabo's racist and devious actions nor any single
agent of state-sanctioned terror has stopped the rising
momentum of the anti-death penalty movement in the United
States. With more and more people questioning the racist,
anti-poor death penalty, coupled with international
pressure, there have been significant breakthroughs in the
struggle to abolish the death penalty within the bourgeois
political arena.
Just last month, Ray Krone, originally from Pennsylvania,
was exonerated and released from Arizona's death row after
DNA tests revealed that he was innocent of a 1991 murder. On
May 3, death-row prisoner Thomas H. Kimbell Jr., who spent
four years on Pennsylvania's death row, became the 101st
exonerated death-row prisoner in the United States and the
fourth person to walk free from Pennsylvania's death row.
According to the anti-death-penalty group Pennsylvania
Abolitionists, in the past 26 months eight Pennsylvania
municipalities have called on the state government to impose
a moratorium on executions.
On May 9, one day after Sabo died, Maryland Gov. Parris
Glendening declared a moratorium on all executions in his
state pending the release of a study documenting the racist
nature of the death penalty. Glendening joins Illinois Gov.
George Ryan in instituting a moratorium on executions.
While there are no tears to shed for this racist bigot who
rained terror on the oppressed, as one Philadelphia activist
put it, "The people have been robbed of our opportunity to
put Sabo on trial and bring him to justice."
[The writer is a co-founder of Rainbow Flags for Mumia.]
Comrade Kamo