For those not familiar with his case, information can be found at www.mumia.org and www.freemumia.org
Both of these are biased sources, hence this thread. I’m looking for someone who is against a retrial for Mumia, as I have yet to find one. If so, why?
The further a person is from Philadelphia, the more likely one is to believe in Mumia’s innocence. Try asking some Philly dopers.
Well for starters, I don’t live far from Philadelphia, and I first heard about the movement from friends who live there. But feel free to chime in with your beliefs.
Here’s one
Here’s some threads from way back. Plenty of info to get you started:
I’m against a retrial.
After moving to Philly (OTTOMH 7 years ago) and seeing all the Free Mumia signs, and the coverage he got in the local media, I began looking for nonbiased information. I couldn’t find any (Though the Daniel Faulkner and other ‘He’s guilty’ sites IMHO did seem more reliable and honest). Eventually, I synthesized all the information into the truth.
Mumia did it. He shot and killed a cop. He wasn’t acting in self defense.
The trial was filled with procedural problems. Some witnesses may have been paid by the cops to give false testimony.
Mumia has used a brilliant PR strategy, including a conversion to Islam and a change of name, to prevent his execution.
MOVE is a bunch of lunatics. They get many facts wrong (for a while their site gave the officer’s name as David Faulkner. Cite I read it in either the bleeding heart liberal left-wing Philadelphia Weekly, or the equally left-wing City Paper). They rant and rave about pretty much anything done by anybody, and attract support from college students (OTTOMH Philly has-Temple, Drexel, University Of The Arts, and I think about 5 more. ) from middle class families who suffer from white liberal guilt, or want to shock their parents. Yes, Mayor Wilson Goode was an idiot to drop a satchel bomb on their compound. Yes, this killed several of the children living in the compound. The fact that they were wronged does not mean that MOVE’s political views or actions hold any merit.
Various Free Mumia groups have also claimed that celebrities and politicians support them. MOVE once claimed that Ed Asner agreed that Mumia should be set free. What Asner, and many others, actually said was that they opposed the death penalty and supported MOVE’s attempts to keep Mumia from being executed.
I support a new trial for Mumia. A truly fair and unbiased trial would result in a guilty verdict. That verdict would be untainted and clearly valid.
A while back, I saw a bumpersticker that read “Framed And Guilty”. I immediately knew they meant Mumia.
Jamal should not get a retrial. He is Guilty McGuilterson, Mayor of Guiltsville.
What’s the status on his sentence these days? Did Pennsylvania appeal the overturn of his death penalty or are we going to have to hear about this cop-killing fucker from the left forever?
What does the left see in him?
When I was a Green, they were all over him, why? 
Beats me. Heck, even Michael Moore is of opinion that all the evidence points to Mumia being guilty, notwitstanding that the trial was questionable and that, in Moore’s opinion, he otherwise has a number of good points.
To most of us on the moderate left he is more of an aggravation. He distracts from other worthy cases and is useful as a rhetorical weapon from both the right and the Hard Left, thru which we’re dared to repudiate him – if we don’t we’re cop-killer-coddlers, if we do we cherrypick when and for whom we’ll stand on principle (re: death penalty or fair trials*), if we say there are points to be made by both sides we’re flip-floppers.
(*many of us don’t believe in the DP to begin with, but that makes him no different from hundreds of other cases. We believe that everyone who is to be found guilty, should be found guilty the right way and we should not settle for the “it’s not a framing if the guy’s guilty anyway” doctrine. AGAIN, this would make him no different from thousands of others. Either it applies to all or to none, but not to all/none-but-Mumia.)
Most of us normal everyday libs would honestly rather be paying attention to someone innocent who got railroaded, but alas Mumia has had this whole PR machine behind him from the Hard Left bringing him front and center, as someone who has The Man coming down on him.
And some people wonder why the French and Americans don’t get along:
Because Mumia has played his cards extremely well, and has sold himself to the Radical Left as an image of what they want to believe- that America is a Fascist Racist Police State where the Man connives to frame and execute any African-American who shows themselves as intelligent/artistic and in possession of THE TRUTH of how America is a Fascist Racist Police State.
See the ‘martyring’ of George Jackson for another good example. David Horowitz wrote an excellent article- don’t remember the name of it, but it’s included in his anthology “Destructive Generation”- about Radical Left lawyers who fell in love- in some cases, literally- with violent prisoners who attached themselves to Radical Left causes like the Black Panthers, and how stunned said lawyers were when those violent prisoners turned out to be, well, violent criminals.
Because he’s guilty. Fry the fucker already.
Guilty. Even had a 'smoking gun".
If they hadn’t sentanced him to Death, very few would know his name.
I have no problem with his Death sentance being commuted to Life without Parole- based upon some irregularities. But he’s as guilty as they come.
Mumia’s a perfect symbol for people looking to denounce the American justice system. If he was actually innocent there’d be a chance he’d be exonerated and released; such a “victory” would be the last thing some of his supposed supporters want as it would be evidence that justice can be achieved within the system.
I remember seeing a 60 minutes segment on Mumia a few years ago. 60 Minutes has regularly done investigations into wrongful convictions. They investigated the claims of the pro-Mumia groups, and found them to be essentially baseless. I remember them interviewing Ad Asner and Mike Farrell and going through the evidence, and they eventually admitted that they weren’t particularly interested in whether Mumia was guilty or innocent, they were just against the death penalty.
Which of course is a perfectly defensible position to take. However, if you want to work to repeal the death penalty it would make more sense to publicize a case where an innocent person is facing the death penalty. I have no doubt that several innocent people right now are facing death for crimes they didn’t commit. Publicize THOSE cases and you’ll get a lot better response than trying to free Mumia, who is assuredly guilty.
It’s defensible, providing you don’t misrepresent your interests. If you oppose Mumia’s execution because you oppose the DP in general,well and good. If your opposition to the DP leads you to believe in his factual innocence, that is another, and logically inconsistent position. Which I suspect is why the pro-Mumia websites tend to come across so slanted. They don’t oppose his execution because they think him innocent, they think him innocent because they oppose his execution.
If Asner and Farrell are opposing the Mumia execution by arguing in favor of factual innocence, but don’t really care whether he is innocent or not as long as he doesn’t die, that is dishonest.
The hard part is finding such a person. It tends to be the case that, the instant genuine evidence of factual innocence comes to light, the convict is released. The appeals process works, in other words, and despite dark accusations by defense attorneys, the system has no real motive to railroad the innocent, even if he is black.
And so anti-DP folks are generally reduced to changing the subject away from factual innocence, the only topic most people really care about when it comes to the DP, and/or distorting or misrepresenting the facts to try to make it seem that the accused (and convicted, beyond a reasonable doubt) is really as pure as the driven snow.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, I believe that the mass of celebrity endorsements from the freemumia.org website were from Los Angeles, Europe and South Africa. I believe that most of the fundraising and merchandise apparatuses on that site are located in San Francisco, which is about as far as one can get from Philly without emigrating. I believe that Philadelphia locals have a much less glamourous assessment of the MOVE organization than residents of France and California (two and three thousand miles away, respectively) might have. I beleve that the most passionate advocates of freeing Mumia are the least likely to live near him if he ever gets kicked from prison.
Feel free to educate me on any of these points.
I’ve seen an overwhelming amount of evidence against Mumia, while the best case that pro-Mumia’ers seem to be able to make is "Well, he’s, he’s…black! And the cops are white!
I say bad trial, but still guilty.
France is two thousand miles from Philadelphia? :dubious:
I flew from Paris to Pittsburg and I seem to remember it taking about 8 hours, while a three thousand mile trip to California takes more like 5.