Mumia Abu-Jamal Loses at the Supreme Court... Again 01/20/2010
 
Chuck Canterbury, National President of the Fraternal Order of Police, applauded the Supreme Court of the United States for its decision in Beard v. Abu-Jamal, which reversed the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia to grant Wesley Cook, better known by his alias Mumia Abu-Jamal, a new sentencing hearing for the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

"I am very pleased with the ruling and am hopeful that the Third Circuit will revise its decision in accordance with a more recent decision of the Supreme Court," Canterbury said. "Justice for Brother Faulkner and his family has been delayed for almost 30 years, but his killer's legal maneuverings are almost at an end."

Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was murdered on 9 December 1981 by a cab driver calling himself Mumia Abu-Jamal. In 1982, Abu-Jamal was convicted and sentenced to death, a verdict which has been upheld by numerous State and Federal Courts for the last three decades despite the killer's specious legal challenges. However, in 2008, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals granted Abu-Jamal's request for a new sentencing hearing by applying a strict interpretation of the Mills standard. This legal standard provides that jurors must unanimously agree on aggravating factors, but not mitigating factors. Abu-Jamal successfully argued that jurors were "confused" and may have believed that they must unanimously agree on mitigating evidence, which the killer argued may have spared him a death sentence.

The Supreme Court revisited the Mills standard in a unanimous decision released last week in the case of Smith v. Spisak. The Supreme Court ruled that sentences could only be overturned if the trial judge's instructions to the jury were actually incorrect and that individuals convicted by a jury could not have their sentences overturned or revisited by arguing that their juries were "confused." As a result of this ruling, the Third Circuit Court will have to revisit their decision in Beard v. Abu-Jamal, which overturned the death sentence pending a new sentencing hearing, with the new standard.

"I am hopeful that this decision will lead to Mumia's ultimate date with justice," Canterbury said. "It is long, long overdue."