Mumia Abu Jamal has always maintained his innocence in the shooting of Daniel Faulkner in 1981, but says the racially-charged atmosphere surrounding his case prevented him from receiving a fair trial. Noelle Hanrahan with prison radio says that politics played a big role in the thirty-year struggle to get Mumia off death row.
Mumia Abu Jamal is well known for his weekly commentaries on world events, which are broadcast on KBOO and hundreds of other radio stations around the world. According to Noelle Hanrahan, who records the weekly commentaries, Mumia’s reputation as a journalist has contributed to the publicity around his case:
Mumia Abu Jamal spoke with a Philadelphia radio station yesterday, and said that the focus should not be on him as an individual, but on the problems with the death penalty, and with the U-S prison system as a whole.
South African anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu said today that the replacement of a death sentence with a sentence of life in prison is insufficient, and said that Mumia should be freed from prison as soon as possible.
- KBOO