Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

New Legal Filing in Mumia’s Case
Johanna Fernández
12 Jan 2022
🖨️ Print Article
New Legal Filing in Mumia’s Case
Photo credit: Joe Piette

2022 may be the year that new evidence is released in the case of political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal.

This article was originally published in Hood Communist.

In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.”

With continued pressure from below, 2022 will be the year that forces the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the Philly Police Department to answer questions about why they framed imprisoned radio journalist and veteran Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal’s attorneys have filed a PCRA petition focused entirely on the six boxes of case files that were found in a storage room of the DA’s office in late December 2018, after the case being heard before Judge Leon Tucker in the Court of Common Pleas concluded. (tinyurl.com/zkyva464)

The new evidence contained in the boxes is damning, and we need to expose it. It reveals a pattern of misconduct and abuse of authority by the prosecution, including bribery of the state’s two key witnesses, as well as racist exclusion in jury selection — a violation of the landmark Supreme Court decision Batson v. Kentucky. The remedy for each or any of the claims in the petition is a new trial. The court may order a hearing on factual issues raised in the claims. If so, we won’t know for at least a month. 

The new evidence includes a handwritten letter penned by Robert Chobert, the prosecution’s star witness. In it, Chobert demands to be paid money promised him by then-Prosecutor Joseph McGill. Other evidence includes notes written by McGill, prominently tracking the race of potential jurors for the purposes of excluding Black people from the jury, and letters and memoranda which reveal that the DA’s office sought to monitor, direct and intervene in the outstanding prostitution charges against its other key witness Cynthia White.

Mumia Abu-Jamal was framed and convicted 40 years ago in 1982, during one of the most corrupt and racist periods in Philadelphia’s history — the era of cop-turned-mayor Frank Rizzo. It was a moment when the city’s police department, which worked intimately with the DA’s office, routinely engaged in homicidal violence against Black and Latinx detainees, corruption, bribery and tampering with evidence to obtain convictions. 

In 1979, under pressure from civil rights activists, the Department of Justice filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the Philadelphia police department and detailed a culture of racist violence, widespread corruption and intimidation that targeted outspoken people like Mumia. Despite concurrent investigations by the FBI and Pennsylvania’s Attorney General and dozens of police convictions, the power and influence of the country’s largest police association, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) prevailed. 

Now, more than 40 years later, we’re still living with the failure to uproot these abuses. Philadelphia continues to fear the powerful FOP, even though it endorses cruelty, racism and multiple injustices. A culture of fear permeates the “city of brotherly love.”

The contents of these boxes shine light on decades of white supremacy and rampant lawlessness in U.S. courts and prisons. They also hold enormous promise for Mumia’s freedom and challenge us to choose Love, Not PHEAR. (lovenotphear.com/) Stay tuned. 

Johanna Fernández is Associate Professor of History at Baruch College of the City University of New York and editor of Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Mumia Abu Jamal
Political Prisoner

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Johanna Fernández and her Unrelenting Advocacy for Mumia Abu Jamal
19 August 2026
The late Dr.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
EXCERPT: Die Nigger, Die! H. Rap Brown, 1969
26 November 2025
“Blackness alone is not revolutionary.”
Black Alliance For Peace
Imam Jamil Al-Amin, Presente!
26 November 2025
From the front lines of the Black Power movement to a Georgia prison cell, the life of Imam Jamil Al-Amin represents a continuous thread of res
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
LETTER: To My People, Assata Shakur, 1973
01 October 2025
“There is and always will be, until every Black man, woman, and child is free, a Black Liberation Army.”
Mumia Health update
Julia Wright
How to Resist the Deliberate Medical Neglect of Our Political Prisoners
28 February 2024
The state uses tactics such as medical neglect to slowly assassinate political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal. 
Sekou Odinga
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
Sekou Odinga Has Joined the Ancestors But the Spirit of the Black Liberation Army And African Resistance Lives On!
17 January 2024
A commemoration of the life of comrade Sekou Odinga, a lifelong New African revolutionary, former political prisoner, and unstoppable force in
Mutulu Shakur
Akinyele Umoja
Mutulu Shakur
12 July 2023
Mutulu Shakur passed away just seven months after being paroled.
Black Agenda Report Book Forum: An Interview with Garrett Felber
Garrett Felber , Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Black Agenda Report Book Forum: An Interview with Garrett Felber
15 February 2023
To commemorate 100 years since the birth of former political prisoner Martin Sostre, the Black Agenda Report Book Forum interviews Garrett Felb
BAR Book Forum: Interview with Akinyele Umoja
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Interview with Akinyele Umoja
08 June 2022
As part of the Black Agenda Report Book Forum, we interview scholars about a recent article they’ve written for either an academic journal or p
If Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Case Is a ‘Non-Issue,’ Why Have Media Gone to Such Lengths to Silence Him?
Janine Jackson 
If Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Case Is a ‘Non-Issue,’ Why Have Media Gone to Such Lengths to Silence Him?
12 May 2021
The corporate media is second only to the police in spreading falsehoods about the nation’s best known political prisoner.

More Stories


  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of October 5, 2020
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of October 5, 2020
    06 Oct 2020
    Black Is Back Coalition to March on White House 
  • Economically Fading US Chooses Military Confrontation
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Economically Fading US Chooses Military Confrontation
    06 Oct 2020
    Unable to keep up with China economically, the United States is militarily encircling its rival and “creating the conditions of a New Cold War,” said Danny Haiphong, contribut
  • If Breonna Were White…
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    If Breonna Were White…
    06 Oct 2020
    In an essay titled “Breonna’s Deathbed,” political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal asks if the Louisville cops that killed Breonna Taylor would still be free if they had shot to
  • Anti-Blackness Throughout the Americas
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Anti-Blackness Throughout the Americas
    06 Oct 2020
    Anti-Blackness is the common denominator underlying Black people’s high rates of death from poverty, disease and police violence on both continents of the western hemisphere, said Jame
  • Black Is Back Coalition to March on White House
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Is Back Coalition to March on White House
    06 Oct 2020
    For the 12th consecutive year, the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations will march on the White House, November 7, this time under the themes “Black Power Matters,
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us