Key Takeaways
- After nearly 45 years in prison and exhausting his U.S. appeals, Mumia Abu-Jamal is asking a United Nations working group to rule that racism, judicial misconduct, hidden evidence, and brutal confinement have kept him unlawfully locked up.
- His legal team, including the Abolitionist Law Center, ACLU, and Center for Constitutional Rights, is targeting his 1982 trial, citing the near-exclusion of Black jurors, a racist remark attributed to the judge, and late-revealed evidence suggesting a key witness expected payment.
- Now 72 and serving life without parole after 28 years on death row, the former Black Panther says his punishment is “slow death row,” while supporters hope a UN condemnation could fuel pressure for a retrial, commutation, or release.
After nearly 45 years in prison—and with no appeals left in the United States—Mumia Abu-Jamal is taking his case to the United Nations. The imprisoned writer and former Black Panther filed a petition on Tuesday, July 28, asking the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to examine whether racism, judicial misconduct, suppressed evidence, and decades of harsh confinement have kept him unlawfully behind bars.
“Hope is an element of struggle, is it not?” Abu-Jamal told The Guardian. “As we used to say in the old days, ‘A luta continua.’”
The filing represents a dramatic new front in one of America’s most divisive criminal cases. Abu-Jamal’s legal team, led by Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center and joined by the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights, wants international experts to review alleged violations dating back to his 1982 trial.
To be clear, the UN panel cannot order the United States to release him. A condemnation, however, could sharpen calls for a retrial, commutation, or release.
Abu-Jamal, 72, was convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner during a December 1981 traffic stop involving Abu-Jamal’s brother. Faulkner was fatally shot, and Abu-Jamal was discovered nearby with a bullet wound to his chest.
Prosecutors presented eyewitnesses and an alleged hospital confession; Abu-Jamal has maintained his innocence.
His attorneys say witnesses were pressured or offered incentives, evidence was withheld, and prosecutors used his Black Panther history and political statements against him during the sentencing phase.
Faulkner’s family and police unions remain adamant that the conviction was sound.
The new petition zeroes in on the trial itself. Prosecutors removed 71 percent of prospective Black jurors, compared with 20 percent of non-Black candidates, according to the filing.
The final jury included just two Black members in a county that was nearly 40 percent Black. The petition also cites a reported racial slur from trial judge Albert Sabo and evidence released to the defense in 2018—including a note in which key prosecution witness Robert Chobert appeared to ask about money owed to him.
For Abu-Jamal, Geneva offers something Pennsylvania never did: distance from the political machinery surrounding his case.
Abu-Jamal was initially sentenced to death and spent 28 years on death row, much of it in solitary confinement. After courts found constitutional defects in the sentencing process, prosecutors stopped pursuing execution in 2011, leaving him to serve life without parole.
His supporters call the punishment “death by incarceration.” He calls it “slow death row.”
“It is death row without a specific date of execution,” he said. “Or execution through time.”
