Former Black Panther on Death Row for a crime he says he did not commit...like it wouldn't be an oddity!
Condemned killer claims innocence 25 years later

By Jon Hurdle Sat Dec 23, 9:14 AM ET

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Condemned killer Mumia Abu-Jamal isn't getting his hopes up. The former radio reporter who was convicted of murdering a Philadelphia policeman in 1981 is appealing his death sentence on grounds that his lawyer Robert Bryan says offer his best chance yet of a new trial.

But the former Black Panther who has spent almost a quarter-century on Death Row for a crime he says he did not commit -- and become an international cause celebre for the anti-death penalty movement -- says he knows better than to pin his hopes on the latest twist in a long legal saga.

"I have learned over the years to not get into the prediction business, and I have learned that the hard way," he said in an exclusive interview with Reuters from a state prison near Waynesburg in western Pennsylvania.

His earlier hopes were dashed in 1989 when his attorneys went before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and returned full of optimism.

"They came back and reported to me, 'You got it, you won,' and of course I believed them. Obviously, that was not the case," the 52-year-old said.

Abu-Jamal, who is black, was convicted and sentenced to death in July 1982 for killing Daniel Faulkner, a white policeman, in Philadelphia on December 9, 1981.

He has maintained his innocence, saying he was framed in a city that had a reputation for police brutality and where he had antagonized officials with his reporting on alleged police corruption.

Critics including the Fraternal Order of Police argue that several eyewitnesses identified Abu-Jamal as the killer, that the bullet that killed the policeman was of the same type used in Abu-Jamal's gun and that Abu-Jamal confessed to the killing while recovering from his wounds, according to testimony of a hospital security guard.

"What more do you need?" said Peter Wirs, a Philadelphia Republican whose local party branch recently filed a lawsuit against the mayor of Paris for making Abu-Jamal an honorary citizen of the city. "It's an open-and-shut case."

RACIST JUDGE?

The city council in Paris made Abu-Jamal an honorary citizen, while Paris suburb St. Denis has named a street after him.

Abu-Jamal also has attracted support from Amnesty International, the European Parliament and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who say they believe he was a victim of police and judicial racism and deserves at least a new trial.

Among other evidence, his backers cite a statement by the now-deceased trial Judge Albert Sabo, who sentenced Abu-Jamal to death and who, according to court documents, was overheard saying, "Yeah, and I'm going to help 'em fry the nigger."

Wirs denied Sabo's statement indicates the trial was racially biased. "He was just expressing the general sentiment of most Philadelphians. He was biased and prejudiced against criminals," he said.

Faulkner's widow, Maureen, could not be reached for comment. The Philadelphia District Attorney, whose office prosecuted Abu-Jamal, declined to comment because the case is under appeal.

In Abu-Jamal's latest appeal, expected to be heard in early 2007, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia will decide whether his trial was tainted by racial discrimination and whether he is entitled to a new trial.

For now, Abu-Jamal remains on Death Row because of appeals against another judge's lifting of the death sentence in 2001.

In a telephone interview lasting 15 minutes, the most allowed by prison authorities, Abu-Jamal said he lives a largely solitary life.

"The day can be encapsulated in the word 'isolation,"' he said. "For 22 hours a day, you are in a cell by yourself. That's where you eat, that's where you sleep, that's where you do your ... bodily functions."

The only possibility of contact with others is a two-hour exercise period at the maximum-security prison. But even that is often solitary during the winter because many inmates avoid the cold, he said.

In his cell, Abu-Jamal said he reads, writes columns on topics such as politics, the death penalty and the war in
Iraq for a Web site run by his supporters and makes radio broadcasts for a San Francisco-based organization called Prison Radio.

Contact with his family is largely limited to phone calls because they live some 300 miles away in Philadelphia.

"My people are poor," he said. "I don't see them often, maybe once or twice a year if we can manage it but sometimes not even that."

Mythical or merely Elusive?
Giant squid caught on video by Japanese scientists

Fri Dec 22, 3:40 AM ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - Its mass of reddish tentacles flailing, a giant squid fought a losing battle to evade capture in a video unveiled by Japanese scientists on Friday.

Images of the squid -- a relatively small female about 3.5 meters (11 ft 6 in) long and weighing 50 kg (110 lb) -- were the ultimate prize for zoologists at the National Science Museum, who have been pursuing one of the ocean's most mysterious creatures for years.

"Nobody has ever seen a live giant squid except fishermen," team leader Tsunemi Kubodera of the museum's zoology department said in an interview on Friday. "We believe these are the first ever moving pictures of a giant squid."

Little was known until recently about the creature thought to have inspired the myth of the "kraken," a tentacled monster that was blamed by sailors for sinking ships off Norway in the 18th century.

Unconfirmed reports say giant squid can grow up to 20 meters long, but according to scientists they are unlikely to pose a threat to ships because they spend their lives hundreds of meters under the sea.

The Japanese research team tracked giant squid by following their biggest predators -- sperm whales -- as they gathered to feed near the Ogasawara islands, 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo between September and December.

They succeeded in taking the first still photographs of a living giant squid in 2005, observing that it moved around in the water more actively than previously thought, and captured food by entangling prey in its powerful tentacles.

The latest specimen, whose formalin-preserved carcass was displayed at a news conference at the museum in Tokyo, was caught on a baited hook laid 650 meters (2,150 ft) under the sea off the Ogasawara islands, on December 4, the scientists said.

A squid about 55 cm (21.65 inches) in length had been attracted by the bait and the giant squid was hooked when it tried to eat the smaller squid, the scientists said.

...the Freedom Bush says Islam wants to take away...
A look at euthanasia, assisted death

By The Associated Press Thu Dec 21, 2:32 PM ET

A look at legislation covering euthanasia and assisted suicide in the industrialized world:

ITALY — Euthanasia is illegal in the heavily Roman Catholic nation. Assisted suicide can carry a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

NETHERLANDS — Euthanasia was legalized in 2001, but the practice was common for at least a decade before that. Under the law, patients must be terminally ill, in unbearable pain and two doctors must agree there is no prospect for recovery.

BELGIUM — Legalized euthanasia under similar conditions as the Netherlands in 2002.

SWITZERLAND — Allows passive assistance to terminally ill people who have expressed a wish to die.

BRITAIN — Passed a law in 2004 allowing living wills or documents that set out what medical treatment patients want if they become seriously ill and lose the capacity to make a decision. In May, the House of Lords rejected legislation that would have allowed doctors to prescribe lethal drug doses to terminally ill patients.

FRANCE — Enables the terminally ill or those with no hope of recovery to refuse treatment in favor of death. Doctors are allowed to administer painkillers, even if their secondary effects include shortening patients' lives. But the law stops short of allowing euthanasia.

SPAIN — Euthanasia is illegal in Spain and people who help someone else die can be punished with at least six months in prison. But Spain's Socialist government wants to legalize it as part of a wave of liberal reforms that have largely transformed this traditionally Roman Catholic country.

UNITED STATES — U.S. law generally permits patients to ask that medical treatment be withheld or withdrawn, even if it raises their risk of dying. Voters in Oregon went further and approved the first physician-assisted suicide law in the U.S. in 1994, but it is now under legal challenge.

AUSTRALIA — Australia's Northern Territory province legalized mercy killing in 1996 and pro-euthanasia physician Dr. Philip Nitschke helped four people die before federal lawmakers overturned the provincial legislation.

OTHER — The U.N. Human Rights Committee criticized Dutch legalization in 2001. The Council of Europe — Europe's top human rights body — rejected euthanasia as a legitimate means to end life in April 2005.