Judgment Day

"'Mumia Exception's' ugly head again" : The Philadelphia Inquirer has this story about Third Circuit Judge Thomas Ambro’s dissent in the Mumia Abu-Jamal case which reads, in part, "Our court has previously reached the merits of Batson claims . . . where the petitioner did not make a timely objection during jury selection . . . and I see no reason why we should not afford Abu-Jamal the courtesy of our precedents."

"[Enhanced] Sentence of man who solicited teen upheld in appeals court":  The Sioux City Journal reports here Eighth Circuit upholds district court’s enhanced sentence where defendant provided false testimony at his sentencing hearing and denied attempting to recruit a fellow inmate to kill the victim.

On Thursday, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals decided Abu Jamal v. Horn.  Abu Jamal was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981 and sentenced to death. 

Capital Defense Weekly writes here that the Third Circuit panel granted relief as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court “was objectively unreasonable” when analyzing whether the “jury instructions and the verdict form created a reasonable likelihood that the jury believed” it was not permitted to find a mitigating factor unless all 12 agreed upon it. 

The panel split, 2-1, on whether the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania intentionally struck jurors on the basis of race. The prosecution used 2/3rds of its strikes to remove persons of color to create a jury that, in a county with a minority of whites, consisted of 9 whites and 3 African Americans The panel, creating new law in the Circuit, held that trial counsel failed to adequately raise the issue at trial (and essentially abandoned it), despite a merits determination by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

An article from the AP is here.  The 118 page decision is here.