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

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.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: State Running Scared, Trying to Make Sure He Dies in Prison 
An Interview with Johanna Fernandez
Mumia Abu-Jamal: State Running Scared, Trying to Make Sure He Dies in Prison 
29 April 2021
Mumia’s case always raises larger questions about the barbarism of the criminal justice system.

More Stories


  • Anthony Rogers-Wright
    Preserving the Legacy of Martin Luther King and The Black Radical Tradition Requires Saving Both from the Congressional Black Caucus More than from white moderates and white supremacists (Or, I said what I said)
    21 Jan 2026
    Preserving the Black Radical Tradition demands struggle not only against white supremacists, but also against the co-opted Black political class who actively support the very evils Dr. King named.
  • Mark P. Fancher
    A Role for Africans In Exile: “Revolutionaries at Large”
    21 Jan 2026
    Africans in the U.S. must weaponize their position and sabotage imperial projects from the inside. Black revolutionaries must modify traditional strategy.
  • Jamal Abdulahi
    Saudi Arabia Asserts Dominant Role in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea 
    21 Jan 2026
    Israel's recognition of a breakaway region in Somalia has redrawn the map of the Horn of Africa, pitting two oil-rich Gulf powers against each other and forcing the U.S. to delay its imperial plans…
  • Monique Welch-Rutherford
    This Texas County Is the Deadliest Place in the U.S. for Black Mothers to Give Birth
    21 Jan 2026
    Harris County, home to a world-renowned medical center, holds the worst maternal death rate for Black women in the entire nation. This staggering statistic represents a systemic failure that subjects…
  • x
    Orinoco Tribune
    Venezuela Rejects CIA Award Rumors While President Maduro’s Son Sparks Backlash Over Comments Suggesting to Resume Diplomatic Ties with ‘Israel’
    21 Jan 2026
    Venezuela's official stance remains one of principled anti-imperialism. Internal discussions reflect the complex realities of navigating a crisis.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us