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District Court Judge William Yohn ruled on Tuesday that Mumia Abu-Jamal
is entitled to a new sentencing hearing. Abu-Jamal was convicted
of murdering a Philadelphia policeman in 1981, and since then, according
to the Washington Post, he has become "the most famous
man on America's death row" — an impressive achievement
but a title that is, one suspects, frequently turned over. I think
Timothy McVeigh used to hold it.
The reason
that Abu-Jamal is so famous is that many believe him to be innocent
— yet another victim of America's racist criminal-justice system.
The prosecutors beg to differ, and presented evidence that the 25-year-old
policeman was shot while lying on the ground at point-blank range,
that several eyewitnesses saw some or all of the murder, that Abu-Jamal
was arrested at the site, and that his gun was found nearby.
Indeed, Judge
Yohn, while finding that a legal technicality earned Abu-Jamal a
new sentencing hearing, did not disturb the jury's guilty verdict
of 20 years ago. Kohn was appointed in 1991 by the earlier President
Bush.
The Post
article reporting Judge Yohn's ruling is interesting. The front-page
headline "Judge Overturns Death Sentence of Phila. Cop Killer"
becomes "Activist to Get New Sentence" on page 11, where
the story continues. If the editors at the Post can turn
a cop killer into a mere activist in less than dozen pages, then
their rehabilitative powers are truly extraordinary. They should
be running our prisons.
But the more
interesting point about the Post's story, and about the whole
"Free Abu-Jamal!" phenomenon, is its international flavor.
The Post notes that "supporters of Abu-Jamal have rallied
regularly from Paris to Washington and Los Angeles," and that
the murderer "recently became the first person to become an
honorary citizen of Paris since Pablo Picasso in 1971." Nor
is it fair to single out the French for censure, at least in this
instance: The Internet has "Free Abu-Jamal!" propaganda
in German, Swedish, Spanish, and Japanese (as well as a site "queers4mumia").
Our own hate-America
Left is stuck in a time warp that sees its country as eternally
pre-civil-rights Mississippi, and so it is no surprise that the
phenomenon should be present, and perhaps even stronger, in the
left abroad. Those who hate capitalism must hate America, and what
better way to justify that hatred than by ascribing a unique racism
to the world's leading free-market power?
So it is useful
from time to time to point out that America has taken enormous,
selfless, and voluntary strides in fighting racism over the last
generation — and that our foreign friends ought not be too
smug. Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom's 1998 landmark book America
in Black and White is chock-full of important data and intriguing
tables, but my favorite is titled, "Majority Dislike for Ethnic
Minorities in European Nations, 1991: Percent with 'Unfavorable'
Attitudes toward the Principal Domestic Minority in Their Country."
It's a simple
table, consisting of three columns: a list of European countries
(and the United States), then the corresponding largest domestic
minority group in each, and then the percent of the population in
each country that admits to "disliking" its largest minority
group. So, for instance, it shows that the percentage of Americans
who say they dislike African Americans in 13 percent.
Now, it is
too bad that 13 percent of Americans feel this way, but what is
most interesting is that this is clearly the lowest number for any
of the countries listed. Great Britain comes in second place, with
21 percent of the British saying they dislike the Irish.
And what about
the haughty French and cultured Germans, leading champions of Abu-Jamal?
Well, 42 percent of the French say they dislike North Africans,
45 percent of West Germans (again, this is 1991) say they dislike
Turks, and the highest figure belongs to the East Germans, 54 percent
of whom say they dislike the Poles. With one exception — Spain,
where 22 percent of the people dislike the Catalans — every
other country at least doubles the dislike-rate of the United States,
and indeed all but one of these — Lithuania, where 30 percent
of the people dislike the Poles — is at least triple the U.S.
rate.
So it is a
little irritating to be lectured by these free-Mumia foreign fan
clubs. The American criminal-justice system is not perfect, but
it is not racist, and Abu-Jamal is getting all the process due to
him, and indeed a lot more.
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