Mumia Abu-Jamal - Popular Support and Opposition

Popular Support and Opposition

Labor unions, politicians, advocates, educators, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and human rights advocacy organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have expressed concern about the impartiality of the trial of Abu-Jamal, though Amnesty International neither takes a position on the guilt or innocence of Abu-Jamal nor classifies him as a political prisoner. They are opposed by the family of Daniel Faulkner, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, lawyers, US politicians, and the Fraternal Order of Police. In August 1999, the Fraternal Order of Police called for an economic boycott against all individuals and organizations that support Abu-Jamal.

Abu-Jamal has been made an honorary citizen of about 25 cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Montreal, Palermo and Paris. In 2001, he received the sixth biennial Erich Mühsam Prize, eponymously named after an anarcho-communist essayist, which recognizes activism in line with that of its namesake. In October 2002, he was made an honorary member of the German political organization Society of People Persecuted by the Nazi Regime – Federation of Anti-Fascists (VVN-BdA) which Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has considered to be influenced by left-wing extremism.

On April 29, 2006, a newly paved road in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis was named Rue Mumia Abu-Jamal in his honor. In protest of the street-naming, US Congressman Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) introduced resolutions in both Houses of Congress condemning the decision. The House of Representatives voted 368–31 in favor of the resolution. In December 2006, the 25th anniversary of the murder, the executive committee of the Republican Party for the 59th Ward of the City of Philadelphia—covering approximately Germantown, Philadelphia—filed two criminal complaints in the French legal system against the city of Paris and the city of Saint-Denis, accusing the municipalities of "glorifying" Abu-Jamal and alleging the offense "apology or denial of crime" in respect of their actions.

In 2007, the widow of Officer Faulkner coauthored a book with Philadelphia radio journalist Michael Smerconish entitled Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Pain, Loss, and Injustice. The book was part memoir of Faulkner's widow, part discussion in which they chronicled Abu-Jamal's trial and discussed evidence for his conviction, and part discussion on supporting the death penalty. J. Patrick O'Connor, editor and publisher of crimemagazine.com, argues in his book The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal that the preponderance of evidence establishes that it was not Abu-Jamal but a passenger in Abu-Jamal's brother's car, Kenneth Freeman, who killed Faulkner, and that the Philadelphia Police Department and District Attorney's Office framed Abu-Jamal. His book was criticized in the American Thinker as "replete with selective use of testimony, distortions, unsubstantiated charges, and a theory that has failed Abu-Jamal in the past."

In 2010, investigative journalists Dave Lindorff and Linn Washington reproduced the shooting in tests that produced results they claimed were inconsistent with the case against Abu-Jamal; according to them, shots that missed Faulkner should have produced marks visible on the pavement. An expert photo analyst found no such marks visible in the highest-quality photo of the part of the crime scene where the body was found. A ballistics expert medical examiner said the idea that police could have failed to recognise such marks at the crime scene was "absolute nonsense". Abu-Jamal's lawyer said that the results constituted "extraordinarily important new evidence that establishes clearly that the prosecutor and the Philadelphia Police Department were engaged in presenting knowingly false testimony".