Supreme Court Declines To Reinstate Death Penalty For Mumia Abu-Jamal
Supreme Court Declines To Reinstate Death Penalty For Mumia Abu-Jamal === https://tiurll.com/2tvYGO
The Reading Eagle reported in June 2016 that from the time the Commonwealth enacted its current death penalty statute in September 1978 through 2015, Pennsylvania had sentenced 408 prisoners to death. Of those, 191 had subsequently been resentenced to life or less or released (46.8%), including 169 resentenced to life (41.4%); 16 resentenced to a term of years (3.9%); and 6 exonerated (1.5%). 181 remained on death row (44.4%), including 28 whose convictions or death sentences had been overturned but who were awaiting further court proceedings. 33 had died on death row other than by execution (8.1%). 3 had been executed (0.7%).
The most recent US executions took place in the states of Virginia, Missouri and Oklahoma, bringing the number of death row inmates put to death this year to 27. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 625 people have been executed in the United States.
James H. Hampton, 62, died by lethal injection in Missouri on March 22 for the abduction and murder of Frances Keaton and Christine Schurman. He had refused for years to appeal his conviction. As police were about to arrest Hampton for the 1992 murders, he shot himself under the chin. The bullet exited through the front of his brain, and death penalty opponents said that his judgment was impaired, leading to his desire to die and not fight his death sentence. Hampton went to reform school at the age of 11, and had served time in 25 different prisons for burglary, assault and drug related crimes before being convicted of the 1992 murders. Forty-one people have been put to death in Missouri since the death penalty was reinstated.
Coe's defenders had hoped that his final appeal would come before Nashville US District Court Judge John T. Nixon, who has a history of overturning capital convictions, but his case was assigned to Judge Trauger. Judge Nixon has come under attack by pro-death penalty forces who have accused him of practicing \"judicial advocacy\" by waiting for years to rule on habeas corpus appeals by condemned death row inmates. Death penalty advocates led a failed impeachment drive against the judge after he overturned Robert Coe's conviction, which was later reinstated by a higher appeals court.
Since the death penalty was reinstated in Florida, Green is the twenty-first person to be taken off the state's death row because of a wrongful conviction or doubt of guilt. Commenting on Green's case, a spokesman for Governor Jef Bush said it didn't prove anything is fundamentally wrong with Florida's judicial system, \"In this particular case, the system worked for this gentleman. Based on his direct appeal, his conviction was overturned.\"
1946 Lewis Hill moves from Washington DC to the SanFrancisco Bay Area and begins work toward creating an alternative radiostation.1949 Pacifica first goes onthe air April 15 as KPFA-FM in Berkeley CA.1950 Opponents to the Korean war are among the manyminority viewpoints given freedom of speech on Pacifica during the McCarthyera.1951 Pacifica receives thefirst major foundation grant (Ford Founda- tion) for the support of anon-commercial broadcast operation.1952 Jazz aficionado Phil Elwood debuts on KPFA, making himtoday the longest-running jazz programmer in the country.1953 Philosopher/author Alan Watts begins aregular program on KPFA that continues until his death in 1973.1954 An on-the-air discussion of theeffects of marijuana results in the California Attorney General impoundingthe program tape.1955Poets Allen Ginsberg andLawrence Ferlinghetti bring the Beat Generation to the airwaves. A fewyears later the FCC questions Pacifica's broadcast of some of their worksas \"vulgar, obscene and in bad taste.\"1956 Pacifica wins its first broadcast awards fora program on the First Amendment by Alexander Meiklejohn and a children'sseries of _Robin Hood_ by Chuck Levy and Virginia Maynard.1957 Pacifica/KPFA wins its first George FosterPeabody Award for \"distinguished service and meritorious public service\"for programming that takes strong issue with McCarthyism.1958 Nuclear war and the arms race are debated onthe air by Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling and Edward Teller, the \"Fatherof the H-Bomb.\"1959 Pacifica begins its second station--KPFK-FM in LosAngeles--with Terry Drinkwater as General Manager.1960-1963 The House Un-American ActivitiesCommittee (HUAC) and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS)investigate Pacifica programming for \"subversion.\" Suspected writers includeBertolt Brecht, Norman Cousins, Carey McWilliams, Dorothy Healey, and W.E.B.DuBois.1960 The Federal CommunicationsCommission (FCC) requests a tape of a Pacifica broadcast of poet LawrenceFerlinghetti that it found \"in bad taste\" with \"strong implications againstreligion, government, the president, law-enforcement and racial groups\"--and demands full information on Pacifica finances andgovernance.1960Commercial station WBAIin New York is given to Pacifica by philanthropist Louis Schweitzer. Then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Mayor Robert Wagner, Jr. and Attorney GeneralLouis Lefkowitz are among the speakers honoring the first day of a Pacificaradio station in New York. Early programs include a documentary on George LincolnRockwell and a speech by Herbert Aptheker. The SISS requests files of WBAIprograms and program guides.1961 KPFK wins Pacifica's second George FosterPeabody Award for excellence in broadcasting.1962 KPFK broadcasts women's history profiles ofDorothy healey and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn--programs that are later used inSISS Hearings charging Pacifica is communist infiltrated.1962 WBAI is the first station to publicly broadcastformer FBI agent Jack Levine's expose of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Theprogram is followed by threats of arrests and bombings, as well as pressurefrom the FBI, the Justice Department, and major broadcastnetworks.1962 The FCC withholds the license renewals of KPFA, KPFB,and KPFK pending its investigation into \"communist affiliations.\" Pacificawas never ultimately cited in any of these or subsequent investi-gations.1963 I. F. Stone and Bertrand Russell take to thePacifica airwaves, leading a long list of luminaries to oppose the war inVietnam at this early stage of direct U.S. involvement.1964Pacifica trains volunteers totravel to the South for coverage of the awakening civil rights movement.Andrew Goodman, son of the Pacifica president, is murdered in Mississippiwith Michael Schwerner and James Cheney.1964 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)renews the licenses of all three Pacifica stations after a three-yeardelay.1965 WBAI reporter Chris Koch is thefirst American to cover the war from North Vietnam.1966 Leaders of organizations such as theStudent Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congress Of RacialEquality (CORE), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and the SouthernChristian Leadership Conference (SCLC) discuss the future of civil rightsover Pacifica stations.1967 Pacifica broadcasts a live interview with LatinAmerican leader Che Guevara months before he is killed inBolivia.1968 Pacifica Radio News(originally the Washington News Bureau of WBAI/New York) is established inWashington DC.1969 Pacifica is the only newsorganization willing to break Seymour Hersh's story of the My Lai massacre.Hersh later wins the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the atrocities committed byU.S. troops in Vietnam.1970 KPFT in Houston goes on the air and is bombed off twice duringits first year by Ku Klux Klan attacks on its transmitter tower. Aftermonths of inactivity by federal agents and Houston police, Pacifica mountsa media campaign. Federal agents ultimately arrest a Klansman and chargehim with plotting to blow up KPFA and KPFK, as well as the actual KPFTbombing.1971 WBAI station manager Ed Goodman is jailed for refusingto turn over taped statements by rebelling prisoners at the \"Tombs,\" theNew York City jail.1972 The Pacifica Radio Archive and Pacifica ProgramService are established in Los Angeles to preserve and distribute Pacificaprogramming to schools, libraries, individuals, and other community radiostations across the country.1973 Pacifica provides gavel-to-gavel coverage of the SenateWatergate hearings.1973Third World programmersat KPFA organize to demand a programming department with paid staff andcontrol over some airtime. The station management opposes this effort andobtains a court order banning Third World project coordinator JeffEcheverria from the KPFA premises. The Third World programmers file achallenge to KPFA's license on grounds of discrimination in hiringpractices. The lawyer representing them is David Salniker, later to becomeKPFA manager and Executive Director of Pacifica.1974 The Symbionese Liberation Army delivers thePatty hearts tapes to KPFA/Berkeley and KPFK/Los Angeles. KPFK manager WillLewis is jailed for refusing to turn the tapes over to the FBI.1974 In the summer, KPFA staff andprogrammers go on strike to demand more democratic decision-making process,the reinstatement of the fired Third World staff, and the firing of stationmanagement. After KPFA is off the air for one month, Pacifica agrees to mostof the strikers' demands. In the fall, KPFA formally creates the ThirdWorld programming department with a paid department head and control oversome airtime.1975Joel Kugelmassbecomes the first Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation.1975 Comedian George Carlin's \"dirty wordsyou can't say on television\" routine, broadcast by WBAI/New York in 1973,leads to several years of First Amendment litigation and a hearing by theU.S. Supreme Court. No sanctions are imposed, but the Carlin Case sets thelimits of broadcasting for over a decade.1976 The Pacfica documentary on the assassination ofChilean diplomat Orlando Letelier is instrumental in piecing togetherevidence that later convicts the murderers.1976 In September, KPFA station manager Larry Bensky lays offtwo-thirds of the station's paid staff in one of the many financial crisesperpetually plaguing Pacifica stati
