Will definitely look this up more tonight, I would love to hear guitarfool's thoughts on the matter.
I'd recommend not looking much farther than a book called "Murdered By Mumia" by Ofc. Faulkner's widow Maureen and radio host/lawyer Michael Smerconish. Smerconish doesn't sway left or right politically, in fact I'd say he's left of center more often than not. But on the Mumia case, he's as compelling arguing against Abu Jamal as anyone I've ever heard, which is why I recommend his book to hear that side of this issue.
I won't comment on the other statements made in this thread.
I will, however, tell my own Mumia related story from my second or third year in college. It's a story similar to several others I've read and heard from other people in different college towns and cities. I lived a block away from Newbury Street and Mass Ave, the corner where Tower Records used to be. Near that corner a lot of skaters and teenagers would hang out. One day I was walking, turning the corner onto Mass Ave from Newbury, and there was a middle-aged man standing there holding a pro-Mumia sign, and a few feet away were two teenagers, I'd say they were 15 or 16 and at that time just a few years younger than me. They looked like the skater kids that hung out every day just down the street.
The kids were also standing there holding "Free Mumia" type signs. I didn't give a sh*t about as much then as I do now, so my flannel-shirted bearded younger self went up to them and asked them point blank "Do you know anything about this case?", then asked them "Do you know the officer's name who was killed?". I think one said "no" very softly and the other had a blank stare. I wasn't nasty, I wasn't mean, I wasn't threatening, but I think I said "That's fucking pathetic" before walking away. It was sad, it was pathetic, and I stopped myself from saying more to the older guy because he was probably the recruiter who got these kids on board - kids who knew nothing of the case including the NAME of the officer killed - to hold empty slogans (which they knew nothing about the background of the case they were protesting) on signs on a busy corner of Boston.
That's the way this pro-Mumia group works. I've seen similar kids at various rallies holding similar signs, where the Mumia case had nothing to do with the rally itself or why the rally was being held. But any chance to hoist a "Free Mumia" sign, any chance to snooker a naive kid who doesn't know any better into carrying such a sign in public, these folks take that chance.
It really is pathetic, and that kind of streetcorner desperation saddens me because those two kids that day didn't know anything about the case beyond the slogan on their sign, yet they were standing there under that banner. If you're going to be the face of a cause, or promote a cause on a public street by holding up a sign, at least know something about the case when doing so. But again, that doesn't matter to the pro-Mumia crowd as much as the slogan "Free Mumia".
For the side of the debate that believes Mumia was guilty and thinks the reasons why he has never won a single appeal to his original conviction in any court of law are more compelling than the grand conspiracy theory that Mumia has been somehow railroaded since the original conviction prosecuted by Ed Rendell, then-DA of Philly up to current DA Seth Williams, just read the Smerconish book for those specific reasons why many think Mumia is in fact guilty.
It's not worth arguing here as the facts of the case are a matter of public record, and the "witnesses" that have appeared since the original trial have all but been discredited and none of the attempts to overturn the conviction have been successful, under numerous DA's and in numerous appeals courts.
Mumia Abu Jamal himself has never testified in his own defense in court.