Oct 11, 2014 3 min read

The old joke has it jails and prisons are full of innocent people because so many inmates say they were framed, the cops got the wrong guy, a miscarriage of justice was carried out and the real perpetrator is still out there lurking on the streets, ready to commit havoc again.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in December 1981, is just of one of many within Pennsylvania prisons who peddled that claim over the years, but his is the only cause that attracted international attention and found so many willing, high-profile believers. Celebrities flocked under Abu-Jamal’s banner, a street was named for him in France and he frequently publishes books and articles and airs his views in radio commentaries. For years, he was a resident on death row at SCI-Greene until that sentence was overturned and he was resentenced to life without parole and transferred to a prison near Pottsville.

It was in his new home that he recorded an address to students at Goddard College in Vermont, which was unveiled at commencement ceremonies last weekend. While it was relatively benign – he urged graduates to strive to transform the world, which is hardly an incendiary call to arms – the fact he was given such a prestigious perch inflamed police organizations, lawmakers and led to calls for a new victims rights bill in Pennsylvania. While this is really nothing new – similar firestorms erupted when laurels were tossed in Abu-Jamal’s direction before – the outrage is justified.

It’s time, once and for all, for the drum-beating on Abu-Jamal’s behalf to cease.

Writing on the Inside Higher Ed website, Goddard College faculty member Jan Clausen wrote Abu-Jamal is “a man with a brilliant mind and an unstoppable pen” and the college’s association with him is “an affirmation of everything we’ve long been about.” Sure, it’s possible to admire Abu-Jamal’s skill as a prose stylist, but it doesn’t remove the fact that no convincing evidence has ever emerged Abu-Jamal did not kill Faulkner. Abu-Jamal and his supporters have tirelessly suggested some shadowy figure emerged from out of nowhere and shot the officer amid the tussle he was having with Abu-Jamal before scurrying back into the darkness. This was refuted in Abu-Jamal’s trial by three witnesses who said they saw Abu-Jamal pull the trigger.

Remember the fury when O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of murdering his wife and a friend of hers in 1995? Well, the evidence that Abu-Jamal committed the crime for which he was convicted is at least as strong as that brought against Simpson, if not more so.

But Abu-Jamal’s acolytes doggedly adhere to the mythology that Abu-Jamal is a “political prisoner” who’s been tossed behind bars because of an inherently racist justice system. To us, that seems more the product of wishful thinking and naivete than an embrace of reality. One wonders if they would be so willing to go to bat for someone who did not have Abu-Jamal’s silver tongue, or for someone who lacked his dreadlocked mien.

Let’s give Abu-Jamal’s supporters the benefit of the doubt and assume their hearts are in the right place. Their energies, however, would be much better spent elsewhere.