Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal

''Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Mumia Abu-Jamal'' was a 1982 murder trial in which Mumia Abu-Jamal was tried for the first-degree murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. A jury convicted Abu-Jamal on all counts and sentenced him to death.

Appeal of the conviction was denied by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1989, and in the following two years the Supreme Court of the United States denied both Abu-Jamal's petition for writ of certiorari, and his petition for rehearing. Abu-Jamal pursued state post-conviction review, the outcome of which was a unanimous decision by six judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania that all issues raised by him, including the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, were without merit. The Supreme Court of the United States again denied a petition for certiorari in 1999, after which Abu-Jamal pursued federal habeas corpus review.

In December 2001 Judge William H. Yohn, Jr. of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania affirmed Abu-Jamal's conviction but quashed his original punishment and ordered resentencing. Both Abu-Jamal and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania appealed. On March 27, 2008, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued its opinion upholding the decision of the District Court. In April 2009, the case was declined by the United States Supreme Court, allowing the July 1982 conviction to stand.

On December 7, 2011, District Attorney of Philadelphia R. Seth Williams announced that prosecutors, with the support of the victim's family, would no longer seek the death penalty for Abu-Jamal. Provided by Wikipedia