Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: Drop the Case Against Mumia Abu-Jamal

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a Philadelphia native, award-winning journalist, beloved grandfather, and Black freedom movement elder who has spent 44 years in Pennsylvania prisons for a crime he did not commit, 29 of those years in solitary confinement on Death Row. Mumia is now 71 and dealing with serious health issues due to elder abuse and medical neglect by the PA Dept of Corrections. It is time for this injustice upon injustice to end. Overwhelming evidence shows that Mumia Abu-Jamal, framed for murdering a Philadelphia police officer, never had a fair trial. Amnesty International, the UN Working Group of Experts on Peoples of African Descent, and other human rights organizations agree.


We petition Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to end this long travesty of justice. His office's Conviction Integrity Unit has gained relief for almost 50 wrongfully convicted people in Philadelphia. Mumia's should be next.


Millions worldwide know that Mumia's conviction should be reversed. Heads of state and prominent politicians worldwide (e.g., France, Germany, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America); Nobel laureates Nelson Mandela, Toni Morrison, and Desmond Tutu; European and Japanese Parliaments; city governments from San Francisco to Detroit to Paris and its suburbs; the Congressional Black Caucus and other U.S. Congress members; prominent civil rights groups including the NAACP; and labor unions from South Africa and French Guiana to Japan and Oakland, California - where the ILWU shut down ports to stop Mumia's execution - have all asserted Mumia's right to a new trial and freedom. It's time Krasner finds the courage to stop playing politics with Mumia's life, to honestly deal with the major injustices in this 44-year-old case, and gain Mumia's release. In this third term in office, we want DA Larry Krasner to overturn Mumia's wrongful conviction.

DA Krasner knows that Mumia has been brutally railroaded at every juncture in his case.

Mumia became a target of the FBI at age 14 due to his membership in the Black Panther Party. Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI characterized the Panthers as a threat to national security and had a 700 page file on Mumia. They wrote about Mumia, "The Negro male showed no propensity toward violence." Yet they also wrote the word "DEAD" near his photo.

Due to Mumia's journalistic support for the MOVE organization, his reporting on rampant police brutality against Black and Brown people, and his work in the Black Panther Party, he had long been hated by the Philadelphia police and the city's notorious police-chief-turned-mayor Frank Rizzo. In fact, Rizzo threatened Mumia, an award winning journalist, at a press conference, saying "They believe what you write, and what you say, and it's got to stop. And one day—and I hope it's in my career—that you're going to have to be held responsible and accountable for what you do."

Mumia's conviction is plagued with police, prosecutorial, and judicial misconduct.
• No physical evidence links Mumia to the death of Officer Daniel Faulkner. On Dec 9, 1981. Mumia was driving a cab early morning. He parked to look over his paperwork and saw his brother Billy Cook in an altercation with a cop (Daniel Faulkner). As he ran over, unarmed, to see how he could help, Faulkner shot Mumia in the chest. He was then beaten severely by cops who arrived on scene, and they continued brutalizing him on the way to the hospital. Mumia nearly died.
• Photos taken by Pedro Polakoff that morning show that police used their bare hands to collect evidence and never secured the crime scene.
• Police said that no gunpowder residue test was done on Mumia's hands or his registered 38 pistol found in his glove compartment.
• The prosecutor in Mumia's trial, Joseph McGill systematically kept Black people off the jury, bribed witnesses to falsely testify against Mumia, and hid other potentially important evidence from Mumia and his attorney(s) for over three decades. Crucial facts pointing to Mumia's innocence also were kept from the jury.
• Before Mumia's trial, court stenographer Terrie Maurer Carter overheard presiding Judge Albert Sabo say to Judge Richard Klein "I am going to help them fry the n....ger." Sabo sentenced Mumia to death July 3rd, 1982.
• Fifteen of the 35 officers involved in Mumia's case, including the top officer at the crime scene, were later convicted of corruption, extortion, and tampering with evidence to obtain convictions. The US Dept of Justice began a lawsuit in 1979 suing mayor Frank Rizzo and other city and police officials for practices including tampering with evidence, beating handcuffed detainees, and shooting nonviolent suspects.

Mumia has survived two death warrants and 44 years of prison. Medical care in the prisons is disgraceful and deliberately negligent. Mumia was essentially blind for eight months in 2025 because the PA DOC delayed Mumia's access to critical eye care. He finally had laser surgery in one eye in September, but his eyesight is dangerously imperiled as the prison delays urgent treatments to prevent permanent blindness.

Mumia also has congestive heart disease, a damaged liver after long-delayed treatment for Hepatitis C (contracted from a blood transfusion after being shot Dec 9, 1981), and an extremely painful skin condition. His medical care only comes after massive public campaigns and lawsuits against the PA Dept of Corrections. Release is the best cure for all of Mumia's medical conditions.

FREEDOM is required to end decades of injustice against Mumia. DA Krasner, don't let the Fraternal Order of Police stop you -- We say: Overturn Mumia's wrongful conviction!