Ex-Black Panther death penalty dropped

A 30-year battle over the death penalty of former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal for murdering a white police officer has been ended by prosecutors, the Associated Press reported.

While Abu-Jamal will no longer face the death penalty, he will spend the rest of his life in prison. Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams stood with the widow of fallen Officer Daniel Faulkner when announcing the decision to drop the death penalty because it would open the case to “an unknowable number of years” of appeals, the AP reported.

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"There's never been any doubt in my mind that Mumia Abu-Jamal shot and killed Officer Faulkner. I believe that the appropriate sentence was handed down by a jury of his peers in 1982," said Williams, the city's first black district attorney, the AP reported. "While Abu-Jamal will no longer be facing the death penalty, he will remain behind bars for the rest of his life, and that is where he belongs."

Abu-Jamal was represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, along with Widener Law Professor Judith Ritter, who appealed the murder conviction and death sentence, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“There is no question that justice is served when a death sentence from a misinformed jury is overturned,” said Ritter, USA Today reported. “Thirty years later, the District Attorney' s decision not to seek a new death sentence also furthers the interests of justice."

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Abu-Jamal was convicted of fatally shooting Faulkner in Philadelphia on Dec. 9, 1981 and was sentenced to death after his trial the following year, the AP reported. He was incarcerated in a western Pennsylvania prison and received worldwide support from those that believed he was a victim of a biased justice system. The decisions was upheld through years of appeals.

Recently a federal appeals court ordered a new sentencing hearing after ruling the instructions given to the jury were potentially misleading, according to USA Today. When the US Supreme Court declined to weigh in on the case in October, prosecutors were forced to decide if they wanted to pursue the death penalty again.