In this edition:  Abuse and deprivation at Coal Township, prosecutors admit defeat in thirty year effort to impose death sentence on Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Pittsburgh prison guard held over for trial on more than 100 charges of raping, torturing, and abusing prisoners and more . . .

 

 

Routine harassment in solitary at Coal Township: Matthew Katona, a state prisoner, is  being held in solitary at the State Correctional Institution Coal Township, with 3 years remaining on a 5 year sentence. He has reported several accounts of abuse occurring in the solitary cells. On October 16, 2011, Katona asked prison guard Belles for a pen when he was making his rounds to which Belles replied, “Shut the f*** up”. Katona told him not to talk to him like that to which Belles further replied, “If you don’t shut the f*** up, I’m going to stick my d*** in your mouth and make you shut up.” Katona filed a grievance for this incident and alledged an internal investigation had begun.

 

On October 28, Katona noticed prison guard Hausman staring at his private parts in the shower room and requested that he stop. Hausman then handcuffed Katona and took him back to his cell. Hausman removed the handcuff from his left wrist and pulled his right arm, handcuff still on, through the wicket in the door while calling him “a little weak bitch.” Katona’s arm was injured from the incident. He was refused medical treatment when he requested it. His arm was swollen and in extreme pain for 2 and 1/2 weeks after the incident.

 

Following the shower incident, he was routinely denied access to showers, the law library, the 1 hour of yard a day he should receive, along with visits from his mother. As of November 29 it had been a full month since he was allowed use of a shower, the law library, or the yard. He has applied for a transfer from this prison because he believes staff members are retaliating against him ffor a previous charge he received for hitting Captain William Miller.

 

Philadelphia District Attorney will not seek death penalty against Mumia Abu-Jamal, supporters gather at the Constitution Center in Philly on 30th anniversary of his incarceration: On December 7, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced that his office would not seek the death penalty in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Pennsylvania political prisoner who was framed in the killing of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Williams said that continuing to seek the death penalty could lead to “an unknowable number of years” of appeals, and that some witnesses have died or are unavailable after nearly three decades.

 

Amnesty International, which maintains that Abu-Jamal’s trial was “manifestly unfair and failed to meet international fair trial standards,” said the district attorney’s decision does not go far enough. Abu-Jamal still has an appeal pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court over the validity of ballistics evidence.

 

“Amnesty International continues to believe that justice would best be served by granting Mumia Abu-Jamal a new trial,” said Laura Moye, director of the human rights group’s Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty.

 

Investigative journalists Dave Lindorff, Linn Washington, and J. Patrick O’Connor, along with Hans Bennett and German scholar Michael Schiffman have all documented the police, prosecutorial, and judicial misconduct which led to Abu-Jamal’s conviction. Violations of Abu-Jamal’s constitutional rights at his original trial include:

 

• Police coercion of witnesses to commit perjury, a common practice by Philadelphia cops during this time period as shown in several federal investigations;
• The police, in collaboration with the prosecuting attorney McGill, conspired to fabricate a “confession” by Mumia two months after its allegedly happened;
• Police tampered with crime scene evidence and failed to follow routine tests to determine if Mumia had fired a gun, or—more likely—had conducted such tests and not liked the results;
• Police refused to pursue evidence pointing to the likelihood that another man (Kenneth Freeman) was the actual shooter;
• Ballistics evidence makes the prosecution’s theory of the shooting of Officer Faulkner impossible;
• The prosecutor, Joseph McGill, withheld critical evidence from the defense in violation of law;
• Blacks were purged from the jury and Mumia was denied a trial by his peers;
• Extreme judicial bias prevented Mumia from receiving a fair trial, including Judge Sabo being overheard telling someone prior to the trial that he “was going to help them fry the nigger.”
• Mumia had his right to self-representation arbitrarily stripped and was provided with deliberately under-funded and ineffective counsel.

 

The widow of the slain police officer, Maureen Faulkner, stated “I am heartened that he will be taken from the protective cloister he has been living in all these years and begin living among his own kind — the thugs and common criminals that infest our prisons.” The “protective cloister” she is referring to is Pennsylvania’s death row, where Mumia has been held in 22-24 hour solitary confinement for nearly thirty years while fighting an unconstitutional conviction. The Center for Constitutional Rights recently released a position paper on death row prisoners in the United States titled: The United States Tortures Before It Kills. The paper argues “that the course of conduct employed by the United States, from sentence, to just before execution, constitutes torture.”

 

The decision not to pursue the death penalty was announced two days before a historic gathering at Philadelphia’s Constitution Center that saw a capacity crowd of 900 come together to plan the next steps in the campaign to free Mumia and fight back against all forms of oppression. Speakers included author of The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander, co-author with Abu-Jamal of a recently-released book, The Classroom and the Cell, Marc Lamont Hill, MOVE Minister of Information Ramona Africa, Dr. Johanna Fernandez, hip-hop artist Immortal Technique, Princeton professor Cornell West, and more.

 

Nobel Peace laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, spoke to the crowd through a recorded message, stating: “Now that it is clear that Mumia should never have been on death row in the first place, justice will not be served by relegating him to prison for the rest of his life—yet another form of death sentence. Based on even a minimal following of international human rights standards, Mumia must now be released. I therefore join the call, and ask others to follow, asking District Attorney Seth Williams to rise to the challenge of reconciliation, human rights, and justice: drop this case now, and allow Mumia Abu-Jamal to be immediately released, with full time served.”

 

Plans are being developed to intensify the campaign to free Mumia, including renewed efforts to push the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the case.

Preliminary Hearing sends Guard to Trial: The preliminary hearing for Harry Nicoletti, a guard suspended from SCI Pittsburgh and arrested on felony charges of institutional sexual assault and criminal solicitation, took place December 7 through the 9 in Pittsburgh. Judge Gene Ricciardi ruled that enough evidence was presented by the prosecution to send Nicoletti to trial. The judge held 101 charges that will be ruled on in the Allegheny Court of Common Pleas.

 

During the hearing, the prosecution called 31 witnesses to testify, most of whom were former or current prisoners. Some testified as victims of assault, and others testified that Nicoletti encouraged them to assault other prisoners for rewards. Patrick Hogan testified that Nicoletti ordered him to put cigarette ashes in the food of another prisoner who was mentally slow, and then pour the rest of the food on the prisoner’s head and smear it on his chest. Hogan also testified that the mentally slow prisoner was ordered to jump up and down for a long time, stand with his nose against a door, and then was ordered to strip down, and was probed with a broom handle. Richard Cavallero testified that when he was at SCI Pittsburgh, he beat up 30 other prisoners while Nicoletti turned his head.

 

The defense worked to discredit the testimony, inquiring why prisoners did not report to higher officials, and why none of them sought medical attention. One prisoner said he kept quiet for fear of being sent to solitary. One said that he reported the abuse when he was transferred to SCI Camp Hill and they did nothing. Another prisoner said, “I told him I didn’t want to do it. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to fight him. … What am I going to do, punch him in the face?”

 

Department of Corrections statistics from 2010 indicate that 98% of prisoner grievances are denied, despite the Department of Corrections maintaining that  the prisoner grievance system provides meaningful oversight of prisoner complaints and abuse. The Department of Justice recently opened an investigation into official abuse at SCI Pittsburgh and SCI Cresson, both in Pennsylvania.

Philly area: Wednesdays are Write On! Prison Letter Writing Night at the LAVA space at 4134 Lancaster, 6-9 pm. Come help us stay connected with the many prisoners who write to us with news from inside, learn to document crimes committed by prison staff, and help bring an end to the abuse and torture of our brothers and sisters behind bars.

 

If you’d like to know more about the Human Rights Coalition or would like to get involved, come to Write On!, to our monthly general meetings (second Monday of each month, 6pm), or call us at 215-921-3491, email: info@hrcoalition.org, or visit our website at http://www.hrcoalition.org./

Pittsburgh area: Write On! – Letter writing to prisoners and HRC work night every Wednesday at 5129 Penn Avenue from 7 -10pm. To get involved with HRC/Fed Up! in Pittsburgh, email: hrcfedup@gmail.com or call 412-654-9070.

 

You’ve been listening to the Human Rights Coalition’s PA Prison Report. HRC is a group of current and former prisoners, family members, and supporters, whose ultimate goal is to abolish prisons.