On April 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit turned down the Philadelphia district attorney’s appeal to reinstate the death penalty for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Court ordered the Pennsylvania trial court to convene a new trial solely to determine whether Abu-Jamal should be sentenced to death once again or left to rot in prison for life. The D.A.’s office has announced it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Third Circuit decision upheld the 2001 decision by U.S.  District Court judge William Yohn that overturned the death sentence while upholding the frame-up murder conviction. Yohn found the sentence to be unconstitutional under the precedent of the Mills v. Maryland decision because the sentencing form and jury instructions did not allow jurors to freely consider the mitigating circumstances weighing against a death sentence.

Yohn’s ruling had been upheld by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in March 2008. But in January 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Third Circuit decision, ordering the Third Circuit to review the case in light of its ruling that reinstated the death sentence for neo-Nazi Frank Spisak, whose sentence had also been overturned due to improper jury instructions.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man who should not have spent a day in prison. Free Mumia now! (For more, see “Appeals Court Hearing on Death Sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal,” Workers Vanguard No. 966, 8 October 2010.)