Convicted cop killer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, has come to symbolize everything that is wrong with the American judicial system. At 3:52 AM on December 9th, 1981, Mumia Abu-Jamal was driving a taxi cab when he saw his brother, William Cook, being beaten by a police officer. Mumia intervened and the officer, Daniel Faulkner, and Jamal were both shot; Faulkner died. It is not questioned whether or not Mumia intervened. What is being disputed is who shot Daniel Faulkner. Mumia insists it was someone else and several witnesses say they saw another shooter flee the scene. Mumia Abu-Jamal's registered .38 caliber handgun, which was found with five chambers empty near Faulkner 's body, was never decisively connected to Faulkner's wounds.
             "Mumia's murder trial was a policeman's dream" (Bisson, Terry par7). His trial was far from fair. The judge to whom the case was assigned was Albert Sabo. Judge Sabo at the time had put thirty-one people on death row. Those people accounted for approximately twenty-five percent of Pennsylvania's death row inmates. Of those thirty-one people, twenty-nine of them were African-American. Many believe that Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo picked Judge Sabo to handle the case himself. However, this is rumor not proven. Initially Mumia was granted the right to represent himself. He thought he could provide a better defense for himself than a public defender. However, during voir dire, the process in which a jury is selected, Mumia was able to select only one juror before being denied his right to self-representation by Judge Sabo. The juror Mumia selected, an African-American, was later dismissed. She was replaced with a white male juror who had reportedly expressed a bias in the case and had said that he would not be able to view the facts fairly. When Mumia argued Judge Sabo's ruling he was sent away from the courtroom. He was left witho
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