Jan 28, 2015 4 min read

Let’s be clear from the start that we have no sympathy for the supposed plight of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

For those who haven’t read a newspaper or watched the TV news for the past 30-plus years, Abu-Jamal is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the 1981 shooting death of Daniel Faulkner, a Philadelphia police officer.

Since then, his incarceration has somehow become a cause celebre for some on the left, especially among the Hollywood set, and the prisoner himself has taken every opportunity to rail against the American justice system, in general, and what he sees as his unjust incarceration, in particular.

It is that outspokenness by Abu-Jamal that led to a new state law designed to prevent him, and other prisoners, from publicly expressing themselves.

The specific incident that prompted state Rep. Mike Vereb, R-Montgomery, to introduce his so-called “Silencing Act” last year was Abu-Jamal’s delivery of a pre-recorded commencement address to students at Goddard College in Vermont.

According to a story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Vereb wrote this in an October memo seeking co-sponsors for his bill, which ultimately was approved unanimously in the General Assembly: “I am utterly outraged that such a reprehensible person would be able to revictimize Officer Daniel Faulkner’s family with this kind of self-promoting behavior. I am asking your support for a bill, the Revictimization Relief Act, that would put an end to this kind of shameful misconduct.”

According to the Post-Gazette report, upon signing the bill into law, then-Gov. Tom Corbett said, “This unrepentent cop killer has tested the limits of decency. Gullible activists and celebrities have continued to feed this killer’s ego.”

Vereb said the law, which is now the subject of a court challenge, would allow crime victims, prosecutors or the state attorney general to go to court seeking a judge’s order to halt any “misconduct which causes the victim or the victim’s family severe mental anguish.”

Again, we are not supporters of Abu-Jamal’s cause, but this reasoning is too broad, vague and insufficient to strip someone, anyone, of his or her rights to free expression. We struggle to see how the delivery of a taped speech to college students in Vermont causes severe anguish to Faulkner’s widow and other relatives. They would have no reason to ever hear the speech. News coverage of the event? That’s easy. Don’t watch it.

This law conceivably could be used in an attempt to stop any and all communication by prisoners, who sometimes have very legitimate complaints and concerns about their legal proceedings, the conditions of their confinement and other issues.

At the same time, it’s easy to be offended by the gullibility and mindlessness of those who have climbed aboard the Abu-Jamal bandwagon. The Goddard incident was not the first time Abu-Jamal was asked to deliver taped remarks to a group of college graduates. Unfortunately, some college students, like certain celebrities, have thus far failed to check off the “acquire intellectual maturity” box on their human growth to-do list. One imagines that many of Abu-Jamal’s supporters simply heard he is some sort of “political prisoner” or the victim of a corrupt, racist justice system, without doing any independent research to determine the veracity of those claims. But they, like Abu-Jamal, have a constitutional right to express their views.

Abu-Jamal was not snatched from the scene of the murder and tossed into a pit on Devil’s Island. He had his day in court. Actually, he had many, many days in court, and at every turn his guilt in the murder of Faulkner has been affirmed. He will, barring some hugely unexpected legal twist, draw his final breath in a prison cell.

There may be little or no merit to what Mumia Abu-Jamal has to say, and it may, indeed, cause considerable discomfort to some to see him in the public eye all these years after the Faulkner killing. But hurt feelings, or even “severe mental anguish,” are not sufficient reasons to strip an American citizen of the most elemental of rights.

A hearing on the challenge to the law is set for next month. We hope that a judge will issue an immediate injunction against it.