Mumia Abu-jamal's Radio Essays

written 5/31/07 Mumia Abu-Jamal For a decade Kenneth Foster, Jr. has languished on one of the worst Death Rows in the U.S. - Texas. He now faces an execution date (of August 30, 2007) despite the fact that even the trial judge, the DA, and the jury that sentenced him to die admit he never killed anyone. Whoa! I know that it sound funny (or fishy), but it's not. It's just a fluke of Texas law. In Texas, that fluke is called the Law of Parties - a variant on conspiracy law, but like most things Texas - this law takes a bigger chunk out of the accused. In essence, the Law of Parties criminalizes presence, not actions. Under U.S. Law, as announced by the Supreme Court in its 1982 Edmunds v Florida decision, a death sentence for one who killed no one, nor intended to, nor assisted in such a killing was a violation of the 8th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. But again - this is Texas. This is the same state that ruled in the Herrera case that innocence is irrelevant; that poi