Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most recognized death row inmate in the world today, whose death sentence was commuted in December of 2011 to life without parole, as a result of a large mass movement. In 1982, Mumia was tried and convicted for the murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. The trial proceedings have been under scrutiny and his case is one of the most contested legal cases in modern American history. A former Black Panther and now renowned author, his books and writings in venues as diverse as the Yale Law Review, Forbes, Nation and street-papers for the homeless, have led many to hail him “the voice of the voiceless.”

While Mumia himself is relatively widely known, recent media attention on his case from outlets as Fox News and Huffington Post, has made it clear that few know the facts related to his case.

Join the Institute for Policy Studies for a free lunch time screening of a documentary that deconstructs with precision all the things one might want to know about Mumia’s case. The films producer and activists in the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home, Johanna Fernandez has been invited to DC for a post viewing discussion.

Justice on Trial; The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal navigates the tempest of the Abu-Jamal trial by reviewing the known facts of the case. It demonstrates that the major violations in the Abu-Jamal case — judicial bias, prosecutorial misconduct, racial discrimination in jury selection, police corruption and tampering with evidence to obtain a conviction– are not special to this case. Instead, they are commonly practiced within the criminal justice system and account for the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans and Latinos in the United States. The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal is a microcosm of greater problems in the criminal justice system in the United States today. The attention that its many violations have received make the Abu-Jamal case one of the most important civil rights cases of our time.

Please RSVP by emailing netfa@ips-dc.org.