On April 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit over­turned the death sen­tence of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Pennsylvania inmate who was con­vict­ed of killing a Philadelphia police offi­cer 30 years ago in 1981. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court vacat­ed a pre­vi­ous grant of sen­tenc­ing relief hand­ed down by the same court in order to allow con­sid­er­a­tion of a recent­ly decid­ed Supreme Court case with relat­ed facts (Smith v. Spisak). Both cas­es involved the ques­tion of whether the jury was incor­rect­ly instruct­ed on eval­u­at­ing mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors in deter­min­ing the prop­er sen­tence. The Court of Appeals con­sid­ered the Spisak rul­ing, but found the jury instruc­tions to be suf­fi­cient­ly dif­fer­ent from those in Abu-Jamal’s case. Judge Anthony Scirica, writ­ing for the Third Circuit pan­el, held that the jury instruc­tions at Abu-Jamal’s tri­al in 1982 vio­lat­ed Mills v. Maryland, which said that find­ings on mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors do not have to be unan­i­mous. Judge Scirica wrote, ​“We con­clude the ver­dict form and jury instruc­tions in this case like­wise cre­at­ed a sub­stan­tial prob­a­bil­i­ty the jury believed it was pre­clud­ed from find­ing a mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stance that had not been unan­i­mous­ly agreed upon.”

Although Abu-Jamal has main­tained his inno­cence, his con­vic­tion in the mur­der remains. The state may appeal the Circuit Court’s rul­ing to the U.S. Supreme Court. Pennsylvania has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 1999. 

(B. Leonard, ​“Convicted Cop Killer Can Appeal Death Sentence,” Courthouse News Service, April 26, 2011). See also U.S. Supreme Court.

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