Mumia Abu-Jamal's 3rd PCRA Petition, filed on December 8, 2003

On December 8, 2003, Mumia Abu-Jamal's then new lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, filed a new petition for Abu-Jamal under the Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA). The basic claims raised in this petition were the following two: according to claim one, the main witness against Abu-Jamal, the prostitute Cynthia White, testified against him as a result of a whole range of police measures to get her to do so, with the measures ranging from supplying her with drugs to the promise of reduced harassment in the streets and reduced sentences to death threats if she refused to comply. This claim is supported by an affidavit by one Yvette Williams who at the time shared a prison cell with White. Claim two says that prosecution witness Priscilla Durham, a hospital guard in Philadelphia’s Jefferson Hospital where Abu-Jamal was treated for the gunshot wound he received at the crime scene, lied when she testified that Abu-Jamal immediately after having been brought in had boasted of killing the police officer. This claim is supported by the testimony of the hospital guard’s half brother, who testified that Durham told him that her testimony was false, that all that Abu-Jamal had said amounted to shouting that he was innocent and feared for his life, and that she testified the way she did to curry favor with the police.

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