The Other Death Row: In Spite of Innocence By Muti A. Ajamu-Osagboro FreeMutiNow@aol.com

“There is no doubt in my mind about life without parole – should be eliminated along with the death penalty.”

-Terry Rumsey, Co-Chair of PA Abolitionist Against the Death Penalty, Steering Committee. After he read my story which became the catalysis for a book I co-authored. (Had Mr. Ramsey been made privy to the latest newly-discovered evidence, further proving INNOCENCE, he would have realized that the injustice in the author’s case is even worst than before.)

In the last six months the rash of exonerations of illegally convicted men in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh brings to the public consciousness the extreme of what some of us face in spite of INNOCENCE.

Life Without Parole is the only type of life sentence in Pennsylvania. For the INNOCENT and the guilty. Most people still think that the convicted will eventually get paroled, however, the only recourse for freedom a person with such a sentence has is to be granted clemency, a form of relief which is called commutation, by the governor. The political terrain is such that this process is so politicized that for an ambitious career politician to grant it, is political suicide. Therefore commutation is granted as often as a unicorn sighting. Pardons are more rare than that.

In this country, much attention is given to the traditional death sentence, and rightfully so, but in the keystone state there is a sentence far more deadlier: DEATH-BY-INCARCERATION! (DBI) which gets zero attention.

DEATH-BY-INCARCERATION is far and away, the number one method of execution in the state of Pennsylvania. As an INNOCENT man when you die in prison that’s as capital as the punishment gets. The literal execution by imprisonment. DBI is lethal injection in slow motion. To make it even crueler, this method of execution is without public witnesses to view the killings, thus having no one to report back to the community and the public at large, the horrors of the torment. Once an outsider, by viewing the horrors, gets past the misinformation that any amount or type of purported amenities could make imprisonment humane, they are then able to feel some, and see even more of the pain and suffering inflicted on me. The multiple nuances and the meticulousness put into it, in order to ensure a complete de-humanization of every aspect of my being. Evil does not begin to describe such a process nor the architects and engineers who created and now sadistically maintain the machinery.

Excruciating pain and unrelenting suffering that amplifies with each passing hour of every single day. It would be far more merciful to kill me, than to subject me to this unspoken death… protracted torture. In most cases when a prisoner is put to death by incarceration there isn’t one line or word mentioned in the media about it. Unlike conventional death sentences that get media coverage and support at the mere mention, not necessarily the merits, of the case.

In Pennsylvania the realization of DBI though novel, is the actual chief method of execution in this so-called Commonwealth. For the INNOCENT, if the actions of the state stops his or her heart from beating, that’s an execution no euphemism can ever remedy. All of these recent vindications have been men. Why aren’t the unjustly convicted women being set free? Or even talked about? What females go through in the courts and prisons is magnified in severity several times over than us men. Part of the proof is that there has yet to be one publicized exoneration of a woman. The undiscussed reality of DBI is that prison is a deliberately designed anti-human, health and life environment that makes an accelerated death inevitable. In its rawest form. The place where no media wants to report that this is from whence guards hone their torturing, dehumanizing, and abusing skills then exported them overseas to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Or outsourced them to various European secret prisons. Separate from that, for the INNOCENT, is the deterioration that comes from knowing that prosecutors broke the law in order to get the conviction and were not held accountable… then or now, thus still in position to do likewise to people coming behind you, like sons and daughters.

From 1983-1996, 126 men and women died in PA state prisons while doing their so-called life sentence (not counting the suicides). In the same time period, not a single person was executed in the conventional method. That’s 126 unconventional executions compared to zero traditional ones. Clearly, in terms of death, it’s not even close as to which one is more likely to happen. However, the zero traditional executions still get all the attention, press, and support. Even worse, from 1997-2003 there were more than 70 additional DBIs and only three conventional. The three conventional asked to be executed and refused to help in their appeals. In a sixteen year period that’s 196 to 3. Three quarters of the DBIs come from Philadelphia: the touted cradle of American justice and democracy. These novel executions dwarf conventional ones like Gulliver did the Lilliputians, except no one is traveling to this land of bizarre – and even worse – the captives are not telling anyone these stories of daily dehumanization and weekly demise.

The word ‘life’ as a sentence of punishment is a euphemism for death, in its truest sense. It is used to soften the reality of killing in a sophisticated form. It is used in the same way a life insurance salesmen does when selling you a policy that is predicated on the death of a loved one, but softens the reality – claiming it is about life – in order to have you easily accept the normally unacceptable.

Unlike conventional death sentences, I don’t have automatic appeals, independent review of the entire record by the state supreme court etc… Those who are INNOCENT and sentenced to DBI are encumbered by intermediary courts; hamstrung by alleged previously litigated issues; treasonous defense lawyers who manufacture procedural default and waiving central issues; judicial economy and many other adverse non-truth seeking court tactics that conventional death cases are not. When you’re a juvenile these injustices are tripled. All of these are clearly gross violations of Equal Protection, Due Process, Right to a Jury of Your Peers, Access to the Courts and other mythical constitutional rights. Juveniles are not allowed to serve on juries, among other things. About two weeks ago the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that conventional death cases can now have hearings for DNA and other evidence – no matter where they are in their past appeals. See House V. Tennessee.

Had I been given a traditional death sentence in this state, the likelihood of death is minuscule at best, and more importantly I’d have full access to the courts, thus the opportunity for evidence to trump immoral – long drawn-out – procedure. In truth, a so-called life sentence in this state, is given to be able to give the convicted person death, without giving him or her all the safeguards that accompany a conventional death sentence. When you count the bodies, scores of us are being put to death from this unorthodox, but actual death sentence.

In spite of having on my side: INNOCENCE, the facts, the truth, the evidence, and growing support, I still will be put to Death-By-Incarceration, if you, dear reader, do not help push my case by the final few steps to freedom’s gate. My case is the thread on the sweater of the district attorney’s office that you were warned not to pull. But pull it, you must, and watch as the corrupt routine practices of the D.A.’s office unravel before your eyes. The sweater is made of a fabric that is woven with racial animus that is blanketed over many other cases and people. PA rules of appeal are not so warped – it’s all or nothing – so this is my last shot. All of my litigating has been to save what’s left of a hue-man, civil and constitutional INNOCENCE that America readily espouses – but so rarely, if at all, acknowledges. In spite of the evidence that my trial prosecutor, Richard Michaelson, covered under mounds of lies, I still managed to unearth it, from years of nonstop fightin’ to keep them from burying me alive. I’m on the cusp of vindication but this will all be for naught, if you do no get involved and help apply the necessary pressure to expose these illegal practices of the D.A.’s office. People pressure will make them uncomfortable and force them to abide by the rule of law, over being ruled by their personal quest for a conviction via routine violations of law: which they are very comfortable with. (1)

INNOCENCE is INNOCENCE; thus Death is Death and once you die there is no redress. The U.S. Supreme Court in a traditional capital case, posited that because “death, in its finality, differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year prison term differs from one of only a year or two.” This thinking is riddled with illogic for several reasons, not the least of which is that, simply put: DEATH-BY-INCARCERATION is final!!

So troubled are the legal waters in Philadelphia (2) when it comes to the disparity in access to the courts – based on an old model of what a death sentence is – that when you contrast the two, purely based on death, you realize that there is no likeness. Swimming in these fetid waters you quickly ingest the reality that a conventional death sentence is the ‘possibility’ of one big shark bite out of you to end it all, while DBI is an actual thousand piranhas taking tiny bites out of your flesh for an elongated period. The Chinese say the death of a thousand cuts is the most agonizing of all. Ironically, the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled, on the same day that they decided the ‘HOUSE’ case, that conventional death sentenced prisoners be allowed to make special federal claims that the chemicals used in lethal injections are too painful – and therefore amount to unconstitutional Cruel & Unusual Punishment. See Hill V. Florida.

Obviously the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have not visited Pennsylvania’s prisons and witnessed the weekly executions of so-called lifers. If the INNOCENT – who have already been killed – could speak from their shallow unmarked graves, “If you are concerned with the state killing someone INNOCENT, start looking where they are being put to death the most, because the pile of dead bodies stacked high, means that the language of yesterday is totally obsolete.” The new reality says that the criterion for a capital case is actual, not potential death. Actual death that is compounded by illegality. Stop this injustice immediately!!!

******* THERE IS NO STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS ON INNOCENCE *******

25 years, 1 month, two weeks, 3 days, 18 hours, 56 minutes and seconds… of unlawful imprisonment. Thursday.

Surely This One Is Innocent,

Muti A. Ajamu-Osagboro

AM-6021

P.O. Box 1000

Houtzdale, PA 16698-1000

USA

(1)Read author’s paper on “PUBLIC TALKIN’ POINTS FOR THE INNOCENT”

(2)Read author’s paper on “INJUSTICE: What’s Wrong With Philadelphia?”

D.R.I.V.E.

DEATH Row INNER-COMMUNALIST VANGUARD ENGAGEMENT