Petition for President Barack Obama  On January 14, 2010, Mumia's lawyer (Robert R. Bryan) posted online a petition for President Barack Obama regarding Mumia (Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Global Abolition of the Death Penalty). As many people as possible need to sign.  The link to the petition is: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html.  

Our petition effort has resulted in over 16,000 signers in three weeks!  It will eventually be presented to President Barack Obama by a distinguished international delegation.  Those signing include: the first signer, Danielle Mitterrand (former Fist Lady of France); Desmond Tutu, South Africa (Nobel Peace Prize); Günter Grass, Germany (Nobel Prize in Literature); Fatima Bhutto, Pakistan (writer); Noam Chomsky, MIT (philosopher & author); Colin Firth, London (2010 Academy Award nominee for Best Actor); Livia Firth, London (Producer of In Prison My Whole Life, along with Mr. Firth, Executive Producer); Ed Asner (actor); Mike Farrell (actor); Michael Radford (director of the Oscar winning film Il Postino); members of the European Parliament; members of the German Bundestag; European Association of Lawyers for Democracy & World Human Rights; Reporters Without Borders, Paris; Paris officials.
The petition, in 10 languages, states:

WE THE UNDERSIGNED petition you to speak out against the death penalty for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and all the men, women and children facing execution around the world.  This ultimate form of punishment is unacceptable in a civilized society and undermines human dignity.  (U.N. General Assembly, Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty, Resolution 62/149, Dec. 18, 2007; reaffirmed, Resolution 63/168, Dec. 18, 2008.)

Mr. Abu-Jamal, a renowned black journalist and author, has been on Pennsylvania's death row for nearly three decades.  Even though you do not have direct control over his fate as a state death-row inmate, we ask that you as a moral leader on the world stage call for a global moratorium on the death penalty in his and all capital cases.  Mr. Abu-Jamal has become a global symbol, the "Voice of the Voiceless", in the struggle against capital punishment and human-rights abuses.  There are over 20,000 awaiting execution around the globe, with over 3,000 on death rows in the United States.

The 1982 trial of Mr. Abu-Jamal was tainted by racism, and occurred in Philadelphia which has a history of police corruption and discrimination.  Amnesty International, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, "determined that numerous aspects of this case clearly failed to meet international standards safeguarding the fairness of legal proceedings.  [T]he interests of justice would best be served by the granting of a new trial to Mumia Abu-Jamal.  The trial should fully comply with international standards of justice and should not allow for the reimposition of the death penalty."  (A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)

[Note:  This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco.]

Legal status:  The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a long-awaited ruling.  The case has been sent back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia.  The decision I won in 2008 for a new jury trial on the issue of the death penalty was vacated.  Mumia is now much closer to being executed.  (See http://www.MumiaLegalDefense.org.)