To see the impact of the Effective Death Penalty Act, consider the controversial case of Philadelphia journalist and former Black Panther Party member Mumia Abu-Jamal.

On death row since 1982 for the 1981 shooting death of a Philadelphia policeman, Abu-Jamal has exhausted his appeals in the Pennsylvania court system, and has filed a habeas corpus appeal to the federal court under the restrictive 1996 rules.

Defense lawyers say his trial was marked by many errors and by alleged misconduct by the police and prosecutors. For example, the Philadelphia police lost a portion of the bullet that allegedly killed officer Daniel Faulkner -- an important error since a ballistics expert had determined that the bullet which killed the officer was a different caliber than the gun Abu-Jamal was carrying. And the court declined to give Abu-Jamal a delay during his trial to locate a police officer who was a critical witness.

The officer's initial report said that Abu-Jamal had made no statements en route to the hospital right after the incident, during which he was seriously wounded. Later, the officer swore Abu-Jamal had confessed during the ambulance ride. During the trial, Philadelphia police claimed the officer could not be located. After the trial, it turned out this key witness had been sent conveniently on vacation.

In addition, several key witnesses who initially identified Abu-Jamal as the gunman have since recanted their testimony and told a later fact-finding hearing that they had been pressured into giving false testimony by police. But Albert Sabo, the judge who initially presided over the trial, also presided over the later hearing, and ruled that the new testimony and other new evidence were not credible.

Prior to 1996, a federal judge would have been able to make an independent determination regarding the credibility of all the old and new evidence and the fairness of all the court proceedings in such a case. But now, under the Effective Death Penalty Act, the federal judge reviewing Abu-Jamal's conviction must either accept the state trial judge's determination of the facts, or he must be willing to declare the state judge's decisions to be "unreasonable."

"Under the new act, you don't get a federal court review of the case," says Abu-Jamal's lead attorney Leonard Weinglass, "you only get a review of the state court's decision. The state courts control the appeal because they are given primacy. It kind of bullet-proofs the state court verdict."

Last fall, Pennsylvania's governor signed a death warrant for Abu-Jamal, but the Dec. 2 execution date has been stayed pending the result of his federal court appeal.

-- Dave Lindorff

For more information on the Mumia case, go to www.mumia.org.