abu-jamal and son of sam

Much has been written about Pennsylvania's efforts to execute Mumia Abu-Jamal, the radio journalist and black activist convicted in 1982 of killing Daniel Faulkner, a Philadelphia police officer. Less noticed, meanwhile, is the state's attempt to deal with his book, Live From Death Row, by trying to apply a so-called Son-of-Sam law that First Amendment advocates worry could be lethal to the writing of prisoners.

 When Live From Death Row, a collection of Abu-Jamal's prison commentaries, came out in May, Maureen Faulkner, the dead officer's widow, was outraged. Two months earlier she had called David Goehring, a vice-president at Addison-Wesley, Abu-Jamal's publisher, and begged him not to go ahead with it. When that didn't work she hired a plane to fly over the company's headquarters, trailing a banner that read "Addison-Wesley Supports a Cop Killer." By paying Abu-Jamal a $30,000 advance, she charged, the publisher was allowing him to profit from her husband's death.

The Philadelphia chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police joined her crusade against the book. It was not the first time the Fraternal Order had objected to Abu-Jamal's journalistic activities; last year National Public Radio, after agreeing to air a series of his commentaries about Death Row, dropped the idea in face of the organization's protests. Many of those commentaries appear in Live From Death Row. (Abu-Jamal, president of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists at the time of his arrest, won a Peabody award for his radio reports in 1981.)

In response to pressure from the police group, some state officials hope to use Pennsylvania's Son of Sam law to channel Live From Death Row's profits to Ms. Faulkner, who is expected to sue for Abu-Jamal's advance money -- money that went to his family and to finance his legal case. Thus the fight over the book became the latest chapter in the long-running debate over the profits from convicts' stories.

Son of Sam laws have a troubled history. The New York state legislature passed the nation's first in 1977, in response to rumors that publishers were offering serial killer David Berkowitz (a.k.a. Son of Sam) lucrative book deals. That law decreed that the state would confiscate any income that a person earned from accounts of his or her illegal deeds, and would put it into an escrow account. Victims of the crime could then claim the money by bringing a civil action. Forty-three other states passed similar laws, as did the federal government. In 1991, however, the U.S. Supreme Court found that New York's law violated the First Amendment because it singled out income from speech over other kinds of crime-related earnings, and could be expected to restrict the content of prisoners' works.

 Despite that ruling, enthusiasm for Son of Sam statutes persists, and since the 1991 Supreme Court decision, several states have revised their statutes to avoid constitutional challenge. Pennsylvania is among them. The state's new law, rather than specifically targeting earnings from speech, is aimed at all "profits received from commission of crime." Under the old law, the state confiscated the earnings automatically; now, the convict has to give up the money only if a victim sues for it and wins.

State officials maintain that the law is not intended to censor Abu-Jamal or any other prison writer, that its purpose is merely to ensure that victims are compensated. Many First Amendment lawyers, on the other hand, argue that Son of Sam laws discourage prisoners from writing, by taking away their financial incentive, and deter publishers from seeking out their stories for fear of legal entanglements and, in some states, financial penalties. Such disincentives, they argue, can amount to censorship. Pennsylvania's revised Son of Sam law went into effect last May, the month Abu-Jamal's book came out.

Rachel Wolkenstein, one of Abu-Jamal's lawyers, says the law should not apply to Live from Death Row because "Mumia's writings have nothing to do with the event" -- Daniel Faulkner's shooting. However, state representative William Lloyd, a vocal Son of Sam proponent, points out that Abu-Jamal's celebrity is at least in part due to his conviction, and has helped the book. The decision on whether the law applies rests with Pennsylvania's Crime Victims' Compensation Board, which began weighing the case this spring, even as Abu-Jamal's lawyers scrambled to save him from impending execution. (Abu-Jamal was granted an indefinite stay of execution on August 7, giving his lawyers time to petition for a new trial.) Meanwhile, in June, prison officials invoked a Department of Corrections regulation barring inmates from "engaging in a business or profession"; formally charged with "journalism," Abu-Jamal was, for thirty days, barred from talking to the media, and his phone and visitation privileges were severely restricted.

 Targeting Abu-Jamal's writing does not sit well with his supporters, many of whom claim that his journalism, often critical of the Philadelphia police department's treatment of blacks, won him enemies on the force. His lawyers have charged the police with suppressing evidence that they claim would have helped their client prove his innocence.

As Pennsylvania continues its efforts to execute Abu-Jamal, anger over Live From Death Row shows no signs of cooling and the First Amendment questions it raises are unlikely to be quickly resolved. Fraternal Order of Police spokesperson Ken Rocks promises the group will continue to promote a boycott of Addison-Wesley and will "do whatever it takes." Maureen Faulkner has argued that Abu-Jamal, "by taking another man's life, forfeits the right to freedom of speech." Abu-Jamal is not giving up, either. "When my right to write is denied," he wrote recently, in a memo to supporters, "what of your right to read?"

Correction

In "Abu-Jamal and Son of Sam" from the September/October 1995 issue of CJR we incorrectly attribute a 1981 Peabody Award to Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former radio journalist sentenced to death in 1982 for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Although Abu-Jamal claimed on the cover of his book "Live From Death Row" that he was the recipient of a Peabody Award, the University of Georgia, which runs the Peabody Institute, has no record of Mr. Jamal winning such an award. We regret the error.

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