The first and only time I heard a heckler at an alt-country concert involved the outspoken singer-songwriter Steve Earle. He was playing the TLA and railing on about the death penalty. An impatient (and likely drunk) fan hollered for Earle to zip it and get back to playing the hits. Earle fired back that it was his damn concert and he could preach as long as he liked.
Eventually, Earle got to "Hard Core Troubador," but no one left that show in the dark about where he stood on the most controversial tenet of the American justice system. (If you still are, listen to "Over Yonder.")
Perhaps the heckler just wanted to hear "Galway Girl." Or maybe he had Mumia fatique?
Mumia Abu-Jamal, the famously dreadlocked death row inmate, remains the human face on the unresolved debate over whether an eye for an eye is justice or more savagery. This week, the conversation heats up again, thanks to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rulling that a new jury should be impaneled to reconsider whether Abu-Jamal, convicted of the 1981 killing of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, receives a death sentence or life in prison.
As my colleague Nathan Gorenstein explains in today's story, it was the second time the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit had ruled for Abu-Jamal on the issue, both times citing confusing language in the 1982 jury instructions. The first decision, in 2008, was overturned by the Supreme Court, which told the Third Circuit Court to reconsider in light of a more recent ruling by the high court.
It did, and it came to the same conclusion.
The Third Circuit ruling left Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams with three options: Drop the protracted legal war and let Abu-Jamal, now 57, serve out a life sentence; impanel a new jury and begin a new death penalty phase; or ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Third Circuit decision, overturn it and uphold Abu-Jamal's original death sentence.
Williams - who's already faced moral quandries of epic proportions - honored a campaign promise and left this delicate decision to the victim's long-suffering widow, Maureen Faulkner.
So, WWMD - What Would Maureen Do?
She chose the death penalty, Gorenstein writes. Faulkner was "devastated" by the appeals court decision and crying while she talked by phone with Williams.
"She believes that the court again is being intellectually dishonest. . . . If the courts don't believe there should be a death penalty, they should just say that," he said.
-- Monica Yant Kinney
(read more at philly.com/blinq)