Who's a Thug?

I've written before that, while I believe Mumia Abu-Jamal is guilty of killing Philadelphia Police Office Daniel Faulkner, his death sentence should be overturned in favor of life in prison. When this finally happened this week, Maureen Faulkner, Officer Faulkner's widow, had this to say about his leaving death row:

"I am heartened that he will be taken from the protective cloister he has been living in all these years and begin living among his own kind — the thugs and common criminals that infest our prisons.”

(Read the AP article here.)

While Faulkner's anger is obviously understandable, her comparing Abu-Jamal to "thugs and common criminals" does not help bring clarity to this contentious case.

All sides agree on a few basic facts of that terrible night in 1981. Abu-Jamal witnessed his brother in an altercation with Faulkner and ran to the scene. In the ensuing mayhem, shots were fired both by Faulkner, hitting Abu-Jamal, and from a gun registered to Abu-Jamal, killing the officer.

Given the context, that would make Abu-Jamal, the convicted cop killer, something other than a common thug. It was not cold-blooded, pre-meditated murder, or an act driven by mindlessness, selfishness or greed. It was not crass barbarism of the variety seen in urban gang violence and atrocities against innocents on the sidelines of drug feuds and sectarian warfare the world over—that is thuggery. Thuggery can be murderous or just stupid and petty, such as the recent case in Philadelphia of a bicycle rider sucker punched on Kelly Drive. It is usually driven more by a type of sociopathy than strong emotion.

Abu-Jamal is not that. He is a convicted murderer who destroyed many lives, but we should not let rhetoric allow us to look at him—or this case—with clouded vision.