2024 marked the 43rd year of Mumia\'s incarceration. He is 70. He has hepatitis C, cirrhosis, congestive heart failure, and a documented history of medical neglect by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. He has been off death row since 2011 when a federal appellate ruling found his death sentence unconstitutional; he is currently serving life without the possibility of parole.
The PCRA litigation in 2024
Mumia\'s post-conviction litigation continued through 2024 in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County. The 2024 phase centered on prosecutorial-misconduct claims arising from a 2018-and-after document discovery — six boxes of previously-undisclosed materials from the Philadelphia District Attorney\'s office that included Brady-material the original prosecution had not turned over. The materials related principally to the credibility of key prosecution witness Robert Chobert, the financial inducements offered to him, and the handling of the ballistics evidence.
Through 2024 his counsel — including a team of attorneys at the Abolitionist Law Center and the National Lawyers Guild — pressed for an evidentiary hearing. The court denied the most recent PCRA petition; appeals from that denial continued through 2024 in the Pennsylvania Superior Court.
The medical campaign
The "Bring Mumia Home" / "Brought to Light" campaign through 2024 emphasized his medical conditions and the case for compassionate release. International figures including Angela Davis, Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Roger Waters, Pink Floyd, and a long roster of African heads of state and former African heads of state continued the call. The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention took up his case in 2024.
Pennsylvania law on compassionate release is narrow and does not in practice extend to defendants serving life-without-parole sentences. Mumia\'s legal team continued to argue that the documented medical neglect and his deteriorating condition constitute Eighth Amendment violations cognizable on federal habeas.
The longer arc
Mumia\'s case is the central political-prisoner case of the contemporary U.S. Black liberation movement. His journalism — both before his arrest and from inside, through his hundreds of essays, his books, his Prison Radio commentaries, and his syndicated columns — has made him among the most heard incarcerated writers in the world. He is widely regarded by the U.S. abolitionist movement, the international human-rights community, and the African diaspora as a political prisoner. He is regarded by Philadelphia police and the Fraternal Order of Police as a cop killer. Neither position has moved in 43 years.
NPPC marks Mumia\'s birthday (April 24) every year and tracks the PCRA litigation as it moves. The 2024 docket is the latest chapter in a case that has now consumed more than half a century of legal effort, movement organizing, and counter-organizing.
