On March 26, 2025, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied Mumia Abu-Jamal’s petition for allowance of appeal in case No. 357 EAL 2024. The brief unsigned order gave no reasons. It left in place the Superior Court’s September 2024 ruling affirming dismissal of his postconviction petition.
The petition concerned prosecution files disclosed long after Abu-Jamal’s 1982 murder trial. His lawyers argued that a witness’s letter about money and the trial prosecutor’s jury-selection notes warranted a new trial. The intermediate appeals court upheld the dismissal without an evidentiary hearing. The state Supreme Court’s order declined discretionary review, leaving Abu-Jamal’s conviction and life sentence in place.
A separate petition against the United States reached the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In 2019 the Commission found claims including alleged fair-trial and due-process violations admissible for consideration. That was a preliminary decision about which claims the Commission could hear.
Read the Pennsylvania Supreme Court order · Read about the 2024 Superior Court ruling · Read the Commission’s admissibility report.
