April 4, 2002: Abu-Ali Insta-Fax Alert
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SEND A FAX TO GOVERNOR SUNDQUIST IN 2 MINUTES!!!

Dear Friends,

The Moratorium Campaign (Sister Helen Prejean) has set up a fax alert for Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman. It is easy to use. Click on the link below and compose a fax by selecting from the pre-composed paragraphs. Once you select your paragraphs you may then edit and customize the fax before you send it. IT COSTS YOU NOTHING!! Please do not send to reporters.

The hard copy fax can be sent to Governor Sundquist, Lt. Governor Wilder, and Attorney General Summers.

Please send this alert to as many people or lists as is possible and within the bounds of e-courtesy. Thank you.

http://capwiz.com/moratorium/issues/alert/?alertid=128105&type=GV

Mr. Abdur'Rahman was sentenced to death for the 1986 Nashville murder of Patrick Daniels, a small-time drug dealer. This case, like too many other death penalty cases, was riddled with problems. There are serious concerns with the quality of legal representation that Mr. Abdur'Rahman received.

There is reasonable doubt that he was actually the one who committed the murder. The jury never heard about the severe physical and emotional abuse he had suffered from the time he was a small child.

In 1998 a U.S. District Judge overturned the death sentence, citing ineffective assistance of counsel. Eight of the nine jurors contacted by the appeal lawyers now say that they might or would not have voted for death if they had heard the evidence in question. In 2000 a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the 1998 ruling and reinstated the death sentence. But one of the three judges issued a strong dissent, citing the “constitutionally inadequate” defense Mr. Abdur’Rahman received at the sentencing phase. And so the state of Tennessee now intends to execute Mr. Abdur'Rahman on April 10, despite such compelling reasons to commute the sentence.

The death penalty system is broken and a moratorium on ALL executions should be instituted while questions about innocence, racial bias, the quality of defense counsel for the poor, and the execution of the mentally ill are reviewed. Please do your part to voice these concerns to Governor Sundquist - you CAN make a difference!

For more information on a death penalty moratorium visit: http://www.moratoriumcampaign.org/