No, since courts still left open the possibility of reinstating the death penalty 
 
 No, believe execution still the best outcome 
 
 Was dropping death-penalty bid for Mumia Abu-Jamal the right call by District Attorney Seth Williams? 
 
 DA Seth Williams during a press conference today. Pictured at left are Joseph McGill (the prosecutor who tried the Mumia case) and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey. (SARAH J. GLOVER / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER) 
 
 Saying he wanted to avoid another three decades of appeals - and a new public forum for Mumia Abu-Jamal - Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said today he will not seek a new death penalty hearing for the convicted killer of Officer Daniel Faulkner. 
 
 Flanked by Faulkner's widow, Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, officials of the Fraternal Order of Police and a cadre of prosecutors past and present who were involved with the case, Williams said he believed his office could successfully impanel a new jury and get a new death sentence against Abu-Jamal. 
 
 But the tortuous legal process ahead for a newly-imposed death sentence - and the likelihood that Abu-Jamal, 57, will die in prison before it could be carried out - made that route seem futile. 
 
 "Every reviewing court has found the trial fair and the guilty verdict sound," Williams said at a press conference. ". . . Our best remaining option is to let Mr. Abu-Jamal to die in prison." 
 
 Still, Williams called the decision "not an easy one to make" and it was clear from the news conference that the key human factor was Maureen Faulkner's concurrence. 
 
 Faulkner spoke for about five minutes, an angry, at times emotional tirade against the federal appeals courts and judges who have reviewed Abu-Jamal's multiple appeals. 
 
 She denounced the former Black Panther and radio reporter for "operating a cottage industry in prison. The money has poured into his defense fund and it's a disgrace." 
 
 Judith L. Ritter, the lawyer who has represented Abu-Jamal in his most recent appeals, said she was pleased with Williams' decision. 
 
 "No one benefits from an execution based on a jury's verdict and deemed by the federal appeals court to be unfair," said Ritter, who is also a professor at the Widener University School of Law. 
 
 Ritter, who has worked on the case with the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund in New York, said she still hopes there will be "new developments" that will allow the legal team to revive Abu-Jamal's bid for a new trial. 
 
 From an inmate's standpoint, Williams' decision could bring about a qualitative change in Abu-Jamal's life. As a death-row inmate at the state prison at Greene in Western Pennsylvania, he is in solitary, locked in his cell 23 hours a day. Nicknamed "Pops" by some inmates, Abu-Jamal will now be transferred into the general population live with other inmates. 
 
 Faulkner said she was "heartened by that prospect." 
 
 "Rest assured, I will now fight with every ounce of energy I have to see that Mumia Abu-Jamal receives absolutely no special treatment when he is removed from death row," Faulkner said. "I will not stand by and see him coddled as he had been in the past, and I am heartened by the thought that he will finally be taken from the protected 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." 
 
 Today's announcement came two days before the 30th anniversary of Faulkner's slaying. 
 
 Faulkner, 25, and newly married, was on patrol in Center City the night of Dec. 9, 1981 when, according to trial testimony, the officer pulled over a car driven by Abu-Jamal's brother, William Cook, at 13th and Locust Streets. 
 
 Abu-Jamal, moonlighting as a cabdriver, recognized his brother's car, ran toward them and shot Faulkner, witnesses testified. A gunfight followed and Abu-Jamal was hit by a bullet from Faulkner's gun. He was found slumped on a curb. 
 
 Witnesses said that during the encounter, Abu-Jamal stood over the wounded officer and shot him in the face. Court records say Faulkner was shot between the eyes. 
 
 Neither Abu-Jamal nor his brother has testified about what happened, though in a 2001 affidavit Abu-Jamal denied shooting Faulkner. 
 
 Since then, Abu-Jamal's vocal supporters have grown to include chapters in France and Germany, countered by equally vocal supporters of the slain officer and his widow. 
 
 Those supporters remained undaunted by Williams' decision to let Abu-Jamal serve life. 
 
 "The D.A. may think that the case can be laid to rest by sending Mumia off to life in prison," said a statement by We the People, which supports Abu-Jamal and believes he is innocent. "But an aroused public ... is ready to challenge anew the entire trial." 
 
 The prelude to Williams' announced came in October when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a petition by the District Attorney's office seeking to reinstate the death penalty. 
 
 The high court ruling - summarily rejected by the court without comment - returned the issue to Williams' office: either conduct a new death penalty hearing for Abu-Jamal or allow him to remain serving a life prison term with no chance of parole. 
 
 The prosecutor's unsuccessful appeal to the nation's high court followed a decision in April by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. 
 
 The Third Circuit reaffirmed its earlier ruling that Abu-Jamal's sentencing hearing was unfair. 

 Former Black Panther and convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal will be spared the death penalty, the Philadelphia district attorney announced Wednesday, bringing a quiet end to a racially charged case that spanned 30 years. 
 
 Seth Williams, the city’s top prosecutor, said Abu-Jamal will spend the rest of his life in prison. He said the “decision to end this fight [over a death sentence] was not an easy one to make” and that he remained convinced that Abu-Jamal was guilty as charged and deserved to die for his crimes. 
 
 But he said he also had concluded that prosecutors could not likely win another death sentence for the now 57-year-old convicted murderer in the face of steady opposition from the federal courts. And he said he did not want to put the widow of slain officer Daniel Faulkner through the ordeal of another sentencing hearing. 
 
 “The survivors of Officer Faulkner have suffered enough, and the best remaining option is to allow his murderer to die in prison,” the district attorney said in a statement. 
 
 On Dec. 9, 1981, Faulkner stopped a car driven by William Cook, Abu-Jamal’s young brother. Seated in a taxi nearby, Abu-Jamal saw what happened and ran to the scene. Witnesses said he exchanged gunfire with the officer, who was hit multiple times and died at a hospital. Abu-Jamal was arrested at the scene, and his revolver was found next to him. 
 
 A radio reporter and a black activist, Abu-Jamal had been a fierce critic of the police, and his trial, conviction and death sentence turned his case into an international cause celebre. Supporters asserted he had been framed by the police. 
 
 But over many years and multiple appeals, state and federal courts upheld his guilt for the murder. Federal judges, however, questioned the process that led to his death sentence. Ten years ago, a federal judge said the jury may have been confused over whether it could grant leniency, and the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia affirmed that decision in several rulings. 
 
 In October, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the district attorney’s appeal, leaving Williams the option of convening a new jury to weigh a death sentence or accepting the lesser sentence of life in prison without parole for Abu-Jamal. Williams said he had decided on the latter. 
 
 “While Abu-Jamal will no longer be facing the death penalty, he will remain behind bars for the rest of his life, and that is exactly where he belongs,” he said. 
 
 Maureen Faulkner said she accepted the decision reluctantly. 
 
 “My family and I have endured a three-decade ordeal at the hands of Mumia Abu-Jamal, his attorneys and his supporters,” she said. “After 30 years of waiting, the time remaining before Abu-Jamal stands before his ultimate judge doesn’t quite seem so far off as it once did when I was younger. I look forward to that day.” 
 
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 --David Savage 
 
 Photo: Mumia Abu-Jamal leaves Philadelphia's City Hall after a 1995 hearing. Credit: Chris Gardner / Associated Press
– Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer 30 years ago, is off death row, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. The city's DA announced today that he is dropping his bid to have the death penalty reinstated against Abu-Jamal and will instead settle for having him "die in prison." The death-penalty process would have dragged on too long, said Seth Williams. Abu-Jamal's defenders have long claimed he was framed—he was a vocal critic of police before the altercation in which he was convicted of shooting officer Daniel Faulkner point-blank in the face—though subsequent courts have upheld the verdict. His case had become a lightning rod for opponents of the death penalty over the years, notes the Los Angeles Times. The DA's decision means Abu-Jamal, now 57, will move out of solitary confinement and into the general prison population.