We wouldn't mind, if celebrity causes were simply vapid or silly. But sometimes, they're down right evil.

Future generations might find it odd that our society repeatedly gave people a stage to talk about important social issues based on nothing more than the fact that they once starred in a movie we liked.

6 Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

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Google the words "free Mumia Abu-Jamal" and you'll find a long list of websites that howl at his incarceration. It's like if Interpol threw Conan O'Brien in jail for making fun of the Pope. The story goes that in 1981, Abu-Jamal was arrested for shooting Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner while he was issuing a traffic citation to Abu-Jamal's brother. He was convicted and sentenced to death. Since that time, everybody from Paul Newman to the European Parliament has lobbied, in one way or another, for his release.



Prince wrote Purple Rain as an extended allegory of Abu-Jamal's story.

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Some who get involved are simply against the death penalty. Others decry the whole thing as institutionalized racism. As Free Mumia supporters like Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin and Nelson Mandela rightly point out, Abu-Jamal was a Black Panther and the American judicial system hasn't exactly been kind to African Americans. Unfortunately, that tends to be the only detail they get right about the case.

For instance, accroding to the "Free Mumia" conspiracy theory, a .44-caliber bullet was removed from Faulkner's body but Abu-Jamal had a .38.



"Mr. Baldwin, please put on a shirt and stop tampering with that evidence."

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However, according to the ballistics expert hired by Mumia's own attorney, the bullet fragments pulled from Faulkner's body were a ballistics match to a gun registered to Abu-Jamal. A gun which, it should be pointed out, was found next to Abu-Jamal at the crime scene along with five empty casings. There's also the matter of the four witnesses who were at the scene of the crime who all implicated Abu-Jamal as firing the fatal shot. There's also the fact that, in almost 30 years, his story has changed numerous times, including the recent claim that it was, get this, a mysterious mafia hit man who killed Faulkner because he was a dirty cop. Faulkner's widow, who was spat on and screamed at during the trial, must especially love that theory.