Wrong Guy, Good Cause

What a shame for death-penalty foes. Philadelphia could have been their moment, and the recent videotaped beating of a carjack suspect by city police and the shooting of an unarmed homeless man by Amtrak cops at the local train station didn't hurt their cause. The size of the American prison population is an embarrassment, the number of government executions is scandalous, and the ethnic disparity on death row is shameful. But in Mumia Abu-Jamal, they picked the wrong guy to carry the flag, and Bush will get off all the easier for it.

For Maureen Faulkner, it doesn't stop with Philadelphia. She got a pilot's license many years ago, and when she hears of a rally to spring Abu-Jamal from prison, or a college commencement speech he will deliver from death row, she grabs a picture of Danny and flies off to tell the other side of the story. Sometimes they listen. Sometimes they curse her or even her dead husband. "I have to keep doing it," she says. "I can't imagine ever stopping."