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State's Take From Mumia Benefit Concert Given To Relatives Of Slain Cops
As a result of last year's benefit concert for death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal at New Jersey's state-owned Continental Airlines Arena, the state of New Jersey will deduct $80,000 from the arena's state subsidies and give the same amount to a charity for relatives of police officers killed in the line of duty, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. On Monday (1/19), New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman signed a law ordering her attorney general to allocate the money to a group called 200 Clubs, which will distribute the money.
The $80,000 figure reflects the arena's charge for hosting the sold out January 1999 concert, which was organized by members of Rage Against The Machine , and featured Rage, the Beastie Boys and Bad Religion . The bands on the bill donated their proceeds to Abu-Jamal's defense fund.
Last March, after venue officials booked the concert (fearing that refusal to do so could expose the venue to legal action), the New Jersey Senate unanimously voted to donate the state's proceeds from the event to the families of slain officers. The state Assembly approved the measure later in the year.
Abu-Jamal, a journalist and radio personality, was convicted of murder in the 1981 shooting of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and is currently on death row. Abu-Jamal's execution order has been signed by Pennsylvania's governor, but has been delayed on an appeal to a federal court. (Pennsylvania's Supreme Court has already upheld his conviction twice.) His bid to win a new trial--based on arguments that evidence and court procedures in his first trial were suspect--has drawn support from Amnesty International and a number of civil rights groups and celebrities.
The concert sold out despite a highly unusual effort by police and state officials--who claimed that ticket-buyers weren't informed about the nature of the event--to encourage people to request refunds. Though about 2,000 of the 16,000 tickets sold were returned, those tickets were quickly snapped up.
