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Petition for Pres. Obama to Save Mumia & End the Death PenaltyEvents of SignificanceJanuary 9, 2010 Rosa Luxemburg Conference, Berlin, Germany - Mumia's lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, spoke to the large standing-room audience about the struggle to save & free his client. He also announced the launching of the online petition, Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Global Abolition of the Death Penalty. February 23, 2010 International Film Festival & Forum on Human Rights, Geneva, Switzerland - Following the showing of the movie "Manners of Dying", Mr. Bryan talked about Mumia & the importance of films in the worldwide fight for human rights & against the death penalty. February 24-26, 2010 World Congress Against the Death Penalty, Geneva, Switzerland - During a panel discussion Mr. Bryan discussed racism in capital cases around the globe including that of Mumia. On the final night of the Congress, Mumia made a surprise call to the capacity audience & spoke as a representative of the over 20,000 men, women & children on death rows around the world. He talked about the horror of awaiting execution. March 2, 2010 European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium - Parliament members Søren Søndergaard (Denmark) & Sabine Lösing (Germany) announced the beginning of a campaign to save Mumia & end executions. They were joined by Sabine Kebir, the noted German author & PEN member, Nicole Bryan, & Mr. Bryan who discussed the online petition (Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Global Abolition of the Death Penalty) & the case update. June 10, 2010 Karibu Education Centre, London - The keynote speaker, Mr. Bryan, discussed new developments in the current litigation in the U.S. Court of Appeals on the issue of the death penalty, racism, & the campaign to end executions (Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Global Abolition of the Death Penalty). Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco, lead counsel - California, New York & Alabama bar
Robert R. Bryan has specialized in death-penalty litigation for three decades & is lead counsel in various murder cases. He is a member of the bar of California, New York, Alabama, United States Supreme Court, & various federal courts. Mr. Bryan is active in the National Lawyers Guild, World Coalition To Abolish the Death Penalty, Paris, an associate member of PEN, the global human rights organization for writers, & formerly served as Chair & a Board member of the Washington-based National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. In 2007 he was honored with the Civil Rights Courage Award. Since 2003, Mr. Bryan has been lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the renowned journalist & author who has been on Pennsylvania’s death row for over a quarter of a century. In 1985, Mr. Abu-Jamal & his family began contacting the attorney who was unable to accept the case at that time due to too many other capital-case commitments. When approached again years later, Mr. Bryan accepted the case because Mr. Abu-Jamal needed expert legal help & had been the victim of poor legal representation, racism, fraud, prosecutorial misconduct, & a legal system that had gone astray. Recently he agreed to investigate the 2007 murder of a French citizen whose tragic death has been neglected by the San Francisco Police. Mr. Bryan has successfully defended numerous people in capital murder cases, with the first being a jury acquittal in the Ammons case, Birmingham, Alabama, when the lawyer was not yet 30. He represented a man who had spent years on California’s death row before being granted a new trial. Even though the evidence included the client's 10 confessions to an execution-style murder, Mr. Bryan proved his innocence before a Monterey County jury resulting in a non-guilty verdict & the client being freed. He represented Larry Layton, the only person ever charged in the Peoples Temple case which concerned the death of Congressman Leo Ryan & over 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana, at the direction of Rev. Jim Jones. Mr. Bryan also defended Buddy Cochran who attacked the leadership of the Klu Klux Klan during their national convention in Plains, Georgia, near the home of then-President Jimmy Carter. The attorney is lead counsel for the only Peruvian on death row in the world, & formerly represented the only Iranian facing execution in the U.S. For 15 years Mr. Bryan represented Anna Hauptmann, who died at the age of 95 in 1994 in Pennsylvania. She was the widow of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German immigrant who was executed in 1936 in New Jersey for the kidnap-murder of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. The attorney uncovered evidence from government files establishing that the authorities knowingly prosecuted an innocent person & that the “Trial of the Century” was the greatest fraud in US legal history. He pursued litigation in New Jersey against the FBI & those who prosecuted the case, in an effort to officially right the wrong. His findings became the subject of The Airman and The Carpenter by L.Kennedy (Viking, Penguin), various other books, documentaries, & a movie. A chapter of Murders Die by D.Brian (St. Martin's Press) is an interview with the attorney on the case & the death penalty. Mr. Bryan wrote a related law review article demonstrating that innocent people are executed in any capital punishment system regardless of efforts to ensure fairness, & a newspaper piece. (R.Bryan, The Execution of the Innocent: The Tragedy of the Hauptmann-Lindbergh and Bigelow Cases, 18 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 831 (1991); R.Bryan, Trial By Fury: The Lindbergh Case, SF Examiner (Apr. 3, 1996).) The attorney is working on a book concerning the case. Mr. Bryan has also been counsel to members of the American Indian Movement. He won a dismissal of federal murder charges again Jimmy Eagle, who was indicted for the June 26, 1975 killing of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota (Leonard Peltier, represented by others, was later convicted in the same case). The lawyer represented federally Gladys Bissonette, who was actively involved in the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. He was also the attorney for the Menominee Warrior Society during its 1975 occupation of the abandoned Alexian Brothers’ Novitiate near Gresham, Wisconsin. He successfully demanded that the enormous mansion be returned to the Native Americans who had lived on the land long before Europeans arrived. Often Mr. Bryan speaks on the death penalty & other human-rights issues both in the U.S. & Europe. In 2010 he spoke at the World Congress Against the Death Penalty, Geneva, Switzerland. Mumia Abu-Jamal, s a representative of the over 20,000 people on death rows around the world, joined him by telephone in addressing the Congress on the concluding night. Also in 2010 Mr. Bryan addressed the annual Rosa-Luxemburg Conference, Berlin, Germany. In 1994 he began doing legal commentaries for ABC News, San Francisco. Mr. Bryan has written articles on a variety of topics relating to the death penalty & human rights, e.g., Taking A Stand, Verdict; What Price Justice?; Waco: Inferno of Rights; Death Penalty Trials: The Innocence of Jerry Bigelow & Defense Creativity; Death Penalty Trials: Lawyers Need Help; The Death Penalty. A chapter entitled "The Defender" in A Punishment In Search of A Crime by I.Gray and M.Stanley (Avon Press) describes Mr. Bryan's work. Some of his cases are featured in Modern Trials by Melvin Belli (West). The lawyer has appeared as an expert witness on attorney competence in capital cases. The activities and memberships of Mr. Bryan have included: PEN, Assoc., NY (2008-present); Chopin Fdn., Board (2004-present); World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Steering Committee, Paris (2006-08);World Affairs Council; elected Fellow, American Board of Criminal Lawyers (1979); Alliance Francaise; Amnesty Int'l; ACLU; Coalition of Concerned Legal Prof., Board (2000); Lycée Français La Pérouse, Board (1997-98); No. Calif. Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Board & Chair (1985-92); NY State Defenders Assn.; NY State Assn. of Crim. Defenders Lawyers; Amer. Indians & the Death Penalty, Adv. Council (1985-92); Int’l Soc'ty for Prof. Hyp., Legal Adv. Board; Int’l Churchill Soc'ty; Glenn Gould Fdn. Mr. Bryan is married to Nicole Bryan, a French citizen who is actively working on behalf of death-row clients with particular emphasis on Mumia Abu-Jamal. They live in San Francisco, but also spend time at the family home in France. Their daughter, Auda Mai, is a classical pianist, a graduate of Rugby School, England, & is now at the University of London’s Royal Holloway College.<!--StartFragment--> |
