BY EDWIN FRUIT
PITTSBURGH - Two suburban cops will stand trial for a third
time in the death of Jonny Gammage, Jr., a 31-year-old Black
man who was killed following a traffic stop in October 1995.
Two previous prosecutions of Milton Mulholland and Michael
Albert ended in mistrials in October 1996 and December 1997.
A third cop, John Vojtas, was acquitted in November 1996 by an all-white jury selected from Lackawanna County, far away from Pittsburgh. Two other cops involved in Gammage's death were never charged.
Last month's mistrial resulted from the fact that while 11 white jurors voted to acquit Mulholland and Albert, the one Black juror refused to budge from his vote for a conviction. Patrick J. Thomassey, one of Mulholland's attorneys, said that in the upcoming trial, "I would be reluctant to put an African American on the jury because that is the reality of this case."
At a news conference January 8, Pittsburgh NAACP president Tim Stevens reacted to Thomassey, saying, "It's a racist statement." He said "it's an insult" to suggest that a Black juror was incapable of making a decision based on the evidence.
Representatives of the United Concerned Christians at Work and the Campus Coalition for Peace and Justice, which have been organizing protests demanding justice in the Gammage case, also spoke at the news conference. These groups are building a march and rally on January 17 to demand the prosecution of all five cops and to commemorate Martin Luther King Day.
Edwin Fruit is a member of International Association of Machinists Local Lodge 1976.