Fred Hampton Senior was a member of the Illinois Black Panther Party(BPP) and at the age of twenty was shot dead in his bed by Chicago police. Laying next to him on that fateful night was his wife who was pregnant with Fred Hampton Jr who just like his father followed in his dad's political footsteps and dedicated himself towards fighting for human rights. Fred jr was the Chicago president for the Uhuru (Freedom) movement (NPDUM), which still is an African working class led movement fighting for the democratic rights of African people and all indigenous people around the world.

The supposed arson attack on two Korean stores occured in May 1992, even though the Chicago Fire Department weren't called, the business's weren't closed and one store pulled out of the charge at the last minute. Their main evidence for motive was presented to the majority white jury in the form of an article in the Uhuru movements own paper called Burning Spear. The article discussed the amount of Korean shops in the area and how Black people needed to get their own business's up and running for their own community in a predominately black area. When 12 plainclothes police arrested Fred Jr on May 11th 1992 there was no arrest warrant, and according to the NPDUM Fred was not doing anything illegal when they arrested him, a clear breach of his constitutional rights. There was no material evidence produced by the the prosecution, and the decrepencies amount to a farce in what was a three day trial.

.Mr Hampton was allowed no character witness
.The judge refused to allow the name "Fred Hampton" to be used in court.
.When Fred Jr.'s mother took the stand to testify as to where Fred Jr. was at the time of the alleged incident, the main focus of questioning is her political affiliation with militant and radical groups like the BPP and the NPDUM
.There were no voluntary witnesses. Police took two witnesses to the police station and showed them two pages of photos out of an over- 90 page album, the pages with Fred on them. One of these witnesses saw a "large black man" for 5 seconds who was in the doorway of the store; the other witness said he saw Fred leaving the area of the arson, and this person had an altercation with Fred two weeks prior to the incident and vowed to get even with Fred.
.There was no physical evidence connecting Fred to the arson
.The State's own fingerprint expert testified that Fred's fingerprints were not on the bottles thrown into the stores as molotov cocktails.

As a spokesperson for the U.K's Uhuru movement pointed out "The government made two separate attempts to indict Fred Hampton Jr on charges of Murder and Armed Robbery two months before the arson arrest, which has a familiar ring to the treatment of the imprisoned Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is on Death Row for Murder." Mr Hampton Jr was found not guilty on both charges. She went on further to say "Mumia recently announced any campaign to free me should include Mumia."

Though a grant of clemency does not automatically mean release from prison, historically it has worked that way in nearly all cases. It means that the inmate immediately becomes eligible for parole, and it is up to the parole board whether to order release.