[Ppnews] Cracks in Mumia’s case

[Political Prisoner News]

<http://www.phillytrib.com/tribune/index.php/newsheadlines/8292>http<http://www.phillytrib.com/tribune/index.php/newsheadlines/8292>://www.phillytrib.com/tribune/index.php/newsheadlines/8292


Cracks in Mumia’s case

By Linn Washington Jr.

A clear case of open-and-shut guilt is how 
Philadelphia police and prosecutors describe the 
first-degree murder conviction that sent 
journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal to death row over a quarter century ago.

However, just a quick peek underneath the surface 
of this case reveals a litany of errors and 
wrongdoing by police, prosecutors and judges that 
implode all claims of Abu-Jamal’s absolute guilt.

The case against the world’s most famous 
death-row denizen arguably contains compelling 
aspects of apparent guilt, albeit circumstantial 
and lacking the conclusive forensic evidence 
normally expected in such a high-profile prosecution.

Yes, police did find Abu-Jamal at the crime 
scene, critically wounded by a bullet fired from the slain policeman’s gun.

Yes, eyewitnesses testified that Abu-Jamal shot Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Yes, two policemen claimed hearing Abu-Jamal confess to the crime.

And, yes, courts from Philadelphia’s Common Pleas 
up to the U.S. Supreme Court have upheld Abu-Jamal’s conviction.

Yet, arguably compelling aspects cannot quell 
serious questions arising from the mound of 
documented misconduct by authorities in 
Abu-Jamal’s case that make a mockery of America’s 
constitutionally enshrined rights to a fair trial.

While fair trial rights require an impartial 
judge, the judge presiding at Abu-Jamal’s 1982 
trial declared on the eve of that proceeding that 
he would help prosecutors “fry the n----r” — a 
declaration graphically displaying unfair bias.

Five of the seven Pennsylvania Supreme Court 
justices who unanimously upheld Abu-Jamal’s 
conviction in 1998 received critical political 
and other assistance from Philadelphia’s police 
union — the main group pushing for Abu-Jamal’s execution.

That entanglement undermined the appearance of 
impartiality required of jurists by Pennsylvania’s Code of Judicial Conduct.

One of those five justices in 1998 — Ronald D. 
Castille, a former district attorney of 
Philadelphia who fought to execute Abu-Jamal — 
rejected recusal requests that cited code 
provisions barring participation of a judge who 
had “served as a lawyer in the matter in controversy 
”

The “overt hostility of the trial judge and the 
appearance of judicial bias during appellate 
review” render Abu-Jamal’s “verdict and sentence 
fundamentally unsound,” Amnesty International 
noted in its seminal February 2000 study of this 
contentious case that recommended a new trial for Abu-Jamal.



Facts Don’t Fit

Consider the fact that the two policemen who 
claimed hearing Abu-Jamal confess hours after 
Faulkner’s fatal shooting waited several weeks to 
report this key evidence to detectives.

One of those two policemen claiming to hear 
Abu-Jamal’s confession had even filed an official 
report hours after the fatal shooting saying Abu-Jamal made “no comments.”

Exactly 64 days after that officer filed his 
no-comment report, he told detectives his delay 
in revealing the confession resulted from him not 
realizing the confession “had any importance until today.”

Evidence of perceived injustice underlying 
Abu-Jamal’s conviction literally hides in plain sight.

One glaring example is photos of the Dec. 9, 
1981, crime scene taken by police investigators 
that don’t show two central elements of the 
prosecution’s case against Abu-Jamal.

A main pillar of the prosecution’s case against 
Abu-Jamal was eyewitness testimony from a cab driver named Robert Chobert.

Prosecutors proclaimed Chobert sat in his cab 
when watching Abu-Jamal murder the police 
officer. But police crime scene photographs don’t 
show Chobert’s cab behind Officer Faulkner’s 
patrol car where prosecutors say it was parked.

The trailer for a forthcoming film about 
Faulkner’s slaying features four police photos 
showing different angles of the crime scene. 
Chobert’s cab is not shown in any of those photographs.

There are only two possible scenarios for the 
missing cab in those official crime scene photos: 
either police tampered with the crime scene by 
removing the cab or the cab was never there. 
Either scenario is a major legal violation that should warrant a new trial.

Also missing from official police crime scene 
photographs are bullet marks in the sidewalk 
around the fallen body of Faulkner fired from Abu-Jamal’s gun.

Prosecutors claimed Abu-Jamal executed Faulkner 
by firing four times at the fallen officer’s body 
at point blank range, hitting Faulkner once in 
the face and missing three times.

Yet, a sophisticated computer examination of 
crime scene photos conducted a few years ago by a 
NASA scientist who analyzes deep space 
photographs revealed no bullet marks in that 
section of sidewalk that should be clearly 
visible if Abu-Jamal acted as prosecutors claim.

It is impossible ballistically for three 
specialized high-velocity bullets to strike a 
sidewalk at point blank range without leaving any marks.

The prosecution’s other prime eyewitness was 
Cynthia White, a prostitute with a long arrest 
record and pending criminal charges at the time of Abu-Jamal’s June 1982 trial.

During Abu-Jamal’s trial, the prosecutor told the 
jury that White hadn’t received any offer of 
leniency or other considerations in exchange for her testimony.

Yet immediately after Abu-Jamal’s conviction, 
Philly prosecutors dropped those charges pending against white.



Examples of Injustice

Remember that Philadelphia police and prosecutors 
applied that “open-and-shut guilt” assertion to 
four other men arrested for three separate 
murders in 1981 — the year of Abu-Jamal’s arrest.

One of those four men spent 1,375-days on 
Pennsylvania’s death row before evidence 
documented that police detectives framed him. Two 
of those four men spent 20 years in prison before 
evidence revealed they were innocent. The fourth 
man — accused of a killing a cop — won an 
acquittal from a jury in 1982 when the only 
witness against him crumbled in court.

Seventeen of the policemen involved in the arrest 
or investigation of Abu-Jamal “were disciplined, 
indicted for crimes, found guilty of committing 
acts of corruption or brutality or resigned from 
the department under a cloud of suspicion,” 
stated investigative reporter Dave Lindorff in 
his 2003 book on the Abu-Jamal case. Lindorff’s 
book “Killing Time” is the first non-partisan 
book published on this miscarriage of justice.

What, many in Philadelphia’s Black community 
would ask, is the likelihood of corrupt cops not 
cutting corners to secure the conviction of a 
person accused of killing a fellow policeman?

The same Philadelphia and Pennsylvania courts 
that found major flaws in 86 Philadelphia death 
penalty convictions between Abu-Jamal’s December 
1981 arrest and last October declare that not a 
single error exists anywhere in the Abu-Jamal 
case — the murder conviction sparking the most controversy worldwide.

Pennsylvania courts, for example, find no fault 
in prosecutors improperly excluding Blacks from 
Abu-Jamal’s trial jury, or allegations of 
manipulating evidence and making secret deals 
with alleged eyewitnesses — all fundamental fair 
trial violations producing favorable actions by 
those courts for defendants in numerous other cases.

Additional evidence of judicial impropriety 
against Abu-Jamal is evident in Pennsylvania 
State and federal courts voiding 22 death 
sentences because of failures by defense lawyers 
to present any mitigating evidence for their 
clients during the death penalty phase hearing 
following guilty verdicts in capital cases.

Voiding convictions for this reason is called 
procedural fairness where courts accept the 
guilty verdict but seek to ensure that all procedures are properly followed.

Suspiciously, despite voiding those 22 death 
sentences, state and federal courts found no 
fault in the failure of Abu-Jamal’s trial lawyer 
to present any mitigating evidence during the penalty phase hearing.

The judge for Abu-Jamal’s trial, the infamous 
Albert Sabo, holds the national record for 
presiding over the most death penalty trials.

While courts have overturned two-thirds of those 
capital convictions in Sabo’s court, including 
citing mistakes or misconduct by Sabo himself, 
Pennsylvania state courts claim Sabo made no errors in Abu-Jamal’s case.

Federal courts have voided Abu-Jamal’s death 
sentence citing errors by Sabo when providing 
death penalty phase instructions to the jury.

However, Abu-Jamal remains on death row because 
Philadelphia prosecutors are seeking to reinstate 
his death sentence. Because of harsh death row 
isolation restrictions, Abu-Jamal has not hugged 
his wife and children for over 20 years.



Injudicious Judges

Courts — state and federal — have repeatedly 
altered and/or abrogated established law to block 
Abu-Jamal receiving fair trial relief granted to 
other defendants raising the same legal challenges.

Precedent, or following established law, is 
supposedly the foundation of U.S. jurisprudence. 
Another foundation of U.S. law is requiring a 
fair trial to establish guilt or innocence.

A prime example of the 
alter-the-law-to-undermine-Abu-Jamal dynamic is 
the 2008 ruling by a federal 3rd Circuit Appeals 
Court panel that created a new legal standard for 
persons challenging racist jury selection practices by prosecutors.

The prosecutor during Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial used 
10 of 15 preemptory challenges to purge potential 
Black jurors — more than twice the exclusion rate 
expected statistically with race-neutral procedures.

That newly created legal standard advanced by two 
3rd Circuit judges to reject voluminous evidence 
documenting racist jury selection practices by 
Abu-Jamal’s trial prosecutor erected procedures 
far in excess of those then required by existing 
3rd Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

The third member of that three-judge 3rd Circuit 
panel issued a stinging 41-page dissent that 
repeatedly criticized his panel colleagues for 
radically changing jury discrimination standards 
applied by their circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Incredibly, the ruling by that panel’s two-judge 
majority — later backed by the full 3rd Circuit — 
faults Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial attorney for not 
strictly following procedures the U.S. Supreme 
Court didn’t adopt until 1986 
 four years after Abu-Jamal’s trial.

Curiously, just days before that March 2008 3rd 
Circuit ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a 
Louisiana death row inmate a new hearing after 
finding race tainted jury selection practices during that inmate’s trial.

That U.S. Supreme Court ruling employed 
preemptory challenge standards less stringent 
than those the 3rd Circuit created in its Abu-Jamal ruling.

The author of that 2008 Supreme Court ruling, 
Justice Samuel Alito, formerly served on the 3rd 
Circuit where he participated in rulings granting 
relief to inmates victimized by prosecutorial 
jury selection improprieties less onerous than those in the Abu-Jamal case.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Abu-Jamal’s appeal of the 3rd Circuit ruling.

American law is an “instrument of the powerful,” 
Abu-Jamal stated in his latest book released 
earlier this year, his sixth book written from 
death row. “For the weak, the powerless, the 
oppressed, the law is more often a hindrance than a help.”

Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and supporter 
of Philadelphia’s MOVE organization, is a harsh 
critic of America’s racially inequitable society, 
a posture enraging many powerful people.



Fundamental Issue

In 1959, when Abu-Jamal was 4-years-old, the 
Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a ruling that 
goes to the heart of the most important yet 
frequently downplayed aspect of Abu-Jamal’s conviction — a fair trial.

Pennsylvania’s highest court proclaimed that 
defendants are entitled “to all the safeguards of 
a fair trial 
 even if the evidence of guilt piles as high as Mt. Everest.”

Defendants retain fair trial safeguards 
irrespective of whether judges or prosecutors are 
convinced of the defendant’s guilt before trial.

That 1959 ruling prohibiting judges and 
prosecutors from failing to follow fair trial 
procedures came in a Philadelphia murder case 
where the defendant pleaded guilty.

Abu-Jamal has always maintained his innocence.

Evidence shows that politics and prejudice drives 
the determination to punish Abu-Jamal, not irrefutable proof of his guilt.

Because of that, Abu-Jamal deserves a new trial — a trial that is fair.

--Linn Washington Jr. is columnist for The 
Philadelphia Tribune and a professor of 
journalism at Temple University. He has been 
covering the Abu-Jamal case since 1981. This 
article first appeared in the Philadelphia Tribue on December 5, 2009:

<http://www.phillytrib.com/tribune/index.php/newsheadlines/8292>http://www.phillytrib.com/tribune/index.php/newsheadlines/8292



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