The Mumia Abu-Jamal Story
Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, and an activist and
journalist, was tried in 1982 for the murder of Daniel Faulkner, a Philadelphia
police officer. He was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death, only for
the death sentence to be eventually declared unconstitutional and vacated. In
December of 2011, the Philadelphia District Attorney made an announcement that
there would be no further attempts to seek the death sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Instead, Abu-Jamal’s sentence would be allowed to revert to a sentence of life
without parole.
THE VACATION OF ABU-JAMAL’S SENTENCE
Abu-Jamal’s case has been the subject of heated debate over
the decades, pitting those who see it as proof of a racially-biased justice
system against those who see it as evidence that justice can prevail. The
December 9th 2011 announcement by the Philadelphia District
Attorney, Seth Williams, was met with celebration by Abu-Jamal’s supporters
worldwide. The nearly three decades that he had spent on death row at the
SCI-Greene maximum security prison were over. He would no longer be confined to
a small, windowless cell, away from other prisoners, nor would the state be
able to continue denying him physical contact with his family and friends.
Abu-Jamal’s flawed sentencing has long been the subject of
controversy. The jury at the 1982 trial sentenced him to death based on
misinformation and confusion over the options available to them. This was
confirmed by a series of federal courts, beginning in 2001. So the December
2011 decision was a victory for Abu-Jamal. However, for many, the celebration
was tinged with disappointment: Abu-Jamal was slated to spend the rest of his
natural life in prison for a crime they believed him to be innocent of. If, as
they asserted, the entire trial, and not just its sentencing phase, had been
flawed, then an innocent man had just given 30 years of his life to death row
with the threat of death hanging over him and would spend the rest of his life incarcerated
in Graterford Prison without the possibility of parole. That was hardly a
victory.
Some may argue that the righting of the wrongs committed
during the sentencing phase of his trial is cause for hope: It points to the
possibility that someday the verdict of his original trial will be overturned
and he will be proven innocent. Mumia Abu-Jamal has already tried to challenge the
verdict of his original trial (citing all the unconstitutional flaws that
characterized this trial and the subsequent appeals) and failed. If anything,
this is an indication that any future attempts on his part are likely to be an
uphill struggle. However, it is possible for Abu-Jamal to get a new trial if
new evidence supporting his claims of innocence comes to light.
THE ACCUSATION
The details surrounding the shooting of Officer Daniel
Faulkner on 9th December 1981 are contested to date. The
prosecution’s version of the fated happenings has it that Faulkner stopped
William Cook, Mumia Abu-Jamal’s brother, for a traffic violation. Cook
responded aggressively, prompting the police officer to try to subdue him. Abu-Jamal,
who was witnessing the events from a parking lot in the vicinity, crossed over
and shot the police officer in his back. Faulkner shot back at him and
succeeded in wounding him. Subsequently, Abu-Jamal is said to have
cold-bloodedly fired four more shots at Faulkner, killing him. According to the
prosecution, Abu-Jamal’s attempts to escape came to nothing as he fell to the
ground, wounded. He was later found there by other police. Abu-Jamal was
transported to the hospital, where, according to two eyewitnesses, he is
supposed to have admitted to killing Faulkner.
During Abu-Jamal’s trial, four witnesses for the prosecution
confirmed the above version of events to various degrees. They included Albert
Magilton, a pedestrian, Michael Scanlan, a motorist, Robert Chobert, a taxi driver,
and Cynthia White, a prostitute. Chobert, the taxi driver, claimed to have seen
the killing from his taxi, which he said was parked immediately behind
Faulkner’s car. He positively identified Abu-Jamal as the shooter, as did
Cynthia White. Scanlan, who said he saw Officer Faulkner being attacked and
then saw a second man run across the street and shoot him, could not positively
identify the killer. Magilton admitted to seeing Abu-Jamal begin crossing the
street, but did not witness the shooting, nor did he see Chobert’s taxi behind
Faulkner’s police car.
Abu-Jamal never testified at his own trial. However, he
maintained his innocence. According to his statement, he ran across the street
after he heard the gunshots and was shot by a police officer upon arriving at
the scene. He denied ever claiming to have shot Faulkner. One witness for the
defense claimed to have seen a man run along the street after Faulkner was
shot. This has contributed to speculation by Abu-Jamal’s proponents that the
killer was not Abu-Jamal or his brother, but another man who left the scene of
the crime.
PROBLEMS AND INCONSISTENCIES
There were holes in the prosecution’s version of events, many
of which have been raised by Abu-Jamal and his defense teams over the years.
More recently, Linn Washington and Dave Lindorff, journalists who have both
written about Abu-Jamal’s case, have taken up the story and subjected it to
further scrutiny.
One of the points that the two journalists have sought to
verify concerns the bullets that Abu-Jamal is said to have fired downward while
aiming at Faulkner. One bullet hit Faulkner between the eyes, but there is no
evidence that other shots were fired in the way that the witnesses claimed. If Abu-Jamal
had actually fired shots into the sidewalk, they would have left clear marks
there and there would also likely have been debris embedded in Faulkner’s clothes
or skin. Two separate tests conducted by the journalists in their respective
attempts to reconstruct the crime confirmed this. There was no evidence of
marks in the concrete sidewalk in the photographs of the crime scene or in the
police investigators’ reports. Nor was there evidence of debris in the
coroner’s report or in the report of the analysis of Faulkner’s police jacket. These
results put to question the prosecution’s physical evidence and the testimony
presented by its eyewitnesses, Cynthia White and Robert Chobert
Another important point involves the police’s apparent
failure to test Abu-Jamal’s hands for gunpowder residue, which would have been
a routine step to take. If they did test him, the results remained unreported.
Interestingly, two other people, previously suspected of involvement in the
crime, had had their hands tested for gun residue by the police.
Linn Washington and Dave Lindorff have also pointed to
Chobert’s and White’s questionable credibility as eyewitnesses. Chobert claims
to have parked his taxi behind the police car seem unlikely as he had a history
of severe traffic violations and was driving on a suspended license at the
time. He also happened to be on probation; thus, it seems inconceivable that he
would take the risk of parking next to a police officer’s car and being caught
violating the terms of his parole. Additionally, Chobert’s view of the events
(as he described them) would have been severely obscured if he had actually
parked his vehicle where he said he did. It is unlikely that he would have been
able to identify the killer easily.
There is also the fact that Magilton, another eyewitness,
saw no taxi parked behind the police officer’s car at the time Chobert claims
to have been there. Official crime scene photos by the police and subsequent
photos by Pedro Polakoff, a press photographer, show no evidence of a taxi
behind Faulkner’s car. This suggests one of two things: either Chobert never
parked his taxi there to begin with, or the police removed it before the crime
scene investigators and photographers arrived. If the latter was the case, then
the police were guilty of tampering with the crime scene.
It is worth noting that Cynthia White never described
Chobert’s taxi as being present in the area when she drew a diagram of the
crime scene and, later, when she described it for a police artist. Just as
interesting is the fact that no witness claimed to have seen White at the
intersection from which she claimed to have witnessed the nearby shooting.
Other inconsistencies have become apparent: For one, White’s description of the
shooting evolved in each subsequent interview with the detectives. At the first
interview, she claimed that Abu-Jamal had fired several shots at Faulkner. Later,
she spoke of two shots being fired. By the time of her trial, the details had
been modified: she only mentioned one shot.
The eyewitness testimony to the effect that Mumia Abu-Jamal
boasted about killing Faulkner while in the hospital ER is also worth
subjecting to further scrutiny. The doctors at the hospital stated that Abu-Jamal
was in no condition to make statements of that nature. More noteworthy is the
fact that Gary Wakshul, the officer who accompanied Abu-Jamal to the hospital,
explicitly indicated in his report that Abu-Jamal made no comment.
WHAT LIES AHEAD?
From the foregoing, it is apparent that Mumia Abu-Jamal’s
case has been characterized by evidentiary issues. It is no wonder that it has
received international attention and taken on symbolic meaning in the eyes of
activists globally. In the past two decades, the rhetoric surrounding the death
penalty has become less strident. A number of people, previously found guilty
of murder, have been proven innocent and released. It is becoming increasingly
apparent to the public that the justice system is not infallible. Evidence can
be unreliable and investigations can be flawed; as a result, innocent men and
women can fall into the cracks of the justice system. If Mumia Abu-Jamal is one
of these people, will he get a chance at a fair trial someday?
RESOURCES
http://www.prisonradio.org/media/audio/Mumia
This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
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