The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal: An Interview With Author J. Patrick

[XXPANTHAXX]

By Hans Bennett

http://www.abu-jamal-news.com/article.php?name=framing4

On March 27, the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against
granting a new guilt-phase trial to world-famous journalist and death
row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. While ruling against the three issues that
could have led to a new guilt-phase trial, the court affirmed US
District Court Judge Yohn's 2001 decision overturning the death
sentence.

If the District Attorney wants to re-instate the death sentence, the DA
must call for a new penalty-phase jury trial that would be limited to
the question of life in prison without a chance of parole or a
re-instatement of the death sentence.

Outraged by this decision, Abu-Jamal’s supporters around the world held
“day after” protests, and are now organizing a mass demonstration in
Philadelphia on April 19, just days before the PA Presidential Primary
Election. Simultaneously, Abu-Jamal is appealing the court ruling “en
banc” to the entire Third Circuit, and if unsuccessful there, he will
appeal to the US Supreme Court, in an effort to be granted a new
guilt-phase trial.

At this critical juncture in Abu-Jamal’s case, an explosive new book is
set for release in May, titled “The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal,” by J.
Patrick O’Connor, and published by Lawrence Hill Books. O’Connor
explains that he “was an associate editor for TV Guide at its
headquarters in nearby Radnor, Pennsylvania during the time Officer
Faulkner was killed and Abu-Jamal was put on trial and convicted of
murdering him….Sometime in the mid-1990s I began hearing and seeing the
‘Free Mumia’ slogan. In 1996, when HBO premiered the one-hour
documentary ‘Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Case for Reasonable Doubt?’, I developed
some questions about the verdict and certainly the fairness of his
trial.”

Soon, O’Connor had “read all the trial transcripts as well as all of the
transcripts from Abu-Jamal’s Post‑Conviction Relief Act hearings that
were held in 1995, and continued in 1996 and 1997. I also read all the
contemporaneous newspaper articles from The Philadelphia Inquirer and
Philadelphia Daily News, as well as all the books published about the
case.”

In his new book, O’Connor argues that Abu-Jamal was clearly framed by
police, and that the actual shooter was a man named Kenneth Freeman.
O’Connor criticizes the local media, who, he says “bought into the
prosecution’s story line early on and has never been able to see this
case for what it is: a framing of an innocent and peace loving man.”

In his review of the recent book “Murdered by Mumia,” O’Connor writes
that “there’s a great deal to admire about Maureen Faulkner, the widow
of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner,” but concludes that her
“obsessive hate for Abu-Jamal has blinded her to the prosecutorial
misconduct and judicial bias that plagued his trial and justifiably
fueled his rise to a world stage.

The real villains in her life were the police and prosecutors who framed
Abu-Jamal for Officer Faulkner’s killing. They are the ones, not the
long drawn out appellate process that has kept Abu-Jamal alive, who have
denied her the closure she was due more than twenty-five years ago.”

For more background on “The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal” and J. Patrick
O’Connor, Abu-Jamal-News.com is featuring an excerpt from the new book,
a previous interview with the author, and O’Connor’s review of “Murdered
By Mumia.” This new interview was conducted on April 11, 2008, and will
be featured in the “Journalists for Mumia” newspaper, to be released
days before the April 19 demonstration in Philadelphia.

Hans Bennett: Advocates of Abu-Jamal's conviction and execution always
say that a police frame-up of Abu-Jamal is a lunatic, far-fetched
"conspiracy theory" that should be dismissed by any sane observer. What
do you mean when you say he was "framed"? How was this done?

J. Patrick O'Connor: Mumia's early association with the Philadelphia
branch of the Black Panther Party marked him as a subversive to George
Fencl, the chief inspector of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Civil
Defense Bureau. His subsequent sympathetic coverage of MOVE while
reporting for the local public radio station made him an avowed enemy of
Mayor Frank Rizzo.

Minutes after Officer Faulkner was shot at 3:55 a.m., Inspector Alfonzo
Giordano – who reported directly to Fencl– took command of the crime
scene and personally set in motion the framing of Abu-Jamal. It would be
Giordano who claimed that Mumia told him in the paddy wagon that he
dropped his gun after he shot Faulkner; it would be Giordano who
arranged for prostitute Cynthia White and felon Robert Chobert to
identify Abu-Jamal as the shooter. Giordano and White would be the D.A.
Office’s only witnesses at the preliminary hearing to hold Abu-Jamal
over for trial where Giordano repeated this “confession.”

Giordano is as corrupt a police officer as one can imagine. For years he
had been extorting kickbacks – personally averaging $3,000 per month –
from Center City prostitutes, pimps and bar owners, which explains his
early arrival at the crime scene. He knew Cynthia White and her pimp. He
coerced her at the scene to identify Abu-Jamal as the shooter. She would
be the only witness the D.A. had to claim to see Abu-Jamal holding a gun
over Faulkner.

In her original statement to the police – given within an hour of the
shooting – she had Abu-Jamal running from the parking lot and from as
far away as 10-yards firing off “four or five shots” at Faulkner before
the officer fell. In her third interview with police detectives, given
on December 17, she fine-tuned her statement to comport with the actual
evidence in the case that Faulkner was shot at close range.

(In one of the most sinister aspects of Abu-Jamal’s case, the police
department waited until the Monday after Abu-Jamal’s conviction to
“relieve” Giordano of his duties on what would prove to be well-founded
“suspicions of corruption.” Four years after Abu-Jamal’s trial, Giordano
pled guilty to tax evasion in connection with those payouts and was sent
to prison.)

Incredibly, the police arriving at the crime scene would later claim not
to have conducted any tests to determine if Abu-Jamal had recently fired
a gun by checking for powder residue on his hands or clothing, nor did
they claim to even feel or smell his gun to determine if it had been
recently fired. Tests such as these are so routine at murder scenes that
it is almost inconceivable the police did not run them. It is more
likely that they did not like the results of the tests.

From the outset, the investigation into the shooting death of Officer
Faulkner was conducted with one goal in mind: to hang the crime on Mumia
Abu-Jamal. There was no search for the truth, no attempt at providing
the slain officer with the justice he deserved. Giordano handed
Abu-Jamal to the D.A.’s Office with his own lie about Abu-Jamal
confessing to him and packing off Cynthia White in a squad car to tell
her concocted account of the shooting.

When the D.A.’s Office was forced to back away from the corrupt
Giordano, Assistant D.A. Joseph McGill elicited a new “confession” to
replace Giordano’s in February when security guard Priscilla Durham and
Officer Garry Bell, Faulkner’s best friend on the police force,
responded to his promptings by saying they heard Abu-Jamal blurt out at
the hospital, “I shot the mother-fucker and I hope the mother-fucker
dies.”

Not one of the dozens of other officers present at the hospital would
make such a claim. In fact, the two officers who accompanied Abu-Jamal
from the time he was placed in the paddy wagon until he went into
surgery, reported that he made no comments in signed statements given to
detectives assigned to the case that morning.

The prosecution knew that its new “confession” could be skewered if
Abu-Jamal’s defense attorney, Anthony Jackson, called the two officers
who accompanied Abu-Jamal to the stand, so all the prosecution really
had was Cynthia White. With White saying she saw it all from beginning
to end, and willing to testify that she saw Abu-Jamal blow the helpless
Faulkner’s brains out in ruthless cold blood, McGill had his case made,
providing White’s credibility could survive Jackson’s cross-examination.
McGill bet the entire case that it could, and despite the utter web of
lies she told the jury, was right.

Bennett: Why do you think that Kenneth Freeman was the actual shooter of
Police Officer Daniel Faulkner?

O'Connor: Kenneth Freeman was Billy Cook’s street vendor partner and was
riding with him in the VW when Faulkner pulled the VW over. Freeman got
out of the VW and subsequently handed Faulkner a phony driver’s license
application bearing the name of Arnold Howard, which Howard had recently
loaned to him. Howard’s papers were found in Faulkner’s shirt pocket.
Police rounded up both Howard and Freeman in the early morning hours of
December 9 and brought them in for questioning. At the Post-Conviction
Relief Act hearing in 1995, Howard testified that on several occasions,
Cynthia White picked Freeman out of a lineup.

At Billy Cook’s March 29 trial for assaulting Officer Faulkner, with
McGill as the prosecutor, White told McGill in direct testimony that the
passenger in the VW “had got out.” McGill said, “He got of the car”?
White responded, “Yes.” (At Abu-Jamal’s trial, McGill got White to
testify that only Abu-Jamal, Cook, and Faulkner were at the scene.)

Various witnesses said they saw a black man running from the scene right
after the shooting. Some of the eyewitnesses said this man had an Afro
and wore a green army jacket. Freeman did have an Afro and he
perpetually wore a green army jacket. Freeman was tall and burly,
weighing about 225 pounds at the time.

Cab driver Robert Harkins was driving right by the parked police car and
the VW when he saw a police officer grab a man. The man “then spun
around and the officer went to the ground,” falling face down backwards,
landing on his hands and knees. The assailant shot the officer in the
back, causing him to roll over on his back, and then executed him with a
shot to his forehead.

Harkins described the shooter as a little taller and heavier than the
6-foot, 200-pound Faulkner. Robert Chobert told police in his first
statement that the shooter had an Afro and weighed about 225 pounds.
(Abu-Jamal, also about 6-foot, wore in his hair in dreadlocks and
weighed 170 pounds at the time.)

In Billy Cook’s April 29, 2001, affidavit he declared that Freeman was
with him the night of the shooting, was armed, and fled the scene after
Faulkner was shot. Cook said he did not see who shot Faulkner.

Freeman would meet an ignominious death hours after Philadelphia police
firebombed the MOVE house on Osage Avenue in 1985, killing 11 MOVE
members, including John Africa, whose corpse had been beheaded.
Freeman’s dead body was found bound, gagged and naked in a vacant lot.
There would be no police investigation into this obvious murder. The
coroner listed his cause of death as a heart attack. The timing and
modus operandi of the abduction and killing alone suggest an extreme act
of police vengeance.

Bennett: In your book, you were very optimistic about the Third Circuit
granting Abu-Jamal a new guilt-phase trial. Were you surprised by the
March 27 ruling? If so, how do you account for such a surprising ruling?

O'Connor: I was incredulous. I thought the oral arguments on May 17 had
gone extremely well for Abu-Jamal and that he would get a new trial. The
2-1 majority ruling demonstrated anew just how politicized this case
always has been from the beginning and continues to be still. The two
Republican-appointed judges on the panel formed the majority and the
lone Democrat-appointed judge dissented. I hate to make it sound that
simple, but the U.S. Supreme Court itself is not above making decisions
based on party or ideological lines, and all too frequently does.

In its ruling, the majority stated it believed Abu-Jamal had “forfeited
his Batson claim by failing to make a timely objection. But even
assuming Abu-Jamal’s failure to object is not fatal to his claim,
Abu-Jamal has failed to meet his burden in providing a prima facie
case.” The majority stated that he failed because his attorneys at his
PCRA evidentiary hearing neglected to elicit the prosecutor’s reasons
for removing 10 otherwise qualified blacks by means of peremptory
strikes during jury selection.

“Abu-Jamal had the opportunity to develop this evidence at the PCRA
evidentiary hearing, but failed to do so. There may be instances where a
prima facie case can be made without evidence of the strike rate and
exclusion rate. But in this case, we cannot find the Pennsylvania
Supreme Court’s ruling [denying Abu-Jamal’s Batson claim] unreasonable
based on this incomplete record,” the majority wrote. In a nutshell, the
majority denied Abu-Jamal’s Batson claim on a technicality of its own
invention, not on its merits.

Judge Ambro’s dissent was sharp: “…I do not agree with them [the
majority] that Mumia Abu-Jamal fails to meet the low bar for making a
prima facie case under Batson. In holding otherwise, they raise the
standard necessary to make out a prima facie case beyond what Batson
calls for.”

In other words, the majority, in this case alone, has upped the ante
required for making a Batson claim beyond what the United States Supreme
Court stipulated. When ruling in Batson in 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court
imposed no timeliness restrictions as to when a Batson claim may be
raised, nor has the court done so in the intervening 22 years. Neither
did it require that the racial composition of the entire jury pool be
known before a Batson claim could be raised.

(In fact, the Supreme Court recently added heft to its Batson ruling,
ruling in Synder that the purging of only one black juror on the basis
of racial discrimination was grounds for a new trial.)

In addition, the Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that to establish a prima
facie case for a Batson claim, the defendant must show only “an
inference” of prosecutorial discrimination in purging even one black
from a jury. Even the Third Circuit has never previously allowed the
timing of a Batson claim to be material, nor had it ever ruled
previously that not knowing the racial composition of the entire jury
pool was a fatal flaw in lodging a Batson claim.

The fact that the prosecutor in Abu-Jamal’s case used 10 of the 15
peremptory challenges to exclude blacks from the jury – a strike rate of
66 percent against potential black jurors – is in itself an inference of
discrimination. The result was that only three of the 12 jurors
impaneled were black.

The Third Circuit should have remanded the case back to Federal District
Court Judge Yohn – the judge who ruled on Abu-Jamal’s habeas corpus
petition in 2001 – to hold an evidentiary hearing to determine the
prosecutors’ reasons for excluding the 10 potential black jurors he
struck. If that hearing revealed racial discrimination on the part of
the prosecutor during jury selection, Judge Yohn would be compelled to
order a new trial for Abu-Jamal.

Abu-Jamal is left with only two remedies to correct the flawed Third
Circuit ruling. His first option is to request the Third Circuit to
review its decision en banc where the entire panel of judges sitting on
the Third Circuit would conduct oral arguments anew. There is some
likelihood that the Third Circuit might agree to meet en banc because
the panel’s decision to deny Abu-Jamal’s Batson claim went against that
court’s own well-established precedents in granting similar Batson
claims in the past.

However, the barrier to en banc deliberations is a high one: a majority
of the sitting judges must vote to reexamine the case. On the Third
Circuit Court, there are 12 judges eligible to vote, but four have
already recused themselves from this particular case, meaning five of
the remaining eight judges would be needed to go forward en banc.
Abu-Jamal has most probably had his one day before the Third Circuit.

Barring a reversal by the Third Circuit, Abu-Jamal’s final option is to
appeal the Third Circuit’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has
on three previous occasions denied to take up his case. This time,
though, there is a remote possibility that the high court may take the
case up because the Third Circuit’s ruling created new law by placing
new restrictions on a defendant’s ability to file a Batson claim.

Bennett: With the media spotlight on the PA Primary Elections, and the
major demonstrations supporting Abu-Jamal on April 19, what would you
like the world to know about this famous death-row case? How far has the
city of Philadelphia come since the days of Police Commissioner and
Mayor Frank Rizzo, a notorious racist and public advocate of police
brutality?

O'Connor: In a real sense, D.A. Lynn Abraham, just as Frank Rizzo before
her, embodies the worst of Philadelphia. Known as “the Queen of Death”
for her zeal in seeking the death penalty, she was depicted as the
nation’s “deadliest D.A.” in a New York Times Magazine article in 1995.
Her personal vendetta against Abu-Jamal equals that of Officer
Faulkner’s widow. The day Federal District Court Judge Yohn overturned
Abu-Jamal’s death sentence in 2001, Abraham put her antipathy for
Abu-Jamal this way: “Today, Mumia Abu-Jamal is what he has always been:
a convicted, remorseless, cold-blooded killer.”

The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal represents an enormous miscarriage of
justice, representing an extreme example of prosecutorial abuse and
judicial bias. What makes getting to the truth about this case so
difficult for people, particularly people in Philadelphia, is that the
prosecution built its case on perjured testimony with a calculated
disregard for what the actual evidence established. The local media
bought into the prosecution’s story line early on and has never been
able to see this case for what it is: a framing of an innocent and peace
loving man.

Two things account for the unprecedented national and international
interest in this case. First and foremost is the man himself. Despite
more than 25 years of the bleakest existence possible in isolation on
death row, Mumia Abu-Jamal remains what he has always been: an
articulate, compassionate righter of wrongs. The second thing that makes
this case so compelling to such a wide audience is that his trial
represents such a monumental abuse of government power to railroad one
man that it really says no citizen is truly free until this wrong has
been undone.

--Hans Bennett is a Philadelphia journalist and co-founder of
Journalists for Mumia, whose website is Abu-Jamal-News.com.