Note: There is a hearing this week
in Pennsylvania to decide whether Mumia will
receive a new trial. (This commentary was
originally published in Black Commentator 15
years ago on October 18, 2007)
A group
of journalists is determined to seek a
fair retrial of death row prisoner, noted
journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, and
they point to evidence they say provides
further proof of his innocence: photos
from the crime scene that the jury never
had the chance to see.
The group, Journalists for Mumia,
was founded by Hans Bennett, a Philadelphia
journalist, and Dr. Michael Schiffmann,
German linguist at the University of
Heidelberg, to challenge what they
characterize as “the long history of media
bias against Abu-Jamal’s case for a new
trial.”
Abu-Jamal, formerly known as Wesley
Cook, was arrested and convicted of the 1981
murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel
Faulkner. He has been on Pennsylvania’s
death row since then, although a federal
judge affirmed his conviction but vacated
his death sentence in 2001. A three-judge,
federal appeals court panel is reconsidering
the case for his retrial, and heard oral
arguments on May 17, 2007.
Faulkner was killed on the corner
of Locust and 13th Streets in Philadelphia,
on the morning of December 9, 1981.
Abu-Jamal and his brother, Billy Cook, were
found lying on the sidewalk when police
arrived at the scene to find Faulkner dead.
In addition, Abu-Jamal, who also had been
shot, was beaten by police when they came to
the scene. And he was arraigned at his
hospital bed while recovering from
life-threatening injuries.
This case has been one of the most
contentious, most widely observed and most
thoroughly critiqued cases of our times, as
it has put a spotlight on the contagion of
police brutality, racism and corruption in
the criminal justice system, and the
capricious application of the death penalty.
Amnesty International has called for a new
trial for Abu-Jamal. “It’s shocking that the
US justice system has repeatedly failed to
address the appalling violation of Mumia
Abu-Jamal’s fundamental fair trial rights,”
said Amnesty International UK Directo,r Kate
Allen.
Through prodigious research,
Schiffmann has located a number of photos
taken by press photographer Pedro Polakoff.
Polakoff, who arrived on the scene 12
minutes after Faulkner’s killing, produced
at least 26 photos before the arrival of the
Philadelphia Police Department’s Mobile
Crime Unit. Some of the photos are
highlighted in Schiffmann’s new book, Race
Against Death. Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Black
Revolutionary in White America. The book —
an expansion of Schiffmann’s doctoral
dissertation — was recently released in
Germany, and has yet to be published in the
United States.
Polakoff told Schiffmann that the
crime scene was poorly managed and
unsecured, “the most messed up crime scene I
have ever seen.” Polakoff attempted to hand
his photos to the D.A.’s office on two
occasions — before the trial in 1982 and in
1995 during Mumia’s post-conviction relief
hearing — but to no avail. Apparently, they
weren’t interested in what he had to show
them. (And Schiffmann and Bennett say that
Polakoff, who until very recently assumed
Mumia was guilty, and that Mumia was the
passenger in his brother’s car, had no
interest in contacting Mumia’s lawyers
regarding the photos.)
Perhaps this was because his photos
presented some damning truths. In his book,
Schiffmann makes a number of important
arguments:
-
The police manipulated the
evidence that was provided to the trial
court. For example, Polakoff’s photo
shows Faulkner’s cap resting on the roof
of Billy Cook’s Volkswagen. Yet, in a
police photo taken 10 minutes later, the
cap is on the sidewalk in front of 1234
Locust.
-
Police officer, James Forbes,
testified at trial that he had secured
Faulkner’s and Abu-Jamal’s weapons, and
did not touch the metal parts in order
to preserve the fingerprints. Yet,
Polakoff’s photos show that Forbes had
touched the metal parts of the weapons,
destroying valuable evidence in the
process.
-
One of the prosecution’s key
witnesses, a cab driver names Robert
Chobert, claimed he was sitting in his
cab behind Faulkner’s police car during
the shooting. Yet, there is no taxicab
in Polakoff’s crime scene photos.
-
The prosecution asserted that
Mumia killed Faulkner by standing over
the already wounded officer and
unloading several shots from a .38
revolver. However, the Polakoff photos
show a clean trickle of blood on the
pavement, not the splatter of blood or
cement damage that one would expect from
the firing of such a weapon.
Journalists for Mumia are providing
a valuable public service in the honored
tradition of the First Amendment. Linn
Washington, Jr., veteran journalist who
worked for the Philadelphia Tribune at the
time of Mumia’s arrest, was on the case at a
time when most of the Philadelphia press
corps were asleep on the issues of race and
criminal justice. Washington recently
reflected on the role of the press in the
U.S. Constitution: “One of the reasons why
we have this First Amendment is [the
framers] said, they knew that power corrupts
absolutely. So they had this check and
balance, you know, where the executive had a
check on the legislative, and the
legislative and a check on the courts, and
the courts had a check on both of them. But
who is going to check the checkers? Well
that was supposed to be the press. So, the
press had a watchdog role to look at what
government is doing, and more specifically,
look at what the government is doing wrong
to who? We the people.”
And the Philadelphia of 1981, on
the heels of the brutal reign of
police-chief-turned-mayor Frank Rizzo, was a
time of rampant official corruption and
misconduct, racism, and police brutality.
Washington noted that during the year of
Mumia’s arrest, five men were framed by the
Philadelphia police for murder and
exonerated years later. Two of the innocent
men spent as much as 20 years in prison
before their release, and one man spent
1,375 days on death row before he became a
free man. This legacy of police corruption
haunts the city to this day, at a time when
better police-community relations are needed
to stem a tide of gun homicides.
There is much in Mumia’s case that
is troubling, and points to a dysfunctional
system in dire need of repair.
-
In a sworn statement, a court
stenographer said she overheard the
trial judge, Albert Sabo, saying he
would help the prosecution “fry the
nigger.”
-
Five of the seven members of
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which
denied his appeal, received campaign
contributions from the Fraternal Order
of Police, the primary group that has
advocated for the execution of Mumia,
who they regard as an unrepentant cop
killer.
All of this is about Mumia, yet far
more than just Mumia, for Mumia’s case marks
a part of the continuum that represents the
tortured, tragically consistent narrative of
people of color in America’s justice system.
Decades before Abu-Jamal, there were the
Scottsboro boys. In 1931, nine black
teenagers in Scottsboro, Alabama — ranging
in age from thirteen to nineteen — were
accused of raping two white women. Tried
without adequate representation, they were
sentenced to death by all-white juries,
despite a lack of evidence. And one of the
women later recanted.
In more recent years, there were
the Central Park Five, the five Black and
Latino men convicted of raping and beating a
female jogger in Central Park, N.Y., in
1989, and later found to be railroaded.
Donald Trump had spent $85,000 on full-page
newspaper ads calling for the death penalty
for the five youths, who were characterized
as a wolf pack. And of course, today we have
the Jena Six, arrested and prosecuted in a
Louisiana town for fighting against nooses
dangling under their high school’s “White
tree,” while the White students who planted
the nooses and committed other acts of
violence were given a pass.
We will never know how many
innocent people in this country — those who
could not afford to buy justice — were sent
to their deaths or forced to languish in
prison for the rest of their lives, all on a
lack of evidence or doctored and cooked-up
evidence, served up by police officers who
wanted to make a name for themselves, and
prosecutors who aspired to higher office on
a tough-on-crime stance.
Society cannot help those who were
victimized by kangaroo justice, but no
longer live among us and are now but a
fleeting memory. But we can still help Mumia
Abu-Jamal, and in doing so we begin to
repair this system of “justice” and save
ourselves in the process.
