The Politics of Death: Throwing Mumia Abu-Jamal Under the Bus

"I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."
--Frederick Douglass

On the evening of March 4, participants at the Fourth World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Geneva, Switzerland had assembled from all over the globe for a dramatic Voices of Victims evening. It got more dramatic than they had anticipated though, when suddenly a cell phone rang and Robert R. Bryan, lead defense attorney for Mumia Abu-Jamal, jumped up on the stage to announce that his client had called him from death row in Pennsylvania.

The audience sat in rapt silence as the emcee held the phone up to the microphone. Abu-Jamal, on death row for 28 years after a widely disputed conviction for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, greeted the delegates and then, as he has done on many occasions before, described to them the horrors of life in prison for the 20,000 people around the world who are awaiting execution.

A small group of American death penalty abolitionist leaders, led by Renny Cushing, executive director of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, stalked out of the hall. Two members of MVFHR, however, remained in the hall: Bill Babbitt, whose brother Manny, a Vietnam vet suffering acute post-traumatic stress disorder, was executed in California; and Bill Pelke, whose grandmother was murdered by a girl whom he later befriended and helped to spare from execution. Babbitt even joined Bryan onstage during Abu-Jamal's brief address.

What neither Babbitt nor Pelke, nor Abu-Jamal and his attorney, Bryan, knew at the time was that way back in December, leaders and individual board members of several of the organizations in the US abolitionist movement had signed--without their full boards’ or their memberships’ knowledge--a “confidential” memorandum, which they then sent to the French organizers of the World Congress, stating bluntly that, “As international representatives of the US abolition movement, we cannot agree to the involvement of Abu-Jamal or his lawyers in the World Congress beyond attendance.”

Purporting to be from “the US members of the Steering Committee” of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (though hardly an inclusive list of that committee’s membership) and titled, “Involvement of Mumia Abu-Jamal endangers the US coalition for abolition of the death penalty,” the memo claimed that the French organizers of the World Congress, Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM), had arranged to have Abu-Jamal speak “over objection.” The memo further further asserted that the abolitionist movement in the US is trying to “cultivate” the support of the ultra-conservative and staunchly pro-death penalty Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), an organization representing some 35,000 police officers in the US that advocates the execution of Abu-Jamal and all other prisoners convicted of killing of police officers. The FOP, said the memo, has “announced a boycott of organizations and individuals who support Abu-Jamal,” and therefore anything done by the Congress to aid his cause would be “dangerously counter-productive to the abolition movement in the US.”

ThisCantBeHappening! this past week obtained a copy of that secret memorandum.

When we showed it to some other members of the boards of the organizations whose officers or individual board members had signed their names to it, responses ranged from consternation to outrage. Babbitt’s brother Manny was killed as a direct result of a corrupt law enforcement system in California that pressed for execution, even though it was clear from medical testimony that the elderly grandmother he allegedly killed actually died of shock when she discovered him breaking and entering her apartment. Left in the dark about the memo despite his being on the MVFHR board, Babbitt said, “My brother Manny’s last words to me were to always take the high road, and to me that means telling the truth and being open and transparent.” He added, regarding the content of the memo, “I think throwing Mumia under the bus is not the way to go in the abolitionist movement. You don’t make bargains with a wolf whose motive is to devour.”

Robert Meeropol, a son of Ethyl and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed as spies in 1953, is also a member of the MVFHR board. Currently traveling on behalf of the organization in Asia, he said through a staffer in the US that he did not know about the memo, and added that he still stands “fully in support of a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal.”

Several calls seeking a comment from Cushing or Lowenstein remain unanswered, though a staffer at the MVFHR Boston office, Susanna Sheffer, said, “This is a complicated thing. You need to understand the depth and texture of this.”

Also surprised at the memo was actor Michael Farrell, president of the California abolitionist group Death Penalty Focus. Farrell, a long-time supporter of the call for a new trial for Abu-Jamal, said he had never seen the memo, though it was signed by a member of the DPF board, attorney Elizabeth Zitrin.

Other signers of the memo were Thomas H. “Speedy” Rice of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, Kritsin Houlé of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and Juan Matos de Juan of the Puerto Rican Bar Assn.

Bryan, a veteran death penalty defense lawyer who served 10 years on the board of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty--three of them as the organization’s chair--says, “In all my years as an activist opposing the death penalty, I have never heard of any individual or group in that fight singling out anyone as an exception to our campaign to abolish capital punishment. Everyone is treated equally. To single someone out and say they don’t count is chilling. Where do you draw the line? At people accused of killing cops? At people accused of killing old ladies? People accused of killing children? Where does it stop? It’s appalling!”

Heidi Beghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, an organization that has long been in the forefront of the campaign to end the death penalty in the US, and which was not advised of the plan to circulate the memo on behalf of the US Steering Committee to the World Coalition, despite the NLG's being a member of the WCADP, roundly condemned the secret effort to silence Abu-Jamal at the March event.

“Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case is emblematic of the inherent flaws in the capital punishment system,” she said. “That he is castigated by leaders in the abolitionist movement shows precisely what is wrong with the system—it is a system enslaved to the whims and personal biases of police, prosecutor, judge, and jury. While cultivating certain voices of law enforcement may assist in efforts to achieve abolition, it should not be at the expense of exposing a case that embodies some of the most reprehensible actions on the part of the police, the district attorney and the judiciary. The powerful FOP, and their heavy-handed efforts to vilify Abu-Jamal and his supporters, should not be the barometer by which abolitionist leaders gauge their strategic priorities. Members of the abolitionist movement should be working together and not further censoring and ostracizing a death row inmate.”

What makes the American abolitionists’ petulant and manipulative behavior as expressed in the secret memo and their cynical threat to withdraw from the Congress particularly outrageous is that Abu-Jamal’s arrest, trial and appeals process has been, as Beghosian notes, a textbook case of police and prosecutor corruption, malfeasance and abuse. From the beginning, even before his arrest, Abu-Jamal’s case was poisoned by a police lust for vengeance. Although he had been shot through the lung and liver by a bullet fired from Officer Faulkner’s service revolver, and was in danger of dying of internal bleeding that was filling his lungs with blood, Abu-Jamal was left lying in a police wagon for almost half an hour before he was finally delivered to a hospital emergency room, where hospital staff and at least one police officer on the scene observed him being kicked and punched by the officers delivering him.

During the jury selection process at the beginning of his trial, the presiding judge, Albert Sabo, who as a county sheriff’s deputy was an FOP member before he was made a judge, was overheard by a second judge and his court stenographer saying to his own court clerk, as he exited the courtroom through the jurdge’s robing room, “Yeah and I’m gonna help them fry that nigger!”

During the tortuous appeals process, both the state and federal courts have shamelessly bent their rules and violated precedents to deny Abu-Jamal the benefits of precedents that have been routinely accorded other appellants. Third Circuit Appeals Court Judge Thomas Ambro filed a stinging dissent to a decision by his two colleagues, who effectively created new law from the bench in rejecting Abu-Jamal’s well-founded Batson claim of racial bias by the prosecution during jury selection at his trail. Scarcely concealing his outrage, Judge Ambro wrote: "Our Court has previously reached the merits of Batson claims on habeas review in cases where the petitioner did not make a timely objection during jury selection--signaling that our Circuit does not have a federal contemporaneous objection rule--and I see no reason why we should not afford Abu-Jamal the courtesy of our precedents." He added, "Why we pick this case to depart from that reasoning I do not know."

Abu-Jamal himself, interviewed by phone last Friday from his cell at the super-max death row facility SCI-Greene in western Pennsylvania, blasted the attempt to silence him at the Congress, and to ostracize him from the American abolitionist movement. “They are really making deals with the devil,” he said, of claims that the US abolitionist movement was trying to gain the support of the FOP. “My instinct, being from Philadelphia, is that money was passed, though I have no evidence to prove it.” He added, “This secret action is a threat to the entire abolitionist movement. They are saying that because the opposition (to abolition) is so strong, we should not fight. If you have that attitude, why have an abolitionist movement at all?”

Abu-Jamal, whose death penalty was lifted by a federal judge in 2001, only to have the US Supreme Court remand that decision back to the Third Circuit, where it could be reimposed, and who continues, in no small part thanks to pressure from the Pennsylvania FOP, to be held in solitary confinement on death row, where he maintains his innocence, calls the signers of the memo “co-conspirators,” and says they are “naive” to believe they can win over the FOP by abandoning him to his fate.

“If the slavery abolitionists had taken this approach back in 1860,” he says, “and said okay let’s free the slaves, except those uppity ones with prices on their heads like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, we’d still have slavery today.” Abu-Jamal said it appeared that the abolitionist movement appeared to have lost its way, and said that it needed to be broadened to more closely reflect the population of the nation’s death rows. where nearly everyone is poor, and where 53% of the doomed inmates are non-white.

Comments

Wrong example

Submitted by Nathan Rodriguez (not verified) on Wed, 06/30/2010 - 10:55pm

In my opinion allowing the state to kill people creates a bad example for society, saying that it´s a valid solution for our problems.

Jamal, the murderer

Submitted by Jon peppers (not verified) on Fri, 07/02/2010 - 8:11pm

For those who don't know, I attended most of that trial and the obnoxious and defiant behavior of Jamal did not help him. It is FACT and PROVEN that Jamal did in fact murder Officer Faulkner. He did it...he knows it and the evidence proved it...all the rest by those who believe he did not have a fair trial and is innocent of murder...smoke and mirrors. Jamal will die in prison, with or without the help of the State and rightfully so....more than he gave his victim on that cold morning in December. If y'all believe Jamal is innocent, you are fools led by fools. Just my opinion.
johnnypeppers@hotmail.com with comments

John Pisano
Proud member of the FOP
Justice for Officer Daniel Faulkner
Justice for Officer James Ramp

Your exactly right! I read

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 07/14/2010 - 3:42pm

Your exactly right! I read the transcripts and could not believe how crazy he was. I doubt any of his supporters have read or heard the testimony. Getting your facts from HBO or the internet is not the way to go about it.

whatever...

Submitted by jorge (not verified) on Fri, 07/02/2010 - 9:05pm

M.A.J. is a symbol not a real person to most of these activists. They're anti-death penalty principally, whether he's guilty or not is really a secondary question. Others support him because it's fashionable, like wearing a Che shirt. A few are really convinced of some massive conspiracy theory, but you have kooks in any group of people. I'd like him to finally be executed so that I don't have to hear about this distraction and we can move on...

Abu-Jamal and the abolitionist movement against execution

Submitted by David Lindorff (not verified) on Sat, 07/03/2010 - 12:16pm

FOP member Pisano, and "jorge", who is not so proud that he would ID himself, make statements that require a response.

First Pisano. The evidence at the trial, presented by the DA's office, did prove Abu-Jamal killed Faulkner. the trouble is that some of that evidence was fabricated, like the testimony of taxi driver Robert Chobert, who, if he was parked directly behind Faulkner's squad car as he claimed, would have had not one but two cars between his driver's seat position in his cab, and where he claimed Jamal was standing, on the sidewalk, astride a prone Faulkner, firing downward from 18 inches (that's well below the height of the body of either Faulkner's car or Billy Cook's VW). In fact, crime photos later discovered show that Chobert's car was not there, though. It was parked at a 90-degree angle AWAY from the scene of the shooting, facing north on 13th Street, meaning Chobert couldn't have seen anything at all.

Furthermore, none of the other witnesses claimed to have seen the other claimed "eye witness," the prostitute Cynthia White, who cops whisked from the scene without asking her to ID the shooter (very strange, since they brought everyone else over to where Jamal was lying, bleeding in a van, to see if they could ID him). White never did get required to do a line-up identification, because the prosecutor lied to the arraignment judge and said she did not have a role in the case that required her identifying him, but then at the trial, he immediately asked her to do so before the jury (a ridiculous piece of theater, because it was seven months after the highly publicized shooting, and his face had been all over the news by that point).

The other thing Pisano fails to mention is that the jury was never told, thanks to the bias of Judge Albert Sabo, that witness Chobert was highly susceptible to pressure to lie for the prosecution because he was, at the time, driving his cab on a DWI-suspended license, and was also therefore violating the terms of his five-year probation for felony arson of an elementary school. None of that was told to the jury, because the judge ruled it "irrelevant" to his credibility! On the testimony of these two "witnesses" the entire case was built.

That's just the tip of the iceberg of how corrupted this case was from the get go. No one can know whether or not Abu-Jamal was guilty, because the trial was a sham, an embarrassment to the very concept of justice.

As for Jorge, he is just one more jackass who doesn't understand that just executing people so you don't have to hear about them anymore is the mentality that the Brits had, and is the reason we had a revolution in this country in the first place. The death penalty has no place in a system of real justice, because it can never be administered fairly. Every juror has to first be shown to be a supporter of capital punishment before they can be seated, which immediately rules out half the jury pool--and disproportionately rules out blacks, Catholics, humanists, and most importantly, people who have a strong sense of healthy skepticism about the power and integrity of the state. Under such circumstances you can never have a fair trial by a jury of your peers. Half your peers are excluded! You have a better chance of a fair trial on a charge of stealing a loaf of bread than on a charge of murder in this country.

Dave Lindorff
www.thiscantbehappening.net

I probably am a jackass.

Submitted by Jorge (not verified) on Sun, 07/04/2010 - 9:22pm

I probably am a jackass. That's about the only point I'll agree with..

So it's a conspiracy to frame a black guy?

Ok...

What's the motive? For a conspiracy to work, you need to have a motivation for the conspirators to 1) work together 2) not disclose the conspiracy since they risk so much by the very act of conspiracy.

Reasonable man theory: the only reasonable motivation I can see here is simple racism, lot of personal risk on all involved in this supposed conspiracy for simple racism...so either there's some other motivation to conspire or, shock and horror, he did it as the jury decided despite your one-sided presentation of the facts.

You prove my point when you admit that no one can prove him guilty. He's just a symbol to be leveraged against the death penalty...

FREE MUMIA NOW---LET DA MAN GO!!!

Submitted by sundog (not verified) on Mon, 07/05/2010 - 3:01am

New Mumia Abu-Jamal crime scene photos unveiled for the first time in the United States, during the week of Abu-Jamal's May 17 oral arguments at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Abu-Jamal's lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, Linn Washington, Jr, and Dave Lindorff respond.

Listen to the audio from Michael Shiffmann's May 18 presentation of the photos, where he is joined by Linn Washington, Jr.

View the photos at: Abu-Jamal-News.com

Speaking in Philadelphia on Friday, May 18, German author, Dr. Michael Schiffmann presented findings from his new book (not yet published in the US) "Race Against Death. Mumia Abu-Jamal: a Black Revolutionary in White America," an expansion of Schiffmann's PhD dissertation at the University of Heidelberg, just released in Germany. Schiffmann traveled from Germany to Philadelphia to observe Abu-Jamal's May 17 oral arguments before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Along with original ballistics analysis, Schiffmann unveiled explosive new crime scene photos from the morning of December 9, 1981, taken by press photographer Pedro P. Polakoff, III.

In 1982, Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death in a trial that Amnesty International has declared a "violation of minimum international standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death penalty."

Below are quotes about the crime scene photos from Robert R. Bryan, Linn Washington, Jr., and Dave Lindorff.
ROBERT R. BRYAN

The newly discovered photographs reveal the fact that the police were actively manipulating evidence at the homicide scene. For example, their moving the police officer's hat from the roof of Billy Cook's vehicle to the sidewalk to make the scene more emotionally dramatic was fraudulent and criminal. It was as if they were setting up a scene, putting in props for a movie to be shot. That is incredible.

Further, the incompetent manner in which the police at the scene dealt with the evidence is mind-boggling. You would expect better from cops in some little town in Alabama or Mississippi, than what we see in this case in Philadelphia. The most stunning example was the photograph in which one sees Police Officer James Forbes holding both pistols found at the scene in one hand, bare-handed! This is unthinkable. A nitwit could do better. Why were there no fingerprint tests? Why no ballistic examinations? It reminds me of a scene from "The Keystone Cops," the way the evidence was being handled and manipulated, except this was not funny. The fraud and incompetence of the police had very tragic consequences for my client. Today Mumia Abu-Jamal continues to sit on Pennsylvania's death row.

Mumia was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. The police and prosecution trampled upon his constitutional rights. It is disgusting and shameful, as I pointed out on May 17 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

My goal is to win a new trial and walk Mumia Abu-Jamal out of that courtroom a free person. I want an acquittal, so that my client can go home to his wife and family.

Robert R. Bryan is the lead attorney for Mumia Abu-Jamal. He can be contacted via email: RobertRBryan@aol.com
LINN WASHINGTON, JR.

This series of photographs damage the prosecution's case significantly because they graphically show police tampering with and manipulating the crime scene..which is totally improper. Of particular significance is the fact that these photographs provide graphic evidence contradicting the core of the case against Abu-Jamal. The account of Abu-Jamal firing at the fallen officer is shown to be false because there are no bullet holes and/or embedded bullets consistent with the physics of this account. Further, claims that the eyewitness cab driver, Robert Chobert, was parked behind the officer's car are also shown false because there is no cab in any of the photos.

Given the ole "picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words" dynamic, it is not surprising that the prosecutor repeatedly rejected this photographer's offers of assistance because his photos expose the structural flaws in the case presented in court against Abu-Jamal. These photos provide additional evidence that the jury did not consider all of the available evidence due to misconduct by police and prosecutors. This misconduct fuels demands for a fair trial in this case.

Sadly, this newly rediscovered photographic evidence has yet to stimulate interest in mainstream media..showing once again how this supposed information seeking institution shirks its ethical duties in the Abu-Jamal case to "seek truth and report it."

Linn Washington, Jr. is a veteran Philadelphia journalist who has been covering the Abu-Jamal case for over 25 years. He is a columnist for The Philadelphia Tribune newspaper and an Associate Professor of Journalism at Temple University.
DAVE LINDORFF

I've seen these photos. They are explosive. Of course, the key at this point is getting Mumia Abu-Jamal a new trial, so that all this incredible evidence can come out. Clearly, if there is a new trial, there would be a quite different verdict.

If there is not a new trial, then of course, the new evidence will have to be used in an effort to reopen the case at the state level.

Dave Lindorff is the author of "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"
SUMMARY OF FACTS FROM DR. MICHAEL SCHIFFMANN'S NEW GERMAN BOOK "RACE AGAINST DEATH."

In May, 2006, Schiffmann discovered two photographs on the Internet that were taken by the only press photographer immediately present at the 1981 crime scene – Pedro P. Polakoff, III. Polakoff arrived within 12 minutes of hearing about the shooting on the police radio and about ten minutes before the Mobile Crime Unit (responsible for forensics and photographs) arrived. According to Polakoff, this unit had still not taken any photos when Polakoff left after 30-45 minutes at the scene.

Upon contacting Polakoff, Schiffmann learned that three of his 31 original shots were published in Philadelphia newspapers at the time, and five others were lost. Schiffmann explains that he published five of the 26 remaining photos to show the following three points:

"The cops manipulated evidence and supplied the trial court with stuff that was simply stage-managed. On Polakoff's photos, P.O. Faulkner's police hat at first is clearly on the roof of Billy Cook's VW, and only later on the sidewalk in front of 1234 Locust where it was photographed by the police photographer who arrived 10 minutes after Polakoff!
*

"In court Police Officer James Forbes claimed that he had ‘secured' the weapons of both Faulkner and Abu-Jamal without touching them on their metal parts in order to not destroy potential fingerprints. However, in the single photo reprinted in the book you can see that Forbes is touching the weapons on their metal parts, and quite a few of Polakoff's other photos make it clear that Forbes touched and smudged these weapons all over, destroying any potential fingerprint evidence that may have been on them.
*

The second-most important prosecution witness, cab driver Robert Chobert, simply was not parked in the spot, allegedly right behind Officer Faulkner's police squad car, where he claimed to have been and from where he claimed to have observed Abu-Jamal fire the shot that killed the officer."

Polakoff's observations don't stop there. Schiffmann writes in Race: "According to Polakoff, at that time all the officers present expressed the firm conviction that Abu-Jamal had been the passenger in Billy Cook's VW and had killed Faulkner by a single shot fired from the passenger seat of the car."

"Polakoff further reports that this opinion on the part of the police about what had happened was apparently based on the testimony of three witnesses who were still present at the crime scene, namely, by the parking lot attendant in charge of the parking lot on the Northern side of Locust Street, by a drug addicted woman apparently acquainted with the parking lot attendant, and another woman. As Polakoff later heard from colleagues in the media, the parking lot attendant had disappeared the day after, while the drug-addicted witness died a couple of days later from an overdose. Whatever it was that these witnesses saw or did not see, we will probably never know – the interesting fact in any case is that neither of them ever appeared in any report presented by the police or the prosecution."

Polakoff told Schiffmann that he was simply ignored when he repeatedly contacted the DA's office to give them his account--and his photos--of the crime scene.

Michael Schiffmann can be contacted via email: mikschiff@t-online.de

so then....who killed the

Submitted by jorge (not verified) on Mon, 07/05/2010 - 7:09am

so then....who killed the officer?

evidence

Submitted by jon peppers (not verified) on Mon, 07/05/2010 - 1:06pm

First...as to the LATE photos. The cab indicated WAS parked behind the Officer marked vehicle on the 9th of Dec. Lindroff was referring to the cab parked on 13 th north of Locust but he forgot to add that was on the 10th of Dec. and NOT on the ninth and there was a uniformed Officer along with the Cab owner waiting for A detective. As to the weapons handled by Officer Forbes, he in fact did what was proper holding the weapons by the WOOD GRIPS and DID NOT touch the metal parts. As to prints, a little CSI here....you CANNOT get valid prints from checkered wood pistol grips. As to the cab driver driving on a suspended license...so what...does that make him less a credible witness. Do the courts allow prosecution to ask a defendant on trial in front of a Jury if he, the defendant, has a criminal background? NO...the same with witnesses. As I stated to those who believe Jamal did not receive a fair trial ...fools led by fools. BTW...y'all accuse Sabo of sending more to death row than any other Judge...FACT...THE JURY makes that determination...NOT THE JUDGE

Jon Pisano
Justice for Officer Daniel Faulkner

Jamal the affirmed murderer

Submitted by jon peppers (not verified) on Thu, 07/15/2010 - 7:30pm

Anti-MOVE/Mumia blog for truthful dialogue...and post your name if you have any balls

Jon Pisano
Justice for Officer Daniel Faulkner
Justice for Officer james Ramp
Justice for John Gilbride

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