| Leonard Weinglass' book Race for Justice, subtitled "Mumia Abu-Jamal's Fight Against the Death Penalty" (Common Courage Press, $15), is an unusual paperback in that it consists primarily of court papers--documentation submitted to Pennsylvania's Court of Common Pleas in support of a new trial for Black journalist and revolutionary Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia has been on Pennsylvania's death row since 1982, having been convicted in the December 9, 1981 shooting death of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. The pleadings of Chief Counsel for the Defense Weinglass--who also participated in the defense of the Chicago 7 in 1969--tell a tale of suppressed evidence, intimidated witnesses, biased jury selection, denial of the right to self-representation, and a judge who acted as a "prosecutor in robes." The bad news is that these arguments have already fallen on the deaf ears of that same robed prosecutor--Judge Albert Sabo--who has denied the request for a new trial although he was forced to stay the execution. The good news is that Mumia's case is presently out of Sabo's jurisdiction, and that Weinglass' convincing arguments may now be heard by jurists other than the one who sentenced Mumia to die by lethal injection. The following is a summary of the evidence that Weinglass and other members of Mumia's defense team presented to Sabo's Court of Common Pleas and will present to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and possibly to Federal appeals panels as the appeal progresses. |
At approximately 4 A.M. on December 9, 1981, both Mumia Abu-Jamal and Officer Faulkner were found lying on the pavement at the corner of 13th and Locust Streets, a busy intersection near the center of Philadelphia. Both men were suffering from severe gunshot wounds; Faulkner expired soon after being taken to the hospital, but Mumia recovered after extensive surgery. As Mumia lay in the hospital facing first-degree murder charges, the death of Faulkner became a favorite topic for Philadelphia's radio talk shows. Callers clamored for the lynching of the ex-Black Panther and award-winning radio journalist. The Philadelphia Daily News screamed about Mumia's radical history, quoting him as saying (in 1970 when he was seventeen years old) that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
The prosecution produced two witnesses who identified Mumia Abu-Jamal as the gunman. Both of these witnesses were persons who were highly susceptible to pressure from law enforcement. Cynthia White, a prostitute with several cases and outstanding warrants pending against her at the time of the trial, testified that she saw Mumia crossing Locust Street with a gun in his hand and that she saw him fire the fatal shot. White was guarded by undercover police officers during the trial while working the streets, and the prostitution cases against her were not prosecuted. Another witness, Robert Chobert, testified at the trial that Mumia shot Faulkner, thereby contradicting the story that he told police the night of the incident, in which he claimed to see the shooter flee the scene. In fact Chobert's testimony evolved through three contradictory stories--the one that he told a police captain at the scene, in which the killer ran away down the north side of Locust Street, then the one he told at the police station an hour later in which the shooter ran thirty feet from the scene, and finally the story he told at the trial in which the shooter fell "less than ten" feet from the mortally wounded cop (Mumia was found lying in the street approximately four feet from Faulkner). Chobert, as it turns out, was on probation for arson and was facing drunk driving charges at the time of the incident--a situation which placed him at the mercy of law enforcement and might explain his evolving willingness to corroborate the prosecution's argument. Chobert's problems with the police however, were deemed inadmissable at trial by Judge Sabo.
On the defense side, two witnesses testified that they had seen someone running away from the scene of the crime in the direction that Chobert had originally indicated. Dessie Hightower told of seeing a person with dreadlocks run and disappear up Camac Street, an alley off Locust which was in the direction that Chobert said he saw the shooter run in his original version of the incident. Veronica Jones, ano-ther prostitute, testified that she had seen one or more persons running in that direction. Jones also stated that police had arrested her after the shooting, questioned her for five hours, and told her that she could work the streets with impunity if she corroborated the testimony of Cynthia White to the effect that Mumia fired the shot that killed Faulkner.
Other persons who had been interviewed (by the prosecution) also reported seeing a man fleeing the scene of the shooting, but did not testify at the trial because the prosecution failed to divulge the results of their investigations to the defense as required by law. Debbie Kandinsky, who lived in a residential hotel overlooking the location of the shooting, said that she saw a man running on Locust Street immediately after she heard shots. William Singletary told police on the night of the crime that he had seen a Black man who was neither Mumia nor his brother flee the scene. The police, according to Singletary, tore up two affidavits that he wrote at the precinct house, threatened to "get something on him," and harassed him until, in frustration, he wrote a statement to the effect that he had not seen the incident at all. In the months after the shooting, Singletary was visited by police and menaced in various ways, which impelled him to leave Philadelphia for a time. Singletary took the stand at a hearing on the petition for post-conviction relief in September 1995 and testified that he saw the passenger in William Cook's Volkswagen--a man with dreadlocks--shoot Officer Faulkner after the cop quarreled with and struck Cook. The shooter then ran off and disappeared down an alley. This is consistent with Dessie Hightower's account of seeing a man with dreadlocks running from the scene. Singletary said that he saw Mumia approach his brother's car from the parking lot just as the third man shot Faulkner and went over to take a look at the injured cop, who then shot Mumia in the chest (a story that makes sense in light of the fact that Mumia has dreadlocks and the cop had just been shot by a man with dreadlocks).
THE DEFENSE
One would think that a defense attorney would do something about a situation where
crucial evidence is ruled inadmissable by the judge or suppressed outright by the police and
prosecution. Mumia Abu-Jamal, however, had no defense attorney to speak of, and was thwarted
in his effort to represent himself. Mumia elected to conduct his own defense, and lawyer
Anthony Jackson was appointed as his backup counsel. Mumia carried out the early stages of
jury selection himself, but after a short time, Judge Sabo decided that the case was
"proceeding too slowly" and denied him the right to continue acting as his own attorney.
Sabo insisted that Mumia turn jury selection over to Jackson, whom Sabo had already chided
on the record for not paying enough attention to the case. Jackson and Mumia quarreled
continually, and the lawyer requested five times during the course of the trial to be
relieved of the case. Jackson failed to interview key witnesses (partly because he had been
granted only $150 for an investigator, but partly because of his own negligence), allowed a
juror to be empaneled who had a friend who was a cop shot in the line of duty, and also
allowed the wife of a police officer to become an alternate juror. Jackson made no
preparations for the penalty phase of the case in which Mumia was sentenced to death. He was
later disbarred, for reasons unrelated to the Mumia case. Mumia continued to press vocally
for his right under the Sixth Amendment to act as his own lawyer, and Sabo repeatedly threw
him out of the courtroom for these "disruptions." He was therefore not present for a great
deal of crucial testimony, including that of Cynthia White.
THE JURY
A combination of lawyerly incompetence by Mumia's court-appointed attorney Anthony
Jackson and judicial prejudice by Judge Sabo led to the empaneling of a jury hostile to
Mumia. The prosecution used 11 of it's 15 peremptory challenges to exclude 11 of the 14
African-American prospective jurors from the final jury. Such deliberate efforts to
establish a racially biased jury using peremptory challenges have been ruled unconsitutional
by the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only did Judge Sabo tolerate this, but he exacerbated the
situation by removing the one juror whom he allowed Mumia to select while Mumia was acting
as his own attorney. This juror, a Black woman named Jeannie Dawley, requested that she be
released from sequestration for a few hours to take her seriously ill cat to the
veterinarian. This occured before the trial began and Ms.Dawley's request would not have
required a continuance or any other delay in the proceedings. Sabo, however, denied the
request, and when Ms. Dawley took it upon herself to leave the confines of the court-ordered
sequestration to take care of her cat, she was summarily excused from the case by Sabo.
Later, after the trial had begun, a white juror requested a morning off to take a civil
service examination. Judge Sabo granted his request, postponed the beginning of court until
the afternoon, and assigned a court officer to accompany the juror on his way to the exam.
After the trial, one of the former jurors presented an affidavit to the effect that three
white jurors would meet privately in a room at the hotel where they were sequestered and
dis-cuss the case. All three of these jurors were in favor of a guilty verdict, and one of
them became the foreman of the jury as legitimate deliberations began. Deliberation by
jurors before the case has been handed over to them by the judge has been held to be grounds
for a mistrial.
THE JUDGE
Albert Sabo served as the Under Sheriff of Philadelphia County for sixteen years before
ascending to the bench. During this time he joined the National Sheriff's Association, the
Police Chief's Association of Southeast Pennsylvania, and the Fraternal Order of Police. The
latter organization has been the main cheerleader for the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Sabo
volunteered in 1976 to become a member of the Homicide Unit, a special subdivision of the
Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas that hears only homicide cases. Mumia's attorneys are
currently challenging the existence of the Homicide Unit under a provision of the
Pennsylvania Constitution that prohibits the establishment of special tribunals to hear only
one type of case. In the capacity of homicide judge, Sabo's sentencing has accounted for
one-sixth the population of Pennsylvania's death row. He also holds the record among
Pennsylvania judges for cases reversed on appeal. In the case of Commonwealth vs. Pana, for
instance, Sabo's decision was reversed because he refused to appoint an interpreter for a
Spanish-speaking defendant even after the District Attorney requested that he do so. An
example of his behavior in Mumia's case related to the matter of Police Officer Gary
Wakshul, who had guarded Mumia in the hospital on the night of the shooting. While several
other officers who were present in the emergency room had testified that Mumia blurted out a
confession ("Yeah, I shot him; I hope the motherfucker dies"), Wakshul had written in his
notebook "the negro male made no comment." In light of the fact that Wakshul spent more time
watching over Mumia than the other cops, and that none of these cops mentioned the
"confession" until months after the shooting (at the time when Mumia filed a lawsuit against
the police for beating him up in the hospital while critically wounded) you would think that
Wakshul's testimony would be highly sought after. Wakshul, however, turned out to be on
"vacation" during the trial, and Sabo refused to grant a continuance to allow Wakshul to be
located. In spite of a directive in the police investigative report that Wakshul be kept
available for testimony, Sabo told Mumia "you and your attorney goofed" by not applying for
a subpoena early enough.
THE CASE AS IT STANDS
Currently, the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal is at the appeals stage with regard to the murder
conviction and death sentence. Mumia has filed suit in Federal court with regard to civil
rights violations by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, and this case is still
being litigated, although hearings at the Federal District Court in Pittsburgh concluded on
October 16. Mumia is charging that the DOC has opened and photocopied mail containing
privileged communications between himself and his attorneys, denied him face-to-face contact
with paralegals and religious advisors, and denied him contact with the media--all of this
in retaliation for his having written Live from Death Row (Addison-Wesley $20), a widely
circulated book (and CD-ROM disk) highly critical of Pennsylvania's correctional system.
Final arguments and a decision in this suit are still pending as of this writing.
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