From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard" -Remember The MOVE Massacre-Free The Move Prisoners

Click on the headline to link to well-known class war prisoner and death row inmate, Mumia Abu-Jamal, speaking on the anniversary of the MOVE massacre.

Workers Vanguard No. 959
21 May 2010

25 Years Ago: Racist Government Bombed Black Philadelphia

Remember the MOVE Massacre

May 13 marks the 25th anniversary of the 1985 MOVE massacre. Eleven people, including five children, were burned alive after police, acting on orders from black Democratic mayor Wilson Goode and in collusion with the Feds, dropped a powerful incendiary bomb on the Osage Avenue home of the largely black MOVE commune in West Philadelphia. The firebombing followed a 12-hour siege during which the cops unloaded over 10,000 rounds of ammunition into the house. Firefighters on site were held back, and cops shot at anyone who tried to escape the burning building. The inferno spread, destroying 61 houses and leaving hundreds homeless in the black neighborhood.

Then-president Ronald Reagan, the FBI, the Philly cops and Wilson Goode were all responsible for this hideous crime, a stark example of the racist terror that black people are subject to in capitalist America. None of the perpetrators ever faced charges, while Ramona Africa, the sole adult survivor, served every day of her seven-year prison sentence. Immediately after the massacre, and ever since, the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee, a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the SL, have sought to sear this racist atrocity into the memory of the working class.

In July 1985, the SL held a public forum in New York City to honor the MOVE martyrs, at which family members and supporters spoke. We wrote in protest that the mass murder carried the bloody signature of the Reagan years and was intended “to send a message to black America and ‘radicals’ of every stripe. ‘Anti-terrorism’ means massive government terror against anyone who is out of step in Reagan’s America” (WV No. 379, 17 May 1985). Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the onslaught against black people, synonymous with Reagan reaction, has continued unabated to this day.

From the moment that MOVE surfaced in the early 1970s in the racist hellhole of Philadelphia, denouncing “the system” and defending the right to armed self-defense, this back-to-nature group was subjected to police harassment, beatings and hundreds of arrests. On 8 August 1978, 600 cops unleashed a barrage of gunfire as they stormed MOVE’s Powelton Village compound. When MOVE members emerged from their home, the police dragged, kicked and stomped Delbert Africa nearly to death. Nine MOVE members were framed up and sentenced in 1981 to 30-100 years on charges of killing a cop who died in the police crossfire at Powelton Village—even though the judge stated that he didn’t have the “faintest idea” who killed the cop. Merle Africa died in her prison cell in 1998. The rest of the MOVE 9 are still in Pennsylvania’s dungeons (see page 2).

In an expression of solidarity with those imprisoned for standing up to racist capitalist repression, the PDC provided monthly stipends for Ramona Africa during her imprisonment as it has also done for the MOVE 9 and death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, who became a MOVE supporter while reporting on the MOVE 9 trial.

Mumia, an innocent man framed up on false charges of killing police officer Daniel Faulkner, was sentenced to death in 1982 for his political views. His case is what the death penalty is all about—a legacy of chattel slavery, the lynch rope made legal. A former Black Panther leader as a teenager in the 1960s, Mumia became a prominent radical radio journalist known as “The Voice of the Voiceless” who reported on the racist Philly cops and courts. It was during the sham trial of the MOVE 9 that Mumia became sympathetic to the MOVE organization.

To avenge the MOVE martyrs, the working class must fight to smash this capitalist system, whose rulers inflict a special oppression on black people as a means to divide and attack the entire working class. We will not forget the MOVE massacre! Free the MOVE members, Mumia and all class-war prisoners! For black liberation through socialist revolution!

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Workers Vanguard No. 959
21 May 2010


Free the MOVE Prisoners!

The following May 10 protest letter was sent by the Partisan Defense Committee to Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole chairman Catherine C. McVey.

The Partisan Defense Committee once again joins with those supporting the release of the eight surviving political prisoners who have been collectively known as the MOVE 9. These men and women were victims of racist police brutality. They are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted and imprisoned for over three decades.

We are outraged by your continued refusal to allow these innocent prisoners to be paroled. As we said in our letter of 6 March 2008, “We are mindful that a common ruse for denying parole for those who have been falsely convicted is the claimed failure to show ‘remorse.’ Having committed no crime, the imprisoned MOVE members have no reason to demonstrate any so-called ‘remorse’.” And yet that is exactly the pretext you consistently have used to turn down the MOVE 9’s parole. In effect you are denying parole for anyone who maintains his or her innocence.

After a year-long siege, on August 8, 1978, an army of nearly 600 police surrounded the MOVE home to evict its defenseless residents. Three months before the attack, MOVE had allowed the police to search their home, resulting in the removal of what were inoperable weapons. The police turned on “deluge guns,” flooding the basement of the house, and then unleashed a furious fusillade so intense that one of their own officers, James Ramp, was killed in the police cross fire.

At least eight witnesses testified that no gunshots came from the MOVE house. Three firemen said they did not know where the gunshots came from and had seen no MOVE members with guns. When weapons supposedly found at the MOVE home were brought to court, none of them had any fingerprints of the defendants on them, and none of the MOVE prisoners were ever charged with illegal weapons possession. After the trial, when presiding judge Edwin Malmed was asked, “Who shot James Ramp?” he replied, “I haven’t the faintest idea.” The MOVE prisoners were convicted of among other charges, conspiracy, a catchall charge used especially to prosecute people for their shared political beliefs when prosecutors are unable to prove that a criminal act was committed.

The denial of parole for the MOVE 9 can only be seen as part and parcel of a decades-long vendetta against MOVE and its supporters. The most grotesque example of this took place 25 years ago in May 1985, when they watched in horror from their Pennsylvania prison cells as the Philadelphia police, in league with federal authorities, dropped a high-powered explosive bomb on MOVE’s Osage Avenue home. This caused the burning to death of eleven people, including five children, and left an entire black neighborhood in smoldering ruins.

It is an injustice that these men and women were ever incarcerated at all. They are innocent survivors of premeditated police assaults. We call once more for the immediate, unconditional release of Debbie Africa, Janine Africa, Janet Africa, Chuck Africa, Eddie Africa, Phil Africa, Delbert Africa and Mike Africa.

* The Latest On Mumia Abu Jamal- Free Mumia!

Click on title to link to a YouTube film clip of Mumia Abu Jamal- The "Voice Of The Voiceless" from Death Row in a Pennsylvania prison. The information about Mumia's current legal status and polemic about the way forward in his defense efforts is passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee.

Workers Vanguard No. 941
28 August 2009

Mumia Is an Innocent Man! Free Him Now!

Reformists Crawl to Obama and His Top Cop

For nearly three decades, Mumia Abu-Jamal has been imprisoned on death row. An innocent man, Mumia is a former Black Panther Party spokesman and supporter of the Philadelphia MOVE organization. He was framed up and convicted on charges of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in December 1981. His conviction was based on lying testimony extorted by the cops, without a shred of physical evidence. His death sentence was secured on the basis of his political convictions and powerful indictments of racist America as a Panther. Since then, court after court has refused to even consider the mountains of evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot Faulkner.

On April 6 the U.S. Supreme Court summarily turned down Mumia’s petition to overturn the frame-up conviction. Ominously, it has not ruled on the Philadelphia district attorney’s appeal to reinstate the death sentence, which was overturned by U.S. District Court Judge William Yohn in 2001. Should the Supreme Court rule in favor of the D.A.’s appeal, it would place Mumia a big step closer to the death chamber.

The relentless campaign by the cops, courts, prosecutors and judges to put Mumia to death or entomb him for life epitomizes the apparatus of state repression deployed by the rulers of this country against any perceived opponents. It throws a spotlight on the barbaric, racist death penalty, a form of institutionalized state terror directly descended in the U.S. from black chattel slavery. It goes to the core of the racist subjugation of black people in this country, which is fundamental to the maintenance of American capitalism. It underlines that the fight for Mumia’s freedom must be based on a class-struggle opposition to the racist U.S. capitalist system.

It is this understanding that has infused the work of the Partisan Defense Committee—a legal and social class-struggle defense organization whose views are in accordance with the Marxist principles of the Spartacist League—since it took up Mumia’s case over 20 years ago. While fighting to assist Mumia in pursuing every legal avenue, we had no illusions that this outspoken fighter for the oppressed could or would get any “justice” from the courts or any other agency of the capitalist state. Our fight has been to mobilize the multiracial working class in the U.S. and working people internationally. The proletariat is the one force in this society that has the social power to effectively challenge the capitalist rulers.

Our fight to free Mumia and abolish the racist death penalty is rooted in the revolutionary perspective of winning the working class to the understanding that the bourgeois state is not some “neutral” agency that serves society as a whole but rather exists to defend the class rule and profits of the capitalist class against those they exploit and oppress. To put a final halt to the grisly workings of capitalism’s machinery of death—be they guardians of death row or the cops who operate as “judge, jury and executioner” in gunning down minority youth on the streets—requires sweeping away this entire system, which is based on exploitation and oppression, through socialist revolution.

In contrast, the reformist left’s defense of Mumia is, in the words of Bolshevik revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, defined by the “framework of bourgeois society and an adaptation to its legality—i.e., the actual training of the masses to become imbued with the inviolability of the bourgeois state” (Lessons of October, 1924). For years the reformists have subordinated the fight for Mumia’s freedom to peddling the most treacherous illusions in the capitalist courts with their calls for a “new,” “fair” trial. Now, with the judicial appeals in which they put their faith all but exhausted, they shamelessly go on bended knee to the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism Barack Obama and his top cop, Attorney General Eric Holder.

Reformists Beg Capitalist State for “Justice”

A petition to Holder by the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ), the International Action Center, initiated by the Workers World Party (WWP), and the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) appeals:

“Inasmuch as there is no other court to which Abu-Jamal can appeal for justice, I turn to you for remedy….

“I call on you and the Justice Department to immediately commence a civil rights investigation to examine the many examples of egregious and racist prosecutorial and judicial misconduct dating back to the original trial in 1982 and continuing through to the current inaction [!] of the U.S. Supreme Court….

“I am aware of the many differences that exist between the case of former Senator Ted Stevens and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Still, I note with great interest the actions you have taken with regard to Senator Stevens’ conviction to assure that he not be denied his constitutional rights.”

The petition further notes, with grotesque understatement of the obvious, that Mumia, unlike Stevens, is not “a U.S. senator of great wealth and power.” No kidding. Does anyone really think that the Justice Department hasn’t spotted the difference between a white Senator facing bribery charges and a black radical facing the death penalty on frame-up charges of killing a cop?

This became an all-out lobbying effort at the centennial convention of the NAACP in New York in July, where Obama and Holder were keynote speakers. Standing outside the convention, the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) raised a banner pleading: “Obama & Holder/We Need You Now!/Free Mumia.”

Who are they appealing to? Obama is the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism—the most bloody and rapacious imperialist power on the face of the planet—and the overseer of the slaughter of countless peoples in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. His attorney general is the warden-in-chief of the prison dungeons holding political prisoners such as Mumia and over two million people, disproportionately blacks and Latinos. It would be hard to find a more savage indictment of the reformists’ fundamental belief in the “democracy” of capitalist class rule.

The appeal for Obama to “free Mumia” is all the more grotesque considering that he supports the death penalty. His credentials in this regard have been promoted by Philadelphia’s right-wing radio broadcaster Michael Smerconish. The co-author of the book, Murdered by Mumia, which rehashes the lies concocted by the Philly cops and D.A.’s office to falsely convict Mumia, Smerconish sees Obama as an ally in his relentless campaign to put Mumia to death. In a 20 August Philadelphia Daily News op-ed article, Smerconish wrote:

“I was also thrilled to have the chance to question him on a subject in which I’ve invested almost 20 years of time and energy—Mumia Abu Jamal.

“Had he taken a position on the case, and if not, did he intend to do so? ‘I haven’t, only because the details of this event I’ve never studied. I’m vaguely familiar with the fact that there’s been a controversy around it. So let me just lay out a very clear principle: In my mind, if somebody killed a police officer, they deserve the death penalty or life in prison,’ he told me.

“Amen to that.”

Reporting on the lobbying effort at the NAACP convention, an article in the Amsterdam News (16-22 July), explained “hope is based on the premise that having a Black attorney general, a Black president…will give Abu-Jamal’s plight stronger consideration.” The self-proclaimed “communists” of WWP took a second to no one in championing Obama’s election as “a triumph for the Black masses and all the oppressed” (Workers World, 20 November 2008).

In fact, after eight years of the widely despised Bush regime, Obama’s election has provided a much-needed facelift for U.S. imperialism to more effectively lord it over the world’s working and oppressed masses. In the U.S., the inauguration of America’s first black president is a powerful propaganda weapon for the U.S. rulers. The message to black people and the oppressed is to shut up and eat it because the election of a black man as president proves the “American dream” works! This was exactly Obama’s message in his speech to the NAACP convention. “No excuses. No excuses,” he intoned, channeling Booker T. Washington, who over a century ago preached accommodation to the racist status quo by telling the impoverished black masses to pull themselves up by their bootstraps (if they owned any).

The reformists and liberals were successful in getting the NAACP to pass a resolution calling on Holder to investigate Mumia’s case. It would be more than welcome if the NAACP put its considerable resources in a genuine fight to free Mumia. But this is not the political purpose of the WWP et al.’s petition for a civil rights investigation, which disappears the fact that Mumia is innocent and pushes illusions in the “fairness” of the American “justice” system. This was captured by NAACP chairman Julian Bond in an interview with Amy Goodman that aired on July 20. Bond argued that Mumia has “had trouble” bringing “doubts” about his case “before a tribunal that can say, you know, these things are true or they’re not true. And we think he needs that chance. We think he needs that chance before the state of Pennsylvania decides to snuff his life out.” I.e., notwithstanding the NAACP’s opposition to the death penalty, the key thing is to let Mumia have another day in court before the rulers “snuff his life out.”

Mumia’s Cause and the Fight for Black Freedom

Black oppression is structurally embedded in American capitalism and will not be overcome short of socialist revolution. In our struggle to free Mumia and abolish the racist death penalty, we seek to win the working class to the understanding that the fight for black freedom is central to the fight for the liberation of all of labor and the oppressed from a system based on exploitation and rooted in the segregation of the black masses at the bottom of society.

The fight to mobilize the social power of the working class in struggle for Mumia’s freedom faces many obstacles. Integrated unions representing millions of workers have gone on record in support of Mumia. But these millions have not been mobilized in action to combat this racist frame-up. The responsibility for that lies with the pro-capitalist trade-union misleaders, who overwhelmingly refuse to call their members into action to defend their economic interests, much less in defense of a black political prisoner. The bureaucracy’s class-collaborationist policies, which have tied the working class to its capitalist class enemy, have dissipated the fighting strength of the unions. The pathetic reformist and liberal petitioners of Obama and Holder similarly do their best in reinforcing belief in the inherent benevolence of the capitalist state.

For the Spartacist League and the Partisan Defense Committee, the fight for Mumia’s freedom is part of the struggle to do away with a social and economic system based on exploitation, increasingly hideous oppression and state terror. The power to do that lies in the hands of the multiracial working class, with its numbers, organization, discipline and, most importantly, its capacity to bring the wheels of the capitalist profit system to a grinding halt. Mobilizing that power is a question of building a revolutionary workers party, acting as the tribune of the people that can bring to the working class the consciousness of its historic interests to be the instrumentality to shatter the power of the racist capitalist rulers and their state.

The stakes are high and the situation is grim, but any real fight for Mumia’s freedom must be based on a class-struggle opposition to the capitalist rulers, who have entombed this innocent black man in prison for more than half his life.

*Free Mumia Now!!!- From The Partisan Defense Committee

Click on the title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.


Commentary

This information is passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee. Mumia is up against it now, we must redouble our efforts to win his freedom in any way we can.

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Supreme Court Bars Evidence of Innocence

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!

There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts!

On October 6, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Mumia Abu-Jamal’s appeal for a new trial based on evidence that critical witnesses lied under police coercion in his original frame-up trial. To the racists in black robes, a court of law is no place for evidence of the innocence of this fighter for the oppressed. Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, MOVE supporter and eloquent journalist known as the “voice of the voiceless,” is an innocent man who has been on death row for 26 years, framed up for the killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. This latest rejection comes after decades of Pennsylvania state and lower federal courts dismissing the mountains of evidence of his innocence and of his racist frame-up by the Philadelphia police and prosecution.

The appeal that was turned down was submitted on July 18 by Mumia’s attorney, Robert R. Bryan. That petition for a Writ of Certiorari on behalf of Mumia was a request for the Supreme Court to grant Mumia’s appeal of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision last February 19, which refused to let him present crucial evidence that key witnesses in his original frame-up trial had lied. The only witness claiming to have seen Mumia with a gun in hand was Cynthia White, a prostitute who was given favors and coerced by the cops to lie. Two months after Faulkner’s death, cops and prosecutors concocted a story that Mumia confessed to the killing as he bled nearly to death on the Jefferson Hospital Emergency Room floor after being shot and beaten by the cops.

The Partisan Defense Committee—a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League—issued a February 21 press release following the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision, emphasizing that the evidence barred by that court cuts to the heart of the prosecution frame-up. Such evidence included a 28 January 2002 declaration by Yvette Williams, who was in jail with Cynthia White in December 1981, stating that “Cynthia White told me the police were making her lie and say she saw Mr. Jamal shoot Officer Faulkner when she really did not see who did it.” Also barred was the declaration of Kenneth Pate, stepbrother of Priscilla Durham, a Jefferson Hospital security guard who testified at Mumia’s trial to hearing the bogus confession. In his 18 April 2003 declaration, Kenneth Pate recalled that Durham told him of pressure by the cops to say Mumia confessed; she confided to him, “All I heard him say was: ‘Get off me, get off me, they’re trying to kill me’.” (The declarations by Williams and Pate are available in full on the Partisan Defense Committee’s Web site (www.partisandefense.org/pubs/innocent/yw.html and www.partisandefense.org/pubs/innocent/kp.html).

Mumia’s attorney Robert Bryan will be filing a second petition for review to the U.S. Supreme Court later this year. That petition will deal with the racist jury-rigging that marked Mumia’s 1982 trial. The prosecution used eleven of its 15 peremptory challenges to get rid of black jurors. In 2001, federal district court judge William Yohn overturned Mumia’s death sentence while upholding the frame-up conviction. Mumia’s attorney as well as the prosecution appealed—the former seeking to overturn the conviction and the latter seeking to reinstate the death penalty. On March 27, a three-judge panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Yohn’s ruling. In July, the Third Circuit Court also turned down an appeal for a full court hearing, letting stand its earlier decision. Mumia now faces the prospect of a new sentencing hearing, in which the only two choices are whether Mumia remains condemned to prison for the rest of his life or is again sentenced to death (see “Third Circuit Court Turns Down Appeal,” WV No. 918, 1 August).

The Supreme Court’s rejection of Mumia’s current petition is an outrage, but it comes as no surprise. The Supreme Court has denied previous petitions by Mumia’s attorneys in 1990, 1999 and 2004. The Supreme Court is the highest court of America’s racist capitalist rulers, the class enemy of workers, black people and all the oppressed. The courts, prisons and police exist to maintain, through organized violence and terror, the rule of the capitalists over working people. We have always advocated pursuing all possible legal proceedings. PDC attorneys Rachel Wolkenstein and Jonathan Piper served on Mumia’s legal team from 1995 to 1999, unearthing much evidence of Mumia’s innocence, including the confession of another man, Arnold Beverly, that he and not Mumia shot and killed Faulkner. But as the PDC has underlined, “We place all our faith in the power of the masses and no faith whatever in the ‘justice’ of the courts.”

The power that can make the courts yield is the power of the multiracial working class. It took a campaign of international mass protest, crucially including trade unionists, to help stay the executioner’s hand when Mumia was under a death warrant in 1995. We fight for a strategy of class-struggle defense, which must be based on the understanding that capitalist society is fundamentally divided between two hostile social classes—the capitalist exploiters and the working class—and that the capitalist state and its courts are organs of repression against working people and the oppressed. Our class-struggle strategy is counterposed to that of the liberals and reformists, who promote dangerous illusions that the courts can provide justice for Mumia, illusions codified in their longtime subordination of the demand for Mumia’s freedom to the call for a “new trial.” This reliance on the agencies of the class enemy, including pathetic appeals to capitalist politicians, has been promoted by groups including the Workers World Party, International Socialist Organization, the Revolutionary Communist Party’s Refuse & Resist, Socialist Action, the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal led by Pam Africa and the San Francisco Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal led by Socialist Action honcho Jeff Mackler.

In the weeks following the Third Circuit Court’s March decision, the PDC and its fraternal defense organizations internationally held emergency protests and united-front demonstrations. Though these protests brought out only hundreds, they point to what is necessary to win Mumia’s freedom: the mobilization of the working class independently of and in opposition to its capitalist class enemy, whether Democrat, Republican or Green. Over 500 organizations and individuals—including trade unionists, students, gay rights activists, leftists, black activists, death penalty abolitionists and others—endorsed these protests, called under the slogans: “Mumia Abu-Jamal Is Innocent! Free Mumia Now! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!”
Mumia’s conviction was a racist, political frame-up of an innocent man, a fighter against racial and class bias, a man who stands for social justice and against U.S. imperialism’s wars of depredation. Since his youth in the Black Panthers, Mumia has endured the hatred and concerted effort of the bourgeoisie to silence him because they see in him the spectre of black revolt. Mumia’s case throws a spotlight on the barbaric death penalty, which is institutionalized state terror directly descended from black chattel slavery and lynch mob terror.

Our fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal is rooted in the struggle to make the multiracial working class conscious of its class interests in the fight against the entire capitalist system, particularly the understanding that in America the fight for black freedom is central to the struggle for the emancipation of labor itself. The PDC’s Class-Struggle Contingents in protests for Mumia organized by other groups this spring expressed the necessity for independent working-class struggle on behalf of Mumia by demanding, in addition to the united-front calls to free Mumia and abolish the racist death penalty: “There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts! Mobilize Labor’s Power—For Mass Protest!”

*FROM THE PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE-A MUMIA ABU-JAMAL FACT SHEET

Click on the title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.

This important information about the case of Mumia Abu-Jama is passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee. I would note here that, as was true in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti and other class struggle cases, there has always been an attempt by our adversaries to muddy the waters around these cases by disinformation. Read the points provided here in Mumia's defense carefully and judge what the real situation is. But more than that take up the call for Mumia's freedom. Free Mumia!

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Mumia Abu-Jamal Fact Sheet


Murdered by Mumia (The Lyons Press, December 2007) by Maureen Faulkner and Michael Smerconish is a compendium of myths, falsehoods, misrepresentations and omissions—all aimed at the legal lynching of an innocent man, Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, targeted by the Feds and cops since the age of 15, who later became a supporter of the MOVE organization and a respected journalist renowned as the "voice of the voiceless." He was framed up for the 9 December 1981 killing of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. An abundance of evidence proves Mumia's innocence, including the confession of another man. Arnold Beverly. that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Officer Faulkner.

Published at a time of waning support for capital punishment—most recently demonstrated by New Jersey's repeal of the death penalty—as well as the highly publicized release of inmates falsely convicted on murder charges, Murdered by Mumia is a rallying call for the barbaric death penalty, which in the U.S. is a legacy of black chattel slavery. In Murdered by Mumia, Maureen Faulkner, Daniel Faulkner's widow and a major spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police campaign to execute Mumia, joins forces with right-wing radio broadcaster and newspaper columnist Michael Smerconish.

Faulkner and Smerconish make no bones about the political nature of Mumia's frame-up, retailing the lie that Mumia's Panther membership proved that he had been planning to kill a cop. They boast that the prosecution had "successfully established that Abu-Jamal had an anti-police, anti-establishment, anti-government philosophy that accounted for his desire to murder Danny" (page 44). It is because Mumia has always been an outspoken and unrepentant fighter for black people and the oppressed that the forces of "law and order," represented by both the Democratic and Republican parties, want to see Mumia dead. To the racist rulers, he represents the spectre of black revolt.

Murdered by Mumia repeatedly claims that the records of Mumia's 1982 trial and pre-trial witness statements "tell the story of how Abu-Jamal murdered my husband" (page 29). The trial reco.rds are replete with inconsistencies, unproven assertions, contradictory evidence and all the hallmarks of a racist frame-up. There is no evidence that Mumia shot Daniel Faulkner, and the "facts" claimed in Murdered by Mumia supposedly proving this story do not exist in the trial record. Since the 1982 trial, there has been a growing mountain of new evidence proving not only that Mumia is innocent, but that the police and prosecution falsified and suppressed evidence, coerced witnesses and orchestrated a monumental frame-up.

This fact sheet will expose the enormity of the lies that underpin every premise in Murdered by Mumia. Our aim is to arm those fighting for Mumia with the facts to refute the mendacity of those who want to execute him. This is part of our effort to mobilize mass protest action on Mumia's behalf that is centered on the social power of the labor movement and is based on the understanding that Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man, the victim of a racist and political frame-up who must be immediately freed!

In refuting the lies in Murdered by Mumia, we cite the transcripts, including the dates and page numbers where testimony appears, from the 1982 trial and pre-trial testimony and 1995-97 post-conviction relief (PCRA) hearings (all designated as "N.T." [Notes of Testimony]), as well as declarations and affidavits that were filed in federal and state courts, and police investigation reports (IIR [Investigation Interview Record]). Citations from Murdered by Mumia are followed by the page number. Readers are also urged to review the July 2006 PDC pamphlet, The Fight to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal—Mumia Is Innocent!, which includes detailed presentations of the facts of the case as well as a series of affidavits and declarations. The pamphlet is available at http: / / www. partisandefense .org/ pubs/ innocent.

What Happened on 9 December 1981

Lie: In virtually every chapter of the book, Faulkner and Smerconish claim that neither Mumia nor his brother William Cook, who was at the scene of Faulkner's shooting, gave an accounting of what happened on 9 December 1981. They write, for example, "Never, in twenty-five years and despite a worldwide campaign on his behalf, has he [Mumia] offered an explanation of what occurred on December 9, 1981" (page 47).

Truth: From the beginning, Mumia has always made clear that he is innocent, including, in his allocution statement to the trial court. (N.T.7/3/82:14-15) On 3 May 2001, he gave a sworn declaration, as did his brother on 15 May 1999 and 29 April 2001, detailing what they saw the night of Faulkner's shooting. On 8 June 1999, Arnold Beverly swore an affidavit detailing how he, not Mumia, killed Faulkner. Smerconish and Faulkner know this—the declarations and Beverly's affidavit are on the original Daniel Faulkner Web site! (See http:/./ www.dariieifaulk.ner. com /original/testimony, html)

In his declaration, Mumia stated, "I did not shoot Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. I had nothing to do with the killing of Officer Faulkner. I am innocent." He described how he ran from his parked cab in Center City after he heard shots and saw other people running, recognizing his brother staggering in the street. "I saw a uniformed cop turn toward me gun in hand, saw a flash and went down to my knees." Mumia was shot in the chest and was critically wounded. He continued: "The next thing that I remember I felt myself being kicked, hit and being brought out of a stupor." He recalled how cops were "hollering and cursing, grabbing and pulling on me." "I was pulled to my feet," he continued, "and then rammed into a telephone pole beaten where I fell and thrown into a paddy wagon." He stated that later the police wagon door opened and a white cop in a white shirt "came in cursing and hit me in the forehead. I don't remember what he said much except a lot of 'n——s', 'black motherfuckers' and what not." (See htip;/_/.w\vav.pardsanck'fen,se,org/.pubs/innocent/rnaj.Jitrnl)

In his 1999 declaration, William Cook stated, "Mumia Abu-Jamal did not shoot Officer Faulkner and I did not shoot Officer Faulkner." Cook stated that he "was stopped by Officer Faulkner while I was circling around City Center in my Volkswagen with Kenneth Freeman." He also stated that Freeman, his passenger and business partner, "told me after that night that there was a plan to kill Officer Faulkner, that Freeman was part of that plan, that he was armed that night and participated in the shooting." Cook also asserted that Freeman "ran from the scene after Officer Faulkner was shot." In his 2001 Affidavit, Cook stated that Freeman was "wearing his green army jacket." (See http.i//w\vw..partisandefense^Qrg/p_u_bs/inno.ce_nt/wc.html)

In his affidavit, Arnold Beverly stated that "Mumia Abu-Jamal did not shoot police officer Faulkner.... Jamal had nothing to do with the shooting." Beverly explained that he "was hired, along with another guy, and paid to shoot and kill Faulkner. I had heard that Faulkner was a problem for the mob and corrupt policemen because he interfered with the graft and payoffs made to allow illegal activity including prostitution, gambling, drugs without prosecution in the center city area." Beverly said that he was given "a .38 caliber policeman's special and I was also carrying my own .22 caliber revolver." Beverly, who like Freeman was wearing a green army jacket, stated that as he came onto the scene of 13th and Locust, he "saw police officers in the area," but "was not worried" because "I believed that since I was hired by the mob to shoot and kill Faulkner, any police officers on the scene would be there to help me."

Beverly described that he saw Faulkner get out of his patrol car and go up to a VW. He heard a shot and then another one that grazed his left shoulder. He continued: "I ran across Locust Street and stood over Faulkner, who had fallen backwards on the sidewalk. I shot Faulkner in the face at close range. Jamal was shot shortly after that by a uniformed police officer who arrived on the scene." Beverly concluded that he left the area through the Speedline subway system "and by pre-arrangement met a police officer who assisted me when I exited the speedline underground about three blocks away. A car was waiting for me and I left the center city area." (See http://_v\iWw...partisanii.eIe.nae.Qi^/.p.ubs/innocent/ab.b_trnJ)

The sworn declarations by Mumia and William Cook and Arnold Beverly's affidavit, along with a host of supporting evidence that we will detail below, were submitted to federal and state courts in 2001. (No. 99 Civ 5089; No. 8201-1357-59) But the courts have refused to even consider them. For their part, Faulkner and Smerconish dismiss Beverly's confession as "pure idiocy" (page 28). Predictably, they say not a word about the rampant corruption of the Philadelphia Police Department, including its working relationship with the mob. At the time of Faulkner's murder, the police department was under at least three federal investigations for corruption, including police ties with the mob. (See http://www.partisandefense.org/pubs/innocent/rw.html)

The cops want to kill Mumia not only because he has been an outspoken voice for black freedom, but also so that they can bury the proof of their own criminality.

The Eyewitnesses

Lie: According to Faulkner and Smerconish, "three people saw Abu-Jamal do it—four if you count [Albert] Magilton who temporarily looked away" (page 42). The other three are Cynthia White, Robert Chobert and Michael Mark Scanlan. The "trial testimony and pre-trial statements from the eyewitnesses to the murder... provide lucid and consistent confirmation of Abu-Jamal's conduct," and "illustrate a high degree of specificity, recounting such details as Abu-Jamal's brand of car, color of shirt, and style of hair" (page 29).

Truth: No witness testified to seeing Mumia, with gun in hand, actually shoot Officer Faulkner. Witness statements are confused, inconsistent and in their specifics describe someone other than Mumia as the shooter. Not a single prosecution witness ever described Mumia's "brand of car"—i.e., his taxicab.

Mumia wore his hair in dreadlocks, was over 6 feet tall and weighed about 170 pounds. He was wearing a blue quilted ski jacket with a wide vertical red stripe on either side of the front.

Mark Scanlan, a 24-year-old white male, initially described the man he claimed to have seen shoot Faulkner as wearing a red and yellow, or red, yellow and black sweater and a black hat. Scanlan explicitly stated that the man did not have MOVE-like dreadlocks, but an Afro hairstyle. Scanlan further stated that he could not see the man's face. (IIR 12/9/81) He testified at trial that he had been drinking and told police, "I don't know which male shot the officer." (N.T.6/25/82:13, 46; IIR 12/11/81)

Robert Chobert, a 23-year-old white cabdriver, first described a person he saw standing over and shooting Faulkner as heavyset and wearing a light tan shirt and jeans. (IIR 12/9/81) Three days later, he described the shooter as weighing 220-25 pounds and wearing a dark gray dress shirt with a red and green picture on the back. (IIR 12/12/81) He admitted both times that he did not see a gun, and in his second interview that he did not see any flash. (IIR 12/ 12/81)

Albert Magilton, a 26-year-old white male, testified that all he saw was Mumia walking fast into the street (N.T.6/25/82:100, 106) and that he didn't have a hat. (N.T.6/25/82:92) He also stated that he did not see anyone with a gun. (IIR 12/9/81; N.T.6/25/82:100) Prosecution witness Cynthia White, a 23-year-old black prostitute, described the shooter as "short." (IIR 12/9/81)

Some 20 witnesses who saw different portions of the entire incident from different vantage points, and saw each other, described varying accounts of what happened.

In addition to Beverly and Cook, six witnesses, including two cops and two civilian prosecution witnesses, reported that someone at the scene was wearing a green army jacket or coat. These witnesses include Mark Scanlan, Albert Magilton, Officer James Forbes, Officer Stephen Trombetta, Robert Pigford and William Singletary. (Scanlan: N.T.6/25/82:26 and IIR 12/11/81; Magilton: G.M. Newman 7/19/95 Interview; Forbes: IIR 12/9/81, 12/16/81; Trombetta: IIR 12/9/81; Pigford: IIR 12/9/81; Singletary: N.T.8/11/95:235-36) William Singletary testified at the 1995 PCRA hearings that a passenger in the VW, wearing an army coat, got out of the car, shot Officer Faulkner and ran away. (N.T.8/11/95:235-36) Witness Robert Pigford, who would go on to become a cop, told police the night of the shooting that immediately after hearing shots he saw a man in an army jacket bent over Faulkner. (IIR 12/9/81) Neither Mumia nor William Cook was wearing a green army jacket. In his 1999 affidavit confessing to the murder of Faulkner, Beverly stated, "I was wearing a green (camouflage) army jacket." In his 29 April 2001 declaration, William Cook stated that he had a passenger in his car, Kenneth Freeman, and that Freeman was also "wearing his green army jacket."

Lie: Faulkner and Smerconish write that Cynthia White "was a critical witness in our case" because "she was the one witness who, because of her location, saw the entire incident from start to finish" (page 280).

Truth: Cynthia White was not even there during the shooting. Prosecution witnesses Chobert, Scanlan and Magilton, as well as defense witness Veronica Jones, who knew White, all testified at trial that White was not on the corner where she claimed to see the shooting. (Chobert: N.T.6/19/82:227-28; Scanlan: N.T.6/25/82:58; Magilton: N.T.6/25/82:86; Jones: N.T.6/29/82:129-30) William Singletary testified that White came up to him after the shooting to ask him what happened. (8/31/90 Deposition 25)

Veronica Jones testified at the 1982 trial that White was given police favors in return for her false testimony. (N.T.6/29/82:129, 134-36) Faulkner and Smerconish falsely claim that Jones first raised this at the 1996 PCRA hearings (page 183). White's photo was posted in Faulkner's precinct with instructions to call Homicide when she was taken in. She was arrested twice in eight days after the shooting, and she was let go only after she signed new witness statements for Homicide. Each time, she changed her story to make a stronger case against Mumia. (N.T.6/21/82:159-90; 6/22/82:31, 33, 55-58) During the 1997 PCRA hearings, prostitute Pamela Jenkins testified that White told her that she was being threatened by police. (N.T.6/26/97:48) A 2002 sworn statement by Yvette Williams, who was in jail with Cynthia White, also stated that White was threatened by the police. (1/28/02 Declaration)

Lie: Faulkner and Smerconish write that cabdriver Robert Chobert, who during the 1982 trial "pointed at Abu-Jamal" as the killer (page 37), "witnessed Danny being knocked to the ground and the 'gunman' standing over him firing three more shots" (page 14). They include a claim by Chobert that he was parked behind Daniel Faulkner's car at the time of the shooting (page 308).

Truth: In 1995, Chobert admitted that he never saw the shooting. (G.M. Newman 9/25/01 Affidavit) Chobert was not parked behind Faulkner's police car, a fact confirmed by freelance photographer Pedro Polakoff's recently unearthed crime scene photos, which the prosecution had suppressed for nearly 25 years. Taken only minutes after the shooting, the photos show no car parked behind Faulkner's vehicle.
During the 1982 trial, Chobert admitted that Mumia did not fit the description Chobert had given the police of a heavyset black man. (N.T.6/ 19/82:234-35) Chobert initially told police the night of the shooting that the shooter "ran away," which would have been impossible for Mumia given his near-fatal gunshot wound. (N.T.6/1/82:70; 6/19/82:234-35) It was only after further interrogation that Chobert changed his story. (N.T.6/19/82:236-37) Chobert was driving with a suspended license while on probation for being hired to throw a Molotov cocktail into a school. (N.T.6/19/82:220-22; 8/15/95:5-6) During the 1995 PCRA hearings, Chobert admitted he was secretly given favors by the prosecution in exchange for his testimony and was kept under wraps by the police at all times during the 1982 trial. (N.T.8/15/95:4-10)

Lie: Faulkner and Smerconish write, "Only two people were seen by the five eyewitnesses to have come that close to Danny—William Cook and Mumia Abu-Jamal" (page 172). Besides White, Chobert, Scanlan and Magilton, the fifth "witness" referred to is Robert Harkins. Faulkner and Smerconish describe his testimony at the 1995 PCRA hearings as "corroborating Chobert's and White's accounts" (page 23).

Truth: Five witnesses said that one or two black men ran away eastward after the shooting. At the 1982 trial, defense witness Dessie Hightower insisted that he saw someone run from the scene. (N.T.6/28/82:125-27) Debbie Kordansky, Veronica Jones and Robert Chobert initially reported to the police that they saw someone flee the scene (Kordansky: IIR 12/9/81; Jones: IIR 12/15/81; N.T.6/1/82:70), though Jones and Chobert denied this at the trial after police pressure. (N.T.6/19/82:236-37; 6/29/82:99-102) During the 1996 PCRA hearings, Veronica Jones recanted her 1982 trial testimony, explaining that she had been threatened by the police with many years in prison on felony charges and loss of her children if she did not testify against Mumia. (N.T. 10/1/96:20-24, 32-33) During the 1995 PCRA hearings, William Singletary testified to seeing the passenger emerge from the VW, shoot Faulkner and run away (N.T.8/11/95:235-36), and Hightower reiterated that he saw a man flee the scene of the shooting and stated that he had faced harassment from the police for telling the truth. (N.T.8/3/95:18-19, 23-24, 103)

Harkins' statements to police were so varied from the prosecution witnesses and scenario of how Faulkner was killed that the prosecution did not call him to testify at the 1982 trial. In his statements to police (IIR 12/9/81, 12/17/81) and during the 1995 PCRA hearings (N.T.8/2/95:205-06), Harkins asserted that he saw only one person in proximity to Faulkner, the shooter.

Lie: Faulkner and Smerconish uphold the prosecution's story that William Cook was alone in his VW when he was stopped by Faulkner, claiming that Cook "never told the police that there was anyone with him in the Volkswagen" (page 141).

Truth: There was a passenger, Kenneth Freeman, in the car with William Cook. In both his May 1999 and April 2001 sworn declarations, William Cook confirmed that Freeman was in the car with him. During the 1995 PCRA hearings, William Singletary testified that there was a passenger, that he was wearing an army coat (confirming Cook's declaration), that this man was the shooter and that he ran away. (N.T.8/11/95:234-36)

During the 1995 PCRA hearings, it was also revealed that police had found the driver's license application of one Arnold Howard in Faulkner's possession. (N.T.8/9/95:6; 8/11/96:131, 139-40, 167) This information was concealed from the defense at the 1982 trial. It was critical because Howard had given the application to Kenneth Freeman. Freeman's presence in the car would explain how Faulkner got Howard's license application. In 1995, Howard stated that Freeman told him that he was in the VW at the time of the shooting. (N.T.8/9/95:9-10, 23; Howard 8/8/95 Affidavit)

Joseph McGill, who prosecuted Mumia in 1982, had, prior to that, prosecuted William Cook on assault charges. At Cook's trial, Cynthia White—who according to other witnesses did not see the shooting and had asked Singletary what had taken place—testified that there was a passenger in Cook's VW who got out of the car when Officer Faulkner approached the driver's side. (N.T.3/29/82:33; Singletary 8/31/90 Deposition 24-25) At Mumia's trial, she changed her testimony to claim that there was no one else on the sidewalk. (N.T. 6/22/82:134)

Even in her book, Maureen Faulkner acknowledges that after pulling William Cook over, Daniel Faulkner made "the normal call for a backup before getting out of his car, and then changed his request, saying to the dispatcher, 'on second thought send me a wagon'" (page 22), indicating that there was likely another person in the car.

The Phony Confession

Lie: Faulkner and Smerconish write: "In the ER, Abu-Jamal was heard by two eyewitnesses to shout defiantly, 'I shot the motherfucker and I hope the motherfucker dies'" (page 24). The two "eyewitnesses" were hospital security guard Priscilla Durham and Police Officer Garry Bell.

Truth: There never was a confession. As Mumia stated in his 2001 affidavit, "because of the blood in my lungs it was difficult to speak, and impossible to holler. I never confessed to anything because I had nothing to confess to." The "confession" was manufactured by the prosecution at a round table meeting with cops two months following the shooting (N.T.8/1/95:78-79, 91), after it became clear that an earlier bogus confession concocted by Inspector Alfonzo Giordano, who was a target of a corruption investigation, could not be used (see below).

Gary Wakshul, the police officer assigned to guard Mumia throughout the night of the shooting, reported that same day: "The negro male made no comments." (IIR 12/9/81 and N.T.8/1/95:38) The prosecution and Judge Albert Sabo prevented Wakshul from testifying at the 1982 trial, but at the 1995 PCRA hearings he testified that neither Durham nor Bell were even present at the time of the supposed confession.
(N.T.8/1/95:23, 51) In several reports, Stephen Trombetta, the other police officer assigned to guard Mumia, made clear that Mumia made no confession, including at the hospital. (IIR 12/9/81, 12/17/81, 2/12/82)

In fact, at the hospital Police Officer Garry Bell threatened Mumia, stating "if he [Faulkner] dies, you die." (LeGrand: IIR 2/2/82; Prayer: IIR 2/8/82; Durham: IIR 2/9/82) None of the cops and hospital security guards reported hearing what Bell and Durham claimed to have heard, even though Durham reported some 15 or 20 cops were in close proximity. (N.T.6/24/82:57) Neither Bell nor Durham even report that the other was present. Bell never mentioned the "confession" in his police log that night nor in a statement he gave to detectives on 16 December 1981. Bell first reported hearing Mumia confess on 25 February 1982.

Faulkner and Smerconish point to an unsigned, typewritten piece of paper—supposedly dated December 1981 and written by Durham's supervisor—recording the "confession" (pages 309-10). But at trial Durham denied that she had ever seen that report. (N.T.6/24/82:98-99) In 2003, Durham's stepbrother, Kenneth Pate, submitted a declaration that Durham told him she was pressured by the cops to falsely say Mumia confessed. (4/18/03 Declaration)

Smoke-and-Mirrors Ballistics

Lie: Faulkner and Smerconish write that the bullets removed from Faulkner "matched the gun purchased by Abu-Jamal" (page 24).

Truth: There was never a "match," not even any evidence that Mumia's gun was fired that night! The police firearms unit claimed that the main bullet fragment removed from Faulkner's head was too damaged to test, and a second bullet fragment removed from the head wound simply disappeared without a trace. (N.T.6/23/82:108; 8/2/95:62-66, 75-77) Incredibly, the police did not report ever testing Mumia's hands and gun for evidence of gunpowder or that the gun had been fired that night. (N.T.8/2/95:66-72) As the Polakoff photos show, the cop who collected the guns at the scene was improperly holding them with bare hands. He did not turn them in to the firearms unit for two hours, providing more than ample time for tampering with them. (N.T.6/19/82:169; 12/9/81 Prop. Rect.)

Faulkner and Smerconish state that a bullet removed from Faulkner was "consistent" with Mumia's Charter Arms gun (page 24) and include a snippet of testimony at the 1982 trial by the cops' own ballistician Anthony Paul (page 318). "Consistent" is a code word prosecutors use when they cannot match evidence. Indeed, Smerconish and Faulkner omit the next two pages of testimony where Paul admits that the bullet would be consistent with "multiples of millions" of other guns as well. (N.T.6/23/82:168-69)

Lie: Murdered by Mumia states that the defense has "never offered any shred of evidence" that there is a missing bullet fragment (page 117).

Truth: The lead fragment and its measurements (10x3x2 mm) are recorded in the Medical Examiner's
autopsy report. (12/9/81 Postmortem Report) As already noted, this fragment has disappeared and was not preserved as part of the ballistics evidence—facts established by Mumia's expert witnesses at the 1995 PCRA hearings. (N.T.8/2/95:75-77; 8/4/95:40-42; 8/9/95:151)

Murdered by Mumia cannot refute the fact that the Findings of the Medical Examiner, whom the D.A. qualified as an "expert" in ballistics at the 1982 trial (N.T.6/25/82:176), state that Faulkner was shot with a .44 caliber bullet; Mumia's gun was a .38 caliber. (12/9/81 Findings; N.T.8/2/95:73-74; 8/9/95:190) The disappeared fragment could be the remains of the .44 caliber bullet initially recorded by the Medical Examiner or from the .22 caliber revolver that Beverly said he was carrying the night of Faulkner's shooting.

Lie: Faulkner and Smerconish claim that Mumia's gun "was recovered at the scene along with five cartridges, all of which had been fired," that Mumia shot Daniel Faulkner in "his upper back" and then in the "center of his face," and that "both bullets were fired from less than twenty inches away" (page 24). Throughout the book, Faulkner and Smerconish retail the prosecution's story that after shooting Faulkner in the back, Mumia stoodover him as he lay on the pavement and fired at least three shots at his face.

Truth: There is no evidence of these three or four bullets, all but one of which supposedly missed their target at near pointblank range. As the Polakoff photos confirm, there are no divots (or bullet markings) in the sidewalk, proving that the prosecution's scenario is concocted.

Lie: Murdered by Mumia states that "the shells found in Abu-Jamal's gun were all Special +P ammunition (4 were Federal brand, 1 was Remington)," "a unique bullet with an extra heavy load of gunpowder" that "devastates its target" (page 115). Faulkner and Smerconish claim that this shows that Mumia was "fully resolved to shoot and seriously injure or kill someone," that he wanted to carry out "the execution of anyone who crossed his path" (page 87).

Truth: Mumia's gun did not have Plus P ammunition. The police Firearms Identification Unit report of 5 January 1982 does not identify the cartridges in Mumia's gun as Special Plus P even though such cartridges would have been clearly stamped. Demonstrating the web of inconsistencies in the prosecution's lies, Police Officer James Forbes, who had possession of the guns after the shooting, testified during the 1982 trial that the cartridge casings in Mumia's gun were Winchesters, not Federal or Remington brands. (N.T.6/19/82:175-76)

Mumia had a legally registered gun that he carried for protection after he had been robbed at gunpoint while driving his cab.

Lie: Smerconish and Faulkner write, "The bullet that struck Abu-Jamal was determined to have been fired from Danny's police-issued .38-caliber Smith & Wesson gun" (page 24). The prosecution has always claimed that Faulkner fired his gun as he was falling down after being shot. (N.T.6/19/82:12)

Truth: The prosecution's scenario is disproved by the fact that Mumia's wound took a steep downward path. (N.T.8/4/95:16-19, 21-22) The Medical Examiner's record from 9 a.m. on 9 December 1981 (some five hours after Faulkner's shooting) stated that Sergeant Westermann of Homicide told a Medical Examiner's investigator that Mumia was shot by "arriving police reinforcements."

The weapon that Faulkner purportedly used to shoot Mumia was not in a condition one would expect from a hunting enthusiast and ambitious officer about to take a detective's examination, and one patrolling Philadelphia's Center City at 4 a.m. According to the police ballistics report, the gun had a bent hammer spur, contained powder fouling, dirt and lint in the chambers and could not cock as designed in single action because of oversized rubber grips. The gun was likely a "throwaway." Finally, not a single prosecution witness testified to seeing Daniel Faulkner shoot Mumia. (Chobert: N.T.6/19/82:267; White: N.T.6/21/82:104; Scanlan: N.T.6/25/82:47; Magilton: N.T.6/25/82:88-89)

The Frame-Up Trial

Lie: Faulkner and Smerconish describe Judge Albert Sabo, who presided over the 1982 trial and the 1995-97 PCRA hearings, as a "reserved and dignified" judge who "had a reputation for being very seldom reversed on appeal" (pages 31-32).

Truth: Sabo was reversed on appeal in more than a third of his cases (J. Henderson, "Philadelphia's Judge Sabo: The Judge Who Became Death Row's King" [1996]). At the time of the 1982 trial, he was overheard by court reporter Terri Maurer-Carter as saying, "I'm going to help them fry the n——r," a fact completely disappeared in Murdered by Mumia. Sabo banished Mumia from the courtroom for nearly half the trial, depriving him of the ability to participate in his own defense. During the 1995 PCRA hearings, the Philadelphia Inquirer (16 July 1995) wrote of Sabo: "The behavior of the judge in the case was disturbing the first time around—and in hearings last week he did not give the impression to those in the courtroom of fair-mindedness." A 1996 study showed that Sabo sent more than twice as many men, overwhelmingly black and Latino, to death row than any other sitting judge in the country. He was a retired member of the Fraternal Order of Police and was widely known, including by the Philadelphia legal establishment, as a "prosecutor in robes."

Lie: Faulkner and Smerconish state that Joseph McGill, the 1982 trial prosecutor, was "determined to qualify as many black jurors as possible" (page 156).

Truth: Joseph McGill used 11 out of 15 peremptory strikes to bar black people from Mumia's jury. A statistical survey showed that Philadelphia prosecutors in the 1980s were 5.2 times more likely to throw blacks off juries than whites. In 1987, the Philadelphia D.A.'s office produced an official training tape, based on its longstanding practice, on how to exclude black jurors and get away with it. A one-minute excerpt of the video is posted on YouTube by Journalists for Mumia. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv9SJPa_dF'8) It features Assistant D.A. Jack McMahon advising prosecutors to choose jurors that are "unfair and more likely to convict"! He also advises prosecutors to avoid "the blacks from the low-income areas," warning, "you don't want smartpeople."

The Facts About the Arnold Beverly Confession

The 8 June 1999 Arnold Beverly affidavit detailing how he was hired to kill Faulkner, who had become a problem for the mob and corrupt cops, is a key piece of evidence that clearly demonstrates the depth of the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal. As they dismiss the Beverly confession out of hand, Faulkner and Smerconish barely say a word about the 2001 federal and state court proceedings in which the defense sought to present the confession and a substantial body of supporting evidence. Along with the sworn declarations of Mumia and William Cook, this included the affidavits of Donald Hersing, an FBI confidential source during its 1981-82 investigation of Center City police corruption, and private investigator Michael Newman. It also included the 28 July 2001 affidavit of Partisan Defense Committee counsel Rachel Wolkenstein, who served on Mumia's legal defense from 1995-99. Wolkenstein's affidavit described the body of substantial evidence supporting Beverly's confession and why Mumia's prior lead attorney, Leonard Weinglass, had refused to present that evidence in court.

Murdered by Mumia so studiously avoids the Beverly confession and supporting evidence that the authors do not even mention the lawyers who headed up Mumia's defense at that time—Marlene Kamish, Eliot Grossman and Nick Brown—instead falsely asserting that Mumia's current lawyer, Robert Bryan, "replaced Leonard Weinglass," whom Mumia fired in 2001 (page 292).

The fact is that Faulkner and Smerconish cannot refute Beverly's confession and the mountain of evidence that backs it up.

Fact: At the time of Faulkner's killing, the Philadelphia Police Department was under at least three federal investigations for corruption involving cop-mob ties. (D. Hersing 5/10/99 Affidavit) The Justice Department also had Philadelphia cops acting as sources in the investigations, including an officer whose brother was also a cop. Faulkner's brother was a cop. Faulkner also owned a very expensive "Topcon" camera model often used by the FBI at the time, and had used it the night of his death. (Wakshul IIR 12/16/81) The camera, which was in the possession of Philadelphia cops, has since disappeared. In Murdered by Mumia, Maureen Faulkner cryptically recounts that during the 1982 trial, defense attorney Anthony Jackson "asked me a very odd question. He asked me if Danny owned a camera. I said he did" (page 36).

Fact: Maureen Faulkner writes that Ed Frederick, a member of the Philadelphia police Stakeout unit, informed her that after meeting Daniel Faulkner at Broad and Race Streets, Faulkner "had to leave around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. to do 'club checks' when the bars let out" (page 18). In his 10 May 1999 affidavit, FBI informant Donald Hersing explained: "Uniformed officers would perform routine 'club checks' at the Morning Glory and other after-hours clubs to count the number of people at the clubs. The purpose of collecting this information was to help them determine how much of a payoff they should demand."

Fact: Virtually the entire chain of command for the "investigation" of Faulkner's death was under suspicion in federal corruption probes, including the head of the Central Division, John DeBenedetto (convicted), and the head of Homicide, James Carlini (unindicted co-conspirator). Inspector Alfonzo Giordano, who pled guilty to corruption in 1986, was the senior officer at the scene after Faulkner's shooting and played a key role in initiating and orchestrating the frame-up. Donald Hersing declared under oath that Giordano was part of a group of police officers engaged in corruption activities. (D. Hersing 5/10/99 Affidavit) Hersing also stated that police knew about the FBI investigations. Murdered by Mumia does not mention Giordano's name even once.

Fact: Giordano was the right-hand man for Frank Rizzo, Philadelphia's racist police chief and later mayor in the late 1960s and '70s. From 1968 to 1970, Giordano was in charge of the Stakeout squad, which helped lead a police raid on the Black Panthers' headquarters in 1970. He was also the supervisor of the 15-month police siege of MOVE'S Powelton Village house in 1977-78, which resulted in nine MOVE members being sent to prison on frame-up charges of killing a cop who had been shot in the police cross fire. Giordano knew exactly who Mumia was. The senior officer on the scene, he had both motive and opportunity to frame up Mumia for Faulkner's killing.

Fact: Giordano originated the claim that Mumia's gun—the putative murder weapon—was lying beside him on the street despite the fact that according to police records, the cops were still looking for the gun some 14 minutes after hordes of police had arrived on the scene. (Police Memo. 12/17/81) It was Giordano who claimed that, while in the back of the police van at the scene, Mumia confessed to shooting Faulkner. (IIR 12/9/81) This claim was refuted by Stephen Trombetta, who was in the van with Mumia and made clear that Mumia made no such statement. (IIR 12/9/81)

Giordano is also the cop who arranged for Chobert's supposed identification of Mumia. (N.T.6/1/82:70-71) Giordano was a key witness for the prosecution against Mumia at the January 1982 preliminary hearing and bail hearing. (N.T.l/8/82:90-99; 1/11/82:71-78) He testified again at a 1 June 1982 hearing regarding the bogus confession. (N.T.6/1/82:67-98) Nonetheless, Giordano was not called to testify at the 1982 trial. He was reassigned to desk duty and resigned from the Philadelphia police force one working day after the trial was over. As Rachel Wolkenstein noted in her 28 July 2001 affidavit, the fact that Giordano was not called to testify by the prosecution is a "powerful indication that the prosecution knew of Giordano's involvement in corruption and thought it would be too risky to present him at Mr. Jamal's trial." Notably, not only do Faulkner and Smerconish disappear Giordano from their book, but these pre-trial hearings are conspicuously missing from the transcripts on the Faulkner Web site.

Fact: As already noted, at least six witnesses, including two cops, reported someone at the scene thought to be the shooter wearing a green army jacket. Both Beverly and Kenneth Freeman, William Cook's passenger, were wearing green army jackets. Substantiating Beverly's assertion that he was hired with another man to kill Faulkner is Cook's 15 May 1999 declaration in which he states that Freeman told him he was part of the plan to kill Faulkner and had "participated in the shooting." Beverly's statement that Mumia was shot by a "uniformed police officer who arrived on the scene" is substantiated by the account of Sergeant Westermann, a Homicide police officer, who stated that Mumia was shot by "arriving police reinforcements." (12/9/81 Medical Ex. Inv. Log)

Fact: Beverly stated he saw two undercover cops and a uniformed police officer in a car nearby. In late 1996, an eyewitness named Marcus Cannon came forward with information that he saw two white men who appeared to be undercover police officers on the scene during Faulkner's shooting. (N.T.6/30/97:123-25) William Singletary has testified that he saw two police "white shirts" and other cops at the scene immediately after the shooting. As Beverly put it in his affidavit, "any police officers on the scene would be there to help me."

Mobilize to Free Mumia Now!

Referring to those fighting to prove Mumia's innocence, Faulkner and Smerconish write, "It's like that old Nazi propagandist said, if you tell a lie, tell it big enough, tell it often enough, it becomes truth" (page 30). This, in fact, is exactly the methodology of Murdered by Mumia.

In her drive to kill Mumia, Maureen Faulkner brags that she and the Fraternal Order of Police have taken every measure to prevent Mumia's voice from being heard from prison, openly boasting about trampling upon his First Amendment rights. She and Smerconish attack the most basic of democratic rights, ranting against Mumia's exercise of his right to appeal to fight his frame-up conviction. Murdered by Mumia oozes with racism— from its attacks on Mumia and his supporters, to its description of members of the MOVE organization as a bunch of "lawless" and "dangerous" murderers, to its use of code words that are the stock-in-trade of racist demagogues. Faulkner and Smerconish take pride in the support they have gotten from racists and xenophobes such as Joey Vento, who owns Geno's restaurant, which carries a sign declaring, "This is America. When ordering speak English."

Smerconish himself was a political advisor to Frank Rizzo. An outspoken proponent of racial and ethnic profiling by the cops and federal agents, Smerconish has made a name for himself by dismissing the torture at Abu Ghraib as "naked pyramid pictures" and calling for the mass arrest of undocumented immigrants who protest for their rights.

Smerconish and Faulkner portray Black Panthers such as Mumia as committed "cop killers" and Mumia's supporters as friends of "cop killers" who, like "terrorists," should have no rights. This is a sinister call for police terror not only against Mumia's defenders but all opponents of racist oppression, imperialist war and capitalist exploitation. In their mendacity, they write that MOVE was responsible for "an exploding bunker" that caused the death of eleven people, five of them children on 13 May 1985. They disappear the fact that it was the cops under black Democratic mayor Wilson Goode, aided and abetted by the Feds, that dropped a bomb on MOVE'S Osage Avenue home, killing eleven MOVE members and their children and destroying a black neighborhood.

Among those cited for honorable mention by Smerconish and Faulkner are a number of Democratic Party officeholders, such as Philadelphia D.A. Lynne Abraham and Ed Rendell, the District Attorney who prosecuted Mumia. Rendell was later the mayor of Philadelphia and is currently governor of Pennsylvania. At the same time, Murdered by Mumia targets even mainstream media spokesmen who say that while Mumia may be guilty, he should get a new trial given the evidence of misconduct by the cops, courts and prosecutors. These spokesmen primarily seek to refurbish the image of the American "justice" system. In attacking them, Faulkner and Smerconish are trying to clear the path for Mumia's execution by intimidating anyone who even raises a question.

Over 800 individuals and organizations, including unions representing hundreds of thousands of workers, have signed a PDC statement titled, "We Demand the Immediate Freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal, an Innocent Man," that also calls for the abolition of the racist death penalty. Signatories include Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer, black intellectuals Manning Marable and Henry Louis Gates Jr., actor Danny Glover and numerous trade unionists around the world. The crux of the PDC statement was echoed by the March 2007 issue of Shopsteward, published by the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which represents hundreds of thousands of workers. The unions that have gone on record in support of Mumia must be mobilized in action to combat this racist frame-up.

Mumia is the victim not of a rogue cop, bad prosecutor or racist judge, but of an entire "justice" system intent on silencing this courageous fighter for the oppressed. The capitalist state—at its core made up of the cops, courts and prisons—is an instrument of repression to uphold the class rule of the bourgeoisie. The lies peddled by Smerconish and Faulkner have been refuted many times over. That they are now given a renewed platform on national news stations should make it clear that those fighting on behalf of Mumia must be mobilized on the basis that he is an innocent man.

Every legal avenue must be utilized to fight for Mumia's freedom. But there should be no illusions that the forces that have kept him in the shadow of death for 26 years will give him justice. The only pressure that will have an impact on the rulers and their courts is the fear of the consequences of executing Mumia or entombing him for life. What is crucially needed is the mobilization of the social power of the international labor movement in the fight for Mumia's freedom. If undertaken with a mobilization of the union movement, the fight to free Mumia and abolish the racist death penalty would be a first, giant step toward infusing workers with the consciousness that this system must be overturned through proletarian socialist revolution. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal now! Abolish the racist death penalty!

The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which champions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people. This purpose is in accordance with the political views of the Spartacist League.

Partisan Defense Committee: P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013 partisandefense@earthlink.net * www.partisandefense.org *(212) 406-4252