|
"The history of the criminal case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, which is by now almost 25 years
old, has been characterized by bias right from the start: against a
black man whom the court denied a jury of his peers, against a member
of the economic underclass who did not have a real claim to a qualified
defense, and against a radical, whose allegedly dangerous militancy
obliged the state to eliminate him from the ranks of society."
So writes German author Michael Schiffmann in his new book “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
this past month. [The German-language version was recently published in
Europe,
and the author is currently looking for a publisher for the
English-language version of the book.]
In 1982, Abu-Jamal was convicted
of killing white 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."
Schiffmann
writes that a third person (not Abu-Jamal or his brother Billy Cook)
most likely shot and killed Faulkner on the morning of Dec. 9, 1981.
This third person was Kenneth Freeman (Billy Cook's friend and business
partner), who—according to the available evidence—was a passenger in
Cook's car. Freeman likely shot him in response to Faulkner’s shooting
Abu-Jamal in the chest, and was therefore the black male that six
eyewitnesses reported to have seen fleeing the scene moments before
other police arrived.
“Race Against Death” asserts
that ballistics almost certainly rule out Abu-Jamal’s firing the first
shot (into Faulkner's back), and that much evidence shows that he also
didn't fire the lethal bullet to Faulkner's head. However, in the very
unlikely scenario that Abu-Jamal did shoot Faulkner, it would have been
a response to being shot himself and would
therefore be justified self-defense.
MIT professor Noam Chomsky (a long-time supporter of Abu-Jamal)
writes that Schiffmann's "careful and
scrupulous inquiry into the events and the available evidence brings to
light much that is new or was obscured," and "raises
understanding of this painful and critically important case to a new
level. Not only his comprehensive research, but also his penetrating
evaluation of the background and import, should be the basis for
further engagement in the case itself and the intricate array of issues
in which it is embedded."
Building upon evidence presented
in the other two books written about Abu-Jamal's case (Dan Williams'
2001 “Executing Justice” and Dave Lindorff's
2003 “Killing Time”), Schiffmann boldly
presents both new evidence and an entirely original analysis of
previous ballistics evidence.
Pedro Polakoff’s
photos
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 Polakoff. The photographer arrived within 12
minutes of hearing about the shooting on the police radio and about 10
minutes before the Mobile Crime Unit (responsible for forensics and
photographs) arrived. 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 had been published in
Philly newspapers at the time, and five others were lost. Schiffmann told Z Magazine that he had published
five of the 26 remaining photos to show the following three points:
1) "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!
2) "In court Police Officer
James Forbes claimed that he had ‘secured’ the weapons of both Faulkner
and Mumia 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.
3) "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 Mumia 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 fired
and 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. Schiffmann
has informed Mumia's lawyers about Polakoff's evidence—who are looking into it further.
No bullet traces in sidewalk
The prosecution claims that Mumia stood over and shot at Faulkner 3-4 times
(with only one shot hitting him) while Faulkner was lying on his back. Schiffmann asserts that if this were true, there
would have had to have been 2-3 large divots in the pavement (next to
Faulkner's body) resulting from the bullets' impact. Since photos and
police reports do not reveal any damage or bullet fragments in that
location, Schiffmann concludes that the
prosecution scenario must be false.
While this "missing
divots" observation was publicly revealed in 2001 by Mumia's former lawyers, Schiffmann
is literally the first writer to investigate this further. To support
the assertion, Schiffmann interviewed a
German ballistics expert and was told that "such divots couldn't
possibly have been overlooked." He concludes: "They were
simply not there."
Furthermore, photographer Pedro Polakoff "emphatically denied that there could
be any such divots beneath the blood or anywhere else in the area of
the sidewalk to be seen on his photos."
After asserting the fraudulence
of the prosecution's scenario, Schiffmann
goes further and declares that the three prosecution witnesses
supporting this scenario must have been lying.
Even ignoring previous evidence
that witnesses Robert Chobert and Cynthia
White falsely testified, "the absence of any bullet traces or
bullets in the sidewalk in front of 1234 Locust is irrefutable physical
evidence that these two, plus witness Michael Scanlan,
did not tell the truth at Mumia's trial. By
that simple observation, a central part of the prosecution's theory is
simply blown out of the water—and new evidence is on the table thereby
for the coaching, coercion and manipulation of witnesses."
Bullet and fragments at crime
scene
Schiffmann's
entirely original ballistics analysis is the most explosive section of
“Race Against Death.” Researched for more than three years, this
chapter analyzes both the unexplained bullet and fragments found in the
doorway of 1234 Locust Street
and the copper bullet jacket found on the sidewalk (all a full
car-length from Officer Faulkner's body).
Most likely, the bullet shot into Faulkner's
back (traveling at an upward angle and exiting slightly beneath his
throat) came from the sidewalk behind Faulkner as he was facing
northwest towards Mumia and towards the
parking lot situated at the northeastern corner of the intersection of
13th and Locust, where Mumia came from.
The most logical way for Mumia to approach the scene was diagonally from
northwest to southeast—but the only bullet fragment found in or around
1234 Locust that could have had anything to do with the shot in
Faulkner's back traveled from northeast to southwest, at a sharp angle
from where Mumia was approaching the scene!
Schiffmann
shows that even if Mumia had approached the
scene in an indirect and awkward way by almost circumventing it first,
the bullet fragment in question cannot have come from a shot fired by
him at that time. There was no evidence of any bullet further east down
Locust—where it would have been had Mumia
shot Faulkner from his more logical approach to the scene from a
northwestern direction.
Schiffmann
writes in “Race” that "this evidence shows that the first shot
that hit Faulkner did not come from the direction from which Abu-Jamal
approached the scene, could therefore not have been fired by Abu-Jamal,
and was thus necessarily fired by some third person, a possibility that
the prosecution has always adamantly denied."
Schiffmann
told me: "The first key point is that Mumia
is no murderer. If he shot at all, he shot to defend his own life,
after he intervened at the scene in the first place to protect his
brother, who had already been beaten bloody."
"Second, it is very
unlikely that Mumia even took his gun out of
its holster during that fateful night. What if the destruction of
fingerprint evidence on Mumia's gun (shown in
Polakoff's photos) was not just negligent,
but deliberate? It would mean that the police themselves were the ones
who drew Mumia's weapon (which had been empty
apart from five spent cartridges to begin with) out of his shoulder
holster."
The third person: Ken Freeman?
Schiffmann
cites six witnesses (including several that were intimidated by police)
that saw someone run away before police arrived, and then argues that
this third person was most likely Billy Cook's business partner and
friend, Kenneth Freeman.
In the 1995 PCRA hearings it was
revealed that Faulkner had a license application in his front pocket
(concealed from the defense for 13 years) for one Arnold Howard—who
testified that he had loaned his temporary (non-photo) license to
Kenneth Freeman.
Schiffmann
explained to me that "Billy Cook's attorney Daniel Alva told Dave Lindorff (in his book ‘Killing Time’) that Cook had
told him within days after the shooting that Freeman had been with him
that night. There wasn't the slightest reason for Alva to have done so
if it was not indeed true. Lying to journalists doesn't belong to the
duties of a defense attorney, and the assumption that a well-respected
member of the Philadelphia
legal community such as Alva would do so for no apparent reason makes
little sense to me."
Returning to his ballistics
analysis, Schiffmann argues: "A person
coming out of the passenger seat of Billy Cook's VW would have been
ideally placed to fire the shot that hit Faulkner in the back and
exited through the region below his throat. Faulkner had on a clip-on
police tie that was apparently hit right at that clip (since there was
blood and lead on it). The tie was found nowhere near 1234 Locust where
it should have been found had Mumia fired
that shot in Faulkner's back. Instead, it was on the northern side of
Locust shortly before the intersection of 13th and Locust.
“And this, in turn, means that
the shooter must have been on the sidewalk in front of 1234 Locust—not
in the street coming from the parking lot, as Mumia
was.”
Further supporting Schiffmann's argument are
the mysterious circumstances of Freeman's death. On May 13, 1985
(the same day police firebombed the MOVE organization's headquarters), Freeman was found dead in a parking lot. Likely
murdered by police that day, he was found naked, handcuffed, and had a
drug needle in his arm. Given the impossibility of injecting himself
with the needle while handcuffed, the official explanation for the
31-year-old's death (heart attack) seems incredible.
"If Freeman was indeed
killed by cops, the killing probably was part of a general vendetta of
the Philadelphia cops against their 'enemies,' and the cops killed him
because they knew or suspected he had something to do with the killing
of Faulkner," said Schiffmann.
The Arnold Beverly
confession
After years of careful analysis, Schiffmann concludes that the scenario presented by
career criminal Arnold Beverly in his 2001 affidavit (stating that he
killed Faulkner and that Mumia was not
involved) is "too contradictory to be tenable."
However, Schiffmann
is highly critical of the courts' flippant rejection of the Beverly
affidavit. Considering the seriousness of a death-row homicide case, he
argues that they should have at least determined its credibility in a
public court hearing.
The controversial Beverly
scenario is no longer an issue in the courts, but Schiffmann
argues that this may not be the worst thing. "The Beverly
affidavit has often been a distraction from what should be the really
central issues: frame-up, unfair trial, legal innocence, actual
innocence. No Arnold Beverly is needed to show that Mumia
should be a free man and shouldn't have spent even one day in jail."
Freiheit für Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Noam
Chomsky argues that "Mumia's case is
symbolic of something much broader. ... The U.S.
prison system is simply class and race war. ... Mumia
and other prisoners are the kind of people that get assassinated by
what's called 'social cleansing' in U.S.
client states like Colombia."
Schiffmann
also feels that Mumia's case is part of a
much larger picture and devotes most of his book to providing a proper
historical context. "Determined not to write the typical boring
academic tract," Schiffmann told me:
"My book's not just about Mumia. His
case is important because of the larger legal, political, and social
issues that his case exposes.
“I investigate the U.S.'s
constitutional tradition, the history of the Civil Rights and Black
Power movements, the horrendous history of city development in the U.S.
tragically exemplified in Philadelphia, Mumia's
extraordinary yet typical history of a Black youth alienated by the
false promises the U.S. ’offered’ for him as a young man of the wrong
color, and finally the development of the U.S. into a virtual police
state for many segments of the population."
Schiffmann
emphasizes the extreme importance of Mumia's
current battle in the courtroom, but feels that solid legal strategy
will only go so far in gaining a new trial. The key will be to exert
maximum political pressure from the grassroots in Philadelphia
and around the world. A "broad, multi-faceted and democratic
mass-movement," emphasizing that "Mumia
is all of us," must be used to ensure real justice.
Schiffmann
urges those in the U.S.
to attend (or support locally) the massive Philadelphia
demonstration being organized to support Abu-Jamal on Dec. 9—the 25th
anniversary of Abu-Jamal's arrest. "We have kept Mumia alive. Against the odds, we have won the
first stage of an uphill battle. Now we must go on all the way—and that
is to free Mumia
Abu-Jamal!"
This review is based on both a
reading of the unpublished English language version of “Race Against
Death” and the author's recent interview with Schiffmann.
-Hans Bennett is a
Philadelphia-based photojournalist who has been documenting the
movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and all
political prisoners for over five years. For more, visit his website:
http://www.insubordination.blogspot.com./
|