Socialist Action /April 2001
With Mumia's Life in the Balance:
The Tragic Evolution of Dan Williams
& Gerald Nicosia
By JEFF MACKLER
Attorney Dan Williams was dismissed last month
by innocent death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. He had served as an important
member of Jamal's legal team for the past eight years.
In late March, Williams appeared on Amy Goodman's
popular Pacifica radio show, "Democracy Now!", to argue that Mumia's
reason for his dismissal, the unauthorized publication of Williams' book
"Executing Justice: An Inside Account of the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal,"
was a "pretext" for the firing.
"Mr. Jamal," said Williams, "wants
to take this case in a direction that I felt he shouldn't." He added,
"A small fringe group has taken over the case."
Williams' book was published without the knowledge
or consent of Mumia, who had never seen it. Several attorneys I asked about
the matter confirm the veracity of Mumia's statement and legal citations
in his petition seeking Williams' formal dismissal. They agree that the
publication of the book represents a fundamental breach of the attorney-client
relationship. Mumia has sued Williams for this breach and is also seeking
to block the publication of his book.
In his acknowledgements at the end of his book,
Williams includes thanks to "Gerald Nicosia, a San Francisco writer
with whom I have spend many hours reflecting upon this case."
Nicosia, a poet and noted biographer of Jack Kerouac,
is in the early stage of writing his own book on the Jamal case. He has
attacked Jamal's supporters for supposedly "censoring" his efforts
after he circulated an 18-page proposal for his book to potential publishers.
Dan Williams states that he agrees with Nicosia's
charges of censorship. For his part, Nicosia has been sending his former
friends heated letters proclaiming his singular allegiance to "God
and the truth." At issue is Nicosia's hostility to those who question
his unsubstantiated public statements that "there is evidence"
that Mumia Abu-Jamal killed police officer Daniel Faulkner.
Nicosia's public formulations of this spurious
assertion vary. At a March 23 press conference that Nicosia initiated at
Philadelphia's exclusive Warwick Hotel, he modified his statement to say
that there "may" be evidence that Jamal was the killer.
Several of Mumia's tormentors eagerly joined Nicosia
in Philadelphia to sing his praises for repeating their lies. Present with
Nicosia were Joseph McGill, Mumia's frame-up prosecutor; Hugh Burns, a later
Mumia prosecutor in the case; and Maureen Faulkner, the wife of the police
officer Mumia was falsely convicted of killing. Working directly with the
Fraternal Order of Police, Faulkner has been the leading proponent of Mumia's
execution.
Nicosia's Chronicle review
Nevertheless, by his own admission to me, Nicosia
broke with his professed allegiance to "God and the truth" in
a book review he authored some six months ago for the San Francisco Chronicle.
While reviewing Jamal's most recent work, "All Things Censored,"
Nicosia included a line to the effect that "there is evidence that
Mumia was the killer."
I called Nicosia to inquire how such a statement
could be included in his review. Nicosia responded point blank that he had
not written the line. It was the Chronicle editors, he insisted,
who inserted the lie, but with his approval. "If I didn't include it,"
Nicosia told me, "my review would not be published and my opportunity
to have an otherwise favorable review of Mumia's book would have been lost."
But Nicosia did respond positively to my observation
that his lie was the "spoonful of tar that ruined the barrel of honey."
He drafted and mailed a letter of apology for his transgression to Pam Africa,
the central leader of the International Concerned Family and Friends of
Mumia Abu-Jamal. He sent me a copy.
Nicosia's letter of apology notwithstanding, he
soon began to repeat the lie, but this time with the amazing accusation
that those Mumia supporters who then declined to collaborate with him had
become his censors. Nicosia claimed in his March 23 press release that he
had circulated his book proposal secretly to avoid "harassment"
from the Mumia movement.
Nicosia, however, has never been harassed or excluded
from any Mumia event. On Oct. 7, 2000, for example, he attended a Bay Area
private reception for Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, the former prizefighter
whose murder conviction was reversed in court after he had spent 20 years
in prison. The "Hurricane" came to defend Mumia as a fellow frame-up
victim.
Gerald Nicosia was there as a guest. Tape recorder
in hand, he was afforded full access to Carter, whom he interviewed, and
to all other reception guests, including Pam Africa. No one present objected
to or otherwise hindered his "work."
As for a statement that Nicosia made in his March
23 press release that former Mumia attorney Leonard Weinglass "would
no longer cooperate" with him after the contents of Nicosia's book
proposal were revealed, Mr. Nicosia lies yet again.
From the very first day that Mr. Weinglass was
approached by Nicosia for interviews-that is, more than a year before Nicosia's
book proposal went astray-Weinglass declined. With few exceptions, Leonard
Weinglass has turned down all such invitations, having largely restricted
himself to public presentations and to legal matters.
The few times that Weinglass had granted formal
interviews to major media, his remarks were brutally mauled and distorted
to meet the needs of editors, like Nicosia's at the San Francisco Chronicle.
What is Nicosia's "evidence"?
I gave Nicosia a complete set of the 10,000 pages
of transcripts of Mumia's 1982 trial and 1995 Post Conviction Relief Act
hearing. He had full access to every meeting and rally organized by what
he now calls Mumia's "iron-fisted censors."
Mumia's supporters had nothing to hide from the
first day Nicosia decided to write his book to today.
But Nicosia did have something to hide. He hid
from Mumia's defense movement the fact that his book proposal purported
to have "evidence" proving Mumia's guilt.
Strangely, Nicosia declines to identify publicly
what this "evidence" may be. But Nicosia did reveal it to me.
According to Nicosia, the bullet that killed Faulkner was of a special type
.38 caliber, the same caliber and type of bullet that Mumia's gun contained.
This allegation, of course, is nothing new. There
has been considerable controversy over this so-called evidence, including
the fact that the state's medical examiner originally reported that Faulkner
had been "killed with a .44 caliber bullet," a bullet that could
not have been fired from Jamal's gun. Amnesty International also cites this
fact and adds that the medical examiner was certified by the court as a
ballistics expert.
Nicosia told me that he got his information on
the bullet issue from Dan Williams, a fact that in and of itself called
Williams' loyalty to his client into question. And indeed, Williams, who
confirmed to me that he gave the information to Nicosia, does express the
opinion in his book that Faulkner was killed by a .38 caliber bullet.
However, Williams points out that there is overwhelming
evidence that establishes Mumia's innocence.
Nicosia ignored Williams' conclusion of innocence,
apparently finding it helpful to hype the bullet issue for his own gain.
And Nicosia's so-called evidence in regard to the bullet falls short on
several accounts:
· The police failed to conduct any tests
on Mumia's hands to determine if a gun had ever been fired by him.
· The police failed to conduct the most
elementary tests, to either smell the gun barrel or feel it, to determine
if the gun itself had been fired.
With more than a score of police on the scene and
at the hospital where Mumia was taken after a near fatal wound, the absence
of these routine tests amounted to a spectacular omission, so much so that
many have concluded (including Williams in his book) that the tests were
actually done but the results likely "deep sixed" in Williams'
words, to hide results that would have exonerated Mumia.
- The police, by their own admission, "lost"
a fragment of the bullet that the medical examiner declared to be the fatal
missile, another spectacular "mistake."
- The prosecution could not produce any evidence
that conclusively matched the markings on Mumia's gun barrel with those
of the bullet, even if it was a .38 caliber.
- And finally, the same police and prosecutors
who intimidated witnesses, falsified confessions, and otherwise organized
Mumia's frame-up, had sole possession of Mumia's gun and the alleged fatal
bullet.
Nicosia's "evidence" also excludes consideration
of the fact that the jury never saw the medical examiner's report of the
.44 caliber bullet. Nor did it know of the lost fragment, or, for that matter,
of the medical reports that refute the police version of Daniel Faulkner's
murder.
Williams denounces "fringe element"
Nicosia's March 23 press release crudely refers
to a statement by Dan Williams, implying that Williams was fired because
he had objected to the so-called censorship of Gerald Nicosia. Nicosia insinuates
that he was perhaps responsible for Williams' dismissal.
Here Nicosia poses as the man whose "evidence"
was so damning that Mumia fired his own attorney to repress it.
But Jamal's dismissal of Williams had absolutely
nothing to do with the content of William's book. At the time of Williams'
dismissal Mumia had never read it.
Unfortunately, although Dan Williams states his
belief that Mumia is innocent, he is continuing along a harmful path. His
interview with Amy Goodman separated him from the case in a tragic and absurd
manner. Williams asserted that "while Mumia's case had the enormous
potential of reaching out broadly and explaining what's wrong with the criminal
justice system ... a small [unnamed] fringe element has taken control of
the case."
Williams told Goodman that his discussions with
mainstream media people convinced him that "the case has become marginalized,
a spectacle."
"It has the grandiosity of a conspiracy...,"
he said, the mobsters killing Faulkner, Anthony Jackson [Mumia's 1982 attorney]
entering into a conspiracy with Judge Sabo [the judge in Mumia's 1982 trial].
... These are insupportable. We have no evidence to prove them. ... It's
histrionic rhetoric."
The reference to mobsters killing Faulkner is also
to be found in Williams' book, his "Inside Account." According
to Williams, this refers to a discussion among Mumia's four attorneys wherein
one raised "mobsters" as a possible avenue to pursue. But the
defense team and Mumia rejected it.
Aside from this reference, there has not been a
single occasion where this notion was raised, either publicly or during
the course of Mumia's trial proceedings by any attorney-or for that matter
by anyone associated with Mumia's defense. The attorney who Williams attributes
the remark to was dismissed from the case more than a year ago.
Thus Williams' histrionic comments on the radio
reveal nothing; the "mobster" theory never saw the light of day
until Williams himself announced it in his "Insider Account,"
written without Mumia's authorization.
Mumia excluded from courtroom
But Williams' second so-called conspiracy has seen
the light of day. The collusion between Mumia's original court-appointed
attorney, Anthony Jackson, and Judge Albert Sabo and prosecutor Joseph McGill
has been well-documented.
It appears in black and white in a sidebar to the
court transcript. It appears again in an amicus curiae brief submitted by
the Chicana/Chicano Studies Foundation on Mumia's behalf. With Mumia's approval,
this was submitted to Judge Yohn, the federal district court judge assigned
to Mumia's case.
When Judge Yohn broke with precedent and refused
to receive this critical brief, Mumia asked attorney Marlene Kamish to file
a writ of mandamus in the U.S. Court of Appeals demanding that Yohn consider
the matter.
A central focus of Mumia's position appears in
Kamish's argument in the section entitled: "Only the Chicana/Chicano
brief exposes the fraud perpetrated upon Mr. Jamal by judge, prosecutor,
defense attorney [Anthony Jackson], and Supreme Court Justice McDermott
in conducting a sham proceeding before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to
justify denial of his right to represent himself."
Kamish notes that "there was something exceedingly
'fishy' about these alleged proceedings, as indicated by the lack of any
entry on the Supreme Court docket of any petitions, hearings or rulings
concerning such matters."
Kamish writes,"Mr. Jackson, and Justice McDermott
all made believe it was a legal proceeding rather than what it really was-a
farce. ... This sham proceeding, bereft of any legal validity, was utilized
to defraud Mumia Abu-Jamal out of his twin constitutional rights to represent
himself in his trial and to have the assistance of lay advisor John Africa
at counsel table."
The record shows that Jamal's court-appointed attorney,
Anthony Jackson, the same attorney that Jamal refused to accept as his counsel,
actually suggested to Judge Sabo that Mumia be removed from the court and
excluded from his own trial. The result was that Jamal spent more than half
of his own trial locked in a holding cell, with no provisions for him to
hear, let alone to participate, in the proceedings where his life hung in
the balance.
Far from a "conspiracy theory," as Williams
alleges, Anthony Jackson's conduct is a matter of the court record.
Williams' book portrays Jackson not as a person
who acted in collusion with Mumia's prosecutors and Judge Sabo but rather
as a hapless, ill-prepared, perhaps incompetent attorney. While the court
record and Williams' book demonstrate this to be the case, the record also
demonstrates, that for whatever reason, Jackson acted in collusion with
Sabo and the prosecution.
The remainder of Williams' Pacifica radio interview
was a sad commentary on his integrity. He claimed that Mumia never asked
to see Williams' manuscript. "There were good reasons why Mumia never
saw the book," Williams stated, and then added, "It would be a
tacit admission that he agreed with every word."
It is hard to believe that Williams does not understand
that in what is perhaps the world's most debated death row case, his own
client would not want to review the work of his attorney when his life is
at stake.
Williams tried to justify his unjustifiable conduct
by citing a case where one Jeffrey Turbin wrote a book on the Contragate
trial of Oliver North while North's appeal was still pending. Turbin was
unsuccessfully sued by the Justice Department, Williams argued to Goodman
in his own defense.
But Goodman ended the matter when she responded
that Turbin was representing the prosecution, not the defense.
Today, Mumia's enemies-from the prosecution, to
the Fraternal Order of Police and the local media-are having a field day
with Williams and Nicosia, who both allowed their egos and personal interests
to interfere with an objective judgment.
In Nicosia's case, a man with no book and no facts
has found his 15 minutes in the limelight. He will be forgotten along with
his factless speculations.
In the case of Dan Williams, he was apparently
unprepared to remain a disciplined member of Mumia's legal team and serve
his client in pursuing a line of argument that provided concrete evidence
that Mumia was denied his constitutional right to self-representation. He
has aggravated his mistakes by fruitless attempts at self-justification.
Meanwhile, Mumia courageously endures in his struggle
for the truth. With his life on the line, he offers nothing in his defense
but the facts that prove his innocence and his challenge to all those who
have denied him his fundamental rights.
The record demonstrates that faint hearts, liars,
and idiots have their moments in history. Mumia's truth will outlive them
all.
Jeff Mackler is a National Coordinator of Mumia
Abu-Jamal's defense and the National Secretary of Socialist Action.
Socialist Action /April 2001 |