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PHILADELPHIA—Two films with
radically opposed viewpoints about the case of death-row political
prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal had their premiers here on Sept 21.
Tigre Hill’s “The Barrel of
a Gun” created a huge splash in the media, warranting the front page of
the Philadelphia Inquirer. Celebrities, city and state
officials, and off-duty cops joined the enthusiastic and highly
partisan audience in the downtown theater in which the film was
exhibited.
What were they cheering
about? Hill’s film centers on the preposterous notion that Mumia and
his brother, Billy Cook, because of their alleged fanatical hatred of
the police, were hunting for a police officer to kill on Dec. 9, 1981.
As a result, that night, they ambushed Philadelphia Officer Daniel
Faulkner—and Mumia is guilty of killing him.
This argument first came to
light in the 2007 book, “Murdered by Mumia” by Maureen Faulkner and
far-right Philadelphia talk-show host Michael Smerconish. The chief
prosecutor in Mumia’s case, Joseph McGill, has put forward the same
sinister story, declaring on Smerconish’s radio show that “it’s awfully
coincidental” that Cook was driving his Volkswagen the wrong way on 13th
St. a moment before the shooting. However, no evidence has ever been
presented that Cook was driving the wrong way on a one-way street
before Faulkner pulled him over, and McGill said nothing about this in
Mumia’s trial.
It’s no surprise that the
Fraternal Order of Police, a range of public officials, and radio jocks
like Smerconish worked to make “The Barrel of a Gun” a major media
event. Nevertheless, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Annette
John-Hall called Tigre Hill’s effort “a film that fails to connect
dots.” She wrote (Sept. 24) that although she “admires” Hill for being
provocative, “I’ve got to admit, I left the screening of his movie shaking
my head in disbelief.”
Annette John-Hall points out
that the core of Hill’s argument is that Mumia was indoctrinated with a
cop-hating philosophy over a decade earlier, as a 15-year-old member of
the Black Panther Party. But the timeworn “angry Black man” syndrome,
she says, is not much to hang a murder charge on.
Unfortunately, the
Philadelphia prosecutor used the same “Black Panther” ploy during
Mumia’s sentencing hearing in 1982. At that time, McGill cited for the
jury a remark that Mumia had made while he was a Panther member:
“political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” an adage attributed
to Mao Zedong. McGill chose to ignore the fact that, following the 1969
murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark by Chicago cops, Mumia had made
the statement in order to characterize the bloodthirsty tactics of
police agencies in the United States.
But Tigre Hill blindly
follows McGill’s distortion and makes it the centerpiece of his film,
“The Barrel of a Gun.”
The other film that was
unveiled in Philadelphia, “Justice for Mumia: The Case for Mumia
Abu-Jamal,” lays out some of the evidence that was ignored by the
prosecutors—and by Hill. The film’s producer, Baruch College/CUNY
professor Johanna Fernandez, said at the press screening at the
National Constitution Center that “this film is about due process. It’s
about not convicting someone in the streets.” If you do that without
seeking the facts, she said, “you are proceeding on prejudice.”
Fernandez said that the
filmmakers have been working on the film for four years. They undertook
the project largely because of their concern about the endemic horrors
of U.S. prisons and “justice” system.
But according to the film’s
website, the filmmakers “decided to confront Tigre’s film with a more
thoughtful exploration of the [Abu-Jamal] case” after they “saw the
series of initial trailers that he released six months ago. Contrary to
his claim of having found ‘rare new insight’ into the case, the
trailers pointed to a rehashing of the basic arguments put forth by ADA
Joe McGill, who wanted to win a death sentence by any means necessary.
We want to elevate the dialogue at a time when reasoned voices are
needed.”
The filmmakers interviewed
Pedro Polakoff, who had photographed the crime scene soon after
Faulkner was killed and Abu-Jamal was wounded, though his photos were
ignored by police investigators. They also interviewed J. Patrick
O’Connor, the author of “The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal,” who argues
that Billy Cook’s business partner, Kenneth Freeman, was present in
Cook’s Volkswagen that night and was the actual shooter of Officer
Faulkner. Some of Mumia’s family members speak out in the film, and
touchingly convey how many lives have been disrupted by Mumia’s unjust
and brutal incarceration.
Mumia himself phoned in to
the panel discussion that followed the press screening. When one of the
panelists asked him how he has kept his sanity after being locked into
his death-row cell for almost 30 years, Mumia responded simply: “I feel
surrounded by love. That might sound a little corny, but guess
what—it’s the truth.”
Linn Washington, a Temple
University professor and writer for the Philadelphia Tribune,
mentioned in the panel discussion an item that might help to demolish
the spurious “ambush” scenario put forward by Joseph McGill, Maureen
Faulkner—and now Tigre Hill.
Washington pointed out that
the Philadelphia Bulletin, in an article written the day after
the Faulkner killing, stated that the taxi cab that Mumia had been
driving the night of the shootings had been found with a flat tire. It
seems that Mumia had radioed his dispatcher to have a mechanic go to
the intersection of 13th and Locust (where the shootings
took place) to fix the flat, and he also had telephoned his brother
Billy to give him a ride home. After arriving, Billy parked his car on
Locust St., and Officer Faulkner then pulled his police car right
behind him.
It is very difficult to
imagine a planned hit on a police officer, in which the shooter is
sitting in a cab that is registered to him and disabled with a flat
tire, radios his dispatcher of his whereabouts, and then expects to
depart in a “getaway car” sandwiched between a parked car and a police
cruiser.
Prof. Washington and Dave
Lindorff (author of the book, “Killing Time: An Investigation into the
Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal”) described at the panel
discussion a ballistics test they had recently conducted. The test was
meant to mimic the conditions stated in Mumia’s trial, in which
prosecutors said that Mumia fired three times at Faulkner from a
distance of three feet while the police officer was lying face-up on
the sidewalk. Accordingly, the two journalists fired a Smith &
Wesson .38 caliber pistol (like the one entered into evidence as the
murder weapon) into a slab of concrete similar to that of the sidewalk
at 13th and Locust St.
The experiment demonstrated
that under those conditions, a bullet would have left prominent dents
in the sidewalk. However, the photographs of Pedro Polakoff as well as
police photos from the scene do not show any bullet marks.
This raises a question over
the testimony of the prosecution’s two “witnesses”—prostitute Cynthia
White and cab driver and convicted arsonist Robert Chobert—who
testified they saw Mumia shoot Faulkner while the officer was on the
ground.
No other witnesses can
remember White even being at the scene. Moreover, Chobert’s taxi,
according to photos taken at the scene, was not in the position he said
it was—behind Faulkner’s police car. And if it were there, Chobert’s
view of the shooting, as he described it, would have been blocked by
the police vehicle. Washington’s and Lindoff’s article describing their
ballistics test can be found at http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff09202010.html.
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