Another Factually Challenged Mumia Article From Kevin Price

(Pic of Kevin Price yelling at people)

Whomever thought it wise to promote Kevin Price to propagandist for MOVE might want to re-consider their choice. The guy can't get his facts straight, much less string together a coherent sentence. One has to wonder whether or not Kevin has "switched sides" and is now playing for the other team given the amount of embarrassment that he must bring down upon his comrades with his sub-competent and largely fact less pro-Jamal tracts. This latest offering of his is just the latest of many and as usual he manages to get the important things wrong. No Surprise there.

Kevin begins by repeating the already discredited notion that Jamal was savagely brutalized by arriving officers at the crime scene. The only witness who claims to have seen this assault was William Singletary, who also saw imaginary helicopters amongst many other things that simply did not occur. Not only that, but the medical evidence as offered by Jamal's own witnesses seem to contradict the account of Jamal's alleged brutalization. Defense witness Dr. Anthony Coletta testified to the following:

A. I believe in the left upper aspect of the forehead somewhere near the mid line of the head up near the hair line.
Q. Any others, sir?
A. He had swelling over the left eye, a laceration of his left lower lip, and there was soft tissue swelling on the right side of his neck and chin.
Q. Now, you noted that from a cursory examination, again? Is that right?

On direct examination Dr. Coletta admitted that he was unable to determine the cause of these relatively minor injuries that amounted to a small cut on the forehead and swelling, hardly evidence of a brutal beating or the "Jamal as a human battering ram" as Singletary testified to at the PCRA hearing.

Another discredited aspect of Kevin's piece is the oft repeated allegation that Jamal was driven around for nearly an hour as police "waited for him to die". A damning comment if it were true. But again, if you are to believe Jamal's own witness, Dr. Coletta, he first saw Jamal around 4am just a few minutes after the shooting occurred. Another witness for the defense says that they saw Jamal at the hospital around 4:20am. The shooting of Officer Faulkner and Jamal occurred around 3:53am.

The next fiction in Kevin's badly put together pro-Jamal rant is that Judge Sabo was a "lifetime member" of the Fraternal Order of Police. This is simply not the case. Judge Sabo was a member of the FOP for eight years while he was an "under-Sheriff", but resigned from the organization when he became a Judge.

Kevin proceeds forward in his typical nonsensical fashion without a shred of decency or respect for factuality.



A brief rebuttal of some of his misrepresentations follows:

1. The "racially stacked" jury was one that Jamal partially helped to impanel. It began with three black jurors and would have begun with four had Jamal not stricken the African-American from the jury pool.

2.It is all well and good to heap criticism upon Judge Sabo, but Kevin may be mindful of where he gets his quotes from. Those who criticised the Judge the most in the media are also papers who consider Jamal to be guilty. Also, it was not Sabo who found Jamal guilty and sentenced him to death, it was the multi-racial jury. Furthermore, dozens of Judges have reviewed Sabo's findings and only one, Judge Yohn has saw fit to take issue with anything that occurred in Sabo's courtroom.

3. The Philly media was no monolith and considering Jamal's friendship with a number of reporters, the notion that he didn't get a fair shake in the press is a bit far fetched.

4. It was not the FOP who sentenced Jamal to death, it was a jury. That people want a sentence carried out that was handed down nearly a quarter a century ago should hardly be surprising.

5. It is not the "movement" to free Jamal that has kept him alive, but rather a judicial system in PA that has proven rather unwilling to use the death penalty. Statistically speaking, those on PA's death row are more likely to die of old age than they are via the needle, movement or not.

The Chaka Fattah issue is a silly spectacle. Obviously, a police union would not endorse a candidate for mayor that has made statements on behalf of a cop-killer. Just as the pro-Jamal forces are free to use their freedom of speech in order to influence people to their cause, so to are the FOP. The FOP is free to boycott people who support Jamal just the same as the pro-Jamal folks are free to boycott those who oppose Jamal.

The line is crossed however, when people like myself are threatened (incidentally enough by Kevin Price) and when film-makers like Tigre Hill are intimidated from plying their trade by Jamal supporters. That is where free-speech ends and crass intimidation tactics begin.

To invoke the idea of a "police state" as Kevin has is sheer lunacy. Perhaps because his existence involves living in a state of perpetual control of a cult he has become solipistic enough to think this is simply the way the world works, but he is dead wrong. The only police state is the one in his head.

And here we go again with the confession. Kevin rightly claims that two more witnesses have come forward with evidence of a Jamal confession bringing the total number of people who claim to have heard Jamal confess to seven. This does not count another hospital security guard who likely heard the confession, but was not called by the prosecution nor does it account for the Jefferson Hospital investigator who took Durham's re-counting of Jamal's confession "a day or so" after it occurred.

Now, even after I left the Jamal movement I found the confession story to be rather dubious, but after a great deal of research I am relatively certain that the confession occurred even if some of the police Officers lied about it. The NBC producer had no reason to lie about the confession and neither did Durham. Moreover, the case against Jamal did not hinge upon his confession, rather it was just another example of just how guilty he was. The ballistics evidence alone, coupled with Jamal's behavior at trial would have likely been enough to convince the jury that Jamal was a cold-blooded cop-killer.

With regards to Philip Bloch, the only thing that was ever truly proven about him was that he stayed a Jamal supporter even after he allegedly heard Jamal confess. This would not make him unique amongst Jamal supporters. I know from my own experience that there are plenty of "Free Mumia" types who could care less whether or not Jamal shot Faulkner and some that would be glad if he did. MOVE leader John Africa for example, sent his foot-soldiers to the hospital the night of the shooting in order to begin the efforts to free Mumia, this before the investigation had barely begun.

MOVE members and supporters such as Kevin Price are not interested in the facts of Jamal's case. A cursory glance at their crude propaganda will tell you that. Their allegiance is not dissimilar from that of a cult-of-personality. In MOVE, you do as you are told and believe what you are told. If Kevin is told that Mumia is innocent than it is so. For him to do an independent investigation on his own would be tantamount to treason. In MOVE, to doubt the leaders is to doubt John Africa, and to doubt John Africa is to doubt God.