The Next Chapter In The Mumia Racket

There is a new website out profaning the internet with more pro-Jamal blather. The two responsible parties for this cyber-excrement are a bloated, dope-smoking, wanna-be anarchist, and an overly confident and factually deficient German who apparently has internalized, but not mastered the art of Nazi propaganda. In a Orwellian twist, the duo have constructed a site called the "Abu-Jamal News" and it is cliched as it is funny.

These two consider themselves "journalists", but I find them more comedic than journalistic. There are too few moments when I can do this kind of work and push out a laugh, but these two clowns have provided me with more than a few over the last couple of years.

Michael Schiffman, wrote a book on Mumia that has apparently blitzkrieged it’s way across the fatherland. And now Schiffman wants to inflict his brand of macabre humor/revisonist histrionics on the rest of us.

I truly wished I had the ability to get Schiffman’s screed published over here, so that people who have access to the transcripts of the case, and are not fed cherry-picked excerpts, can eviscerate this trash that one too many trees died to help create. Than we can send Schiffman back to his own screwed up country and he can goose-step around Munich with his little Mumia sign and carry his cup to collect Deutsche marks for his murdering hero.
The other "journalist" in this dynamic duo, is Hans Bennet. Bennett is a gross apologist for all things MOVE and Mumia, and was up to his round tummy in the hideous campaign to malign John Gilbride. I have pointed out his overt lies on this blog on a number of occasions before and will enjoy doing so again.

Now, on their website, these two journalists of the Mumiac beat are claiming to have "explosive new evidence" that show through pictures from the crime scene, evidence, proof that Mumia was framed. A pretty heady boast to be sure and one that should not be taken easily, but in the world of Mumia, facts are as loose and fast as the sex workers of 13th and Locust.

To take it point by point:

It is argued that the Officer holding the weapon is doing so in a way that would have destroyed finger-print evidence and that this same Officer perjured himself during the 1982 trial when he claimed that he never touched the metal pieces in order not to destroy fingerprint evidence. But what are the facts?

What jumps out at me first is that the Officer is holding the gun by the grip, which being 1981 was very likely made out of wood. And more than just likely, it was testified to at court that Jamal’s weapon had a wooden handgrip.

The Officer in question, Officer Forbes was holding both Jamal’s gun and Faulkner’s by the handgrips in his left hand which would be consistent with his training. For if you are to hold a weapon with a wooden grip, the only plausible place to hold it is the grip as it is the only non-metal place on the weapon.

Jamal’s gun was not able to provide fingerprint evidence as they had been smudged. Something that was known to Jamal’s 1982 jury.

Next, in a stretch that is even incredible even for Jamal supporters, Schiff and Hans make a statement as fact that the testimony of Cynthia White, Michael Scanlan, and Chobert were coerced and that the events they described never happened. Quite a statement of hubris given the fact that court after court has decided that the events did happen and did so as described by the witnesses that Schiff and Bennet want to disparage. For what these witnesses had to say I would encourage everyone to read their testimony at danielfaulkner.com. Do that, and than weigh them against the arrogant declaration of fact made by the factually challenged "Jamal journalists". You will see that Schiff/Bennett are assuming what they should have to proof and are doing a bad job at it considering the availability of the transcripts.

It is also alleged that the police "manipulated evidence" by "moving" Officer Faulkner’s hat around the crime scene and the photos they present seem to back this point up. The problem with this however is that Faulkner’s hat is brought up in the trial transcripts, but not in the context of it’s location on the scene, but in Maureen Faulkner’s testimony. She held the hat as she explained that it was her husbands.

Now if it can be proven that police "planted" the hat in order to prop up their case or for emotional effect for the trial, than I would be very quick to cite this as evidence as malfeasance on their part, but I haven’t seen evidence of this to this point.

The most obscene aspect of the Schiff/Bennet propaganda is their assertion that "several" shots were allegedly fired by Jamal at Faulkner while Faulkner was on the ground. They than go onto say that this couldn’t have happened because no "traces" of the bullet strikes are visible on the sidewalk.

There are some serious problems with this line of reasoning. The first of which being that it was not possible for Jamal to have fired "several" shots at anyone. His weapon, that he bought, and had a license for, but not to carry concealed, was a 5 shot revolver. This makes the notion of him firing "several times" impossible and laughable.

According to witness testimony, Jamal shot twice at Faulkner’s back, striking the Officer once. Leaving him with three bullets. After being shot by Jamal, Faulkner swung around and apparently was able to get off one shot that struck Jamal. Faulkner goes down and his weapon slides away from him and he is now at the mercy of Jamal (the bullet removed from Jamal was conclusively linked to Faulkner’s gun). Jamal shows none. Despite Jamal’s purported disdain for the death penalty, he must have put his moral convictions on hold when he stood over Faulkner and shot downward towards Faulkner who was, according to witnesses, was writhing on the ground in an attempt to avoid being shot. One of those bullets struck the Officer between the eyes causing Faulkner’s whole body to jerk, killing him instantly. Jamal than stumbled a few feet, dropped his weapon, and slumped down. He is out of ammo, but this does not stop him from reaching for his gun at the approach of police Officers just a few seconds later.

Now, there are no close up shots of the cement on the Schiff/Bennett website that could show any damage done by the bullets fired. That Jamal’s acolytes now want to contrive an issue by arguing that the lack of damage done by the three remaining bullets (one of which remained in Faulkner’s body) to the cement is nothing more than sadism as offered by masochists.

Unfortunately for the Schiff/Bennet scam, at trial the police investigator did a fair job accounting for the bullets fired that night. We know that Faulkner got off one round that struck Jamal. And we also know that one of the five rounds fired from Jamal’s gun was removed from Faulkner’s skull. According to testimony another bullet was taken from the front door leading into 1234 Locust Street. And there was some conjecture in court over what appeared to be bullet holes in the door on 1234 Locust accounted for more than one bullet. The police investigator could not give a definitive answer due to the amount of bullet fragmentation and the jury knew all of this.
Moreover, there was testimony to the effect that there was damage to the concrete that was noted by the police investigators, that none is visible on the photos as offered by Schiff and Bennet means nothing in the whole scheme of things.

It does, however, demonstrate just how desperate Jamal supporters are to conjure up "new, explosive" evidence in a pathetic attempt to mitigate the tremendous amount of physical evidence that points to Jamal’s guilt.

In another example of unjustified arrogance, the dynamic duo claim that "none" of the witnesses saw Cynthia White at the scene. Well, nobody saw Arnold Beverly at the scene either, and we, to this day are told that he shot Officer Faulkner.

But is the claim about Cynthia White by Schiffman the truth?

First of all, it is of the utmost importance for Jamal supporters to assault White’s testimony as she provided some of the best of all the eyewitness testimony and an immediate identification of Jamal as the shooter, but even if nobody had noticed the prostitute it really made no difference.
She really wasn’t in anybody’s field of view and was behind Chobert. One person, interestingly enough did claim to see Mrs. White in the area that evening, William Singletary, one of Jamal’s more "interesting" witnesses.

It is curious to note that Singletary is the only one to have brought up White’s not being able to see the shooting from where he says he she was located. It is also interesting because all witnesses, both defense and prosecution can agree that Arnold Beverly was nowhere to be seen.
So let us assume that White was not at the scene of the crime. You still have the other three eyewitnesses, Jamal’s confession, the damning ballistics evidence, and on and on ad-nauseam.

Remove White and I argue that Jamal’s guilt is still as clear as day.

Now the most fantastic of all claims on this new site is that witness Chobert was not actually there on the night of the killing. The support for this claim being that his car is not visible on the photos presented on their site. This is not only absurdity in it’s most extreme form, but just shows further the intellectual bankruptcy of the pro-Mumia fanatics.

But let us indulge Schiffman/Bennett’s deranged fantasy for a moment and assume that Chobert was not at the scene, despite the fact that he spoke to people at the scene and most convincingly, that Jamal himself seemed to know exactly who Chobert was back in 1982 as this exchange makes clear

"Mumia-...And you saw me in the back of the wagon, didn’t you?

Chobert- Yes, I did.

Mumia-What made you certain it was the same man?

Chobert-Because I saw you buddy. I saw you shoot him. (the "him" in this case is referring to Officer Faulkner)."

Now, none of Jamal’s witnesses have ever attempted to refute the fact that Chobert’s was at the scene, nor does Jamal or his attorneys. In actuality, he was a very prominent witness at the scene as he identified Jamal and gave his statement. To believe that he was a non-entity on the scene that night is to believe in a conspiracy that not only involved the police, prosecutors, but also Jamal and his own witnesses and attorney who have never challenged Chobert’s presence at the scene. To believe Schiffman and Bennet’s outlandish and cynical, conspiratorial propaganda is to embrace madness.

In order to "prove" that Chobert was not on the scene the Schiffman/Bennett duo contend that the photos on their site show that Chobert’s cab was not on the scene when the pictures were taken. They fail however to mention the fact that just after the police arrived at the scene they had Chobert move his car, as demonstrated by the following testimony:

"Q. By the time that the Police arrived and told you to move back to your car, was there any other civilians on the sidewalk other than the man you said who ran ten feet and Mr. Jamal who you said ran ten feet? Where there any other civilians, I mean non-police people, on that sidewalk?

A. I didn't see none."

The police arrived at the scene roughly a minute after the shooting. The photographer that came on the scene arrived 10-15 minutes after the police and after Chobert would have already moved his cab.

Only two attention mongering, wannabe "journalists," have such a deprivation in character that they would try and muddy these waters even more with their half-baked conspiracy theories with no real evidence to back them up.