Monday, June 30, 2008

Anti-MOVE Blog T-Shirt Ideas

(Anti-Mumia shirt available at the Police Officer Daniel Faulkner website.

I will be honest with everyone. If you are contemplating getting into the business of telling the truth about MOVE or Mumia than you had better not think of quitting your day job. I go by the axiom of writing as stated by George Orwell, and this is one's chief duty is to tell people things they don't want to hear. The other side of that contrarian coin however is that unless you are extremely talented and prolific you aren't going to make much money doing that kind of thing. Even Orwell, never made much money off of his writing while he was alive. Much like the artist as writer that he was, his work only was to become appreciated and renowned after his early death.

The slew of pro-Mumia books, films, t-shirts, DVD's, etc...are proof positive that the death row oracle to the "great un-washed" has the market cornered. The alleged anti-capitalists that they are have managed one of the greatest public relations coups in history by not just convincing people of a guilty man's innocence, but also turned him, his bogus story, and captivating image into a small, but obviously somewhat lucrative financial endeavors. The scene of shriveled up, armchair revolutionaries, charging $20 for a "Free Mumia" shirt is one that can be seen worldwide at pro-Mumia events, the irony apparently missed by just about everyone.

Periodically, I have requested donations from people to aid me in my work. And thankfully, since the inception of my website and blog I have had assistance, financial and otherwise from too many people to thank and probably a few who would rather not even see their names up on this site. That said, my total expenses for this endeavor are ultimately covered by me and if I were rich or getting the money from the "FOP" as is claimed by my opponents, than there would be no issue to be had. But this is not the case.

An idea I have been kicking around for literally a year or so is to have t-shirts or stickers or something of that nature to sell as a fundraiser for my work. The problem with that is I haven't come up with what I think would be a great idea. So, I am asking for you, the reader to help me out.

There are a few things that I won't do. No shirts having anything to do with Mumia. The website for Officer Faulkner has their own shirts and I wouldn't want to cut into anything they are doing to raise money for their charity. Also, and as tempting as it may be, nothing that calls for violence or death for those in MOVE. Neither do I want anything that could be misconstrued as bigoted or humorous. And while I have spent more than a few lines poking fun at MOVE for various reasons, at the end of the day this is a group that ruthlessly abuses children, is responsible for the death of Police Officers, and employs a variety of nefarious tactics to silence their critics.

With all of that said, please send your ideas. I would be going thru Cafe Press, which has it's customers design the shirt while it handles the actual production and sale of the shirts and a variety of other products with the same design or logo on them online. They obviously take a cut of anything sold, but their service is worth it.

This is a bit of a contest. The person with the winning idea gets their own shirt and a copy of Maureen Faulkner's book "Murdered By Mumia", as well as a copy of the new book on Officer Faulkner's murder by John Hayden once it is released.

I look forward to reading your ideas and hope we can get this done soon.

-Tony Allen

Sunday, June 29, 2008

MOVE Supporter's Defense Of Child Abuse


(Pic of the children of MOVE holding signs they can't read)

Recently, I posted an article from this blog at the Philly IMC site. I don’t do this kind of thing nearly as much as I used to as I came to the realization that “radical” community has always and probably will always, have a general ambivalence towards MOVE.

The folks at the Philly IMC do allow me to post my work at their site, which as I mentioned before is a break in the trend of other IMC’s that find it necessary to censor my critiques of MOVE, no matter how painfully restrained I try to tailor them.

The post in question had to do with MOVE’s abuse of children, in particular whether human biology had given the sect a kind of pass with regards to their forcing barely pubescent children to become pregnant and “married”, the latter institution arguably being antithetical to human nature altogether, but that kind of talk is for another day.

Often enough, some anonymous individual will leave a comment on my IMC post with the usual kind of chicken-shit, squalid, genuine farce of a response that comes nowhere near being a real rebuttal or refutation of my work and which typically either begins or end with some kind of personal attack.

One would think that after four years of such ad-hominem viciousness failing to upend me from my position, that those who take up the banner of stupid personal attacks would come up with something better, but the whole lacking of thought is after all the problem in the first place.

Only somebody entrenched in a sick moral atmosphere would try and justify the rape of children or to try and deny the reality of the acts to which Ramona Africa has already conceded MOVE members carry out. There simply is no argument to be had whether girls entering puberty get pregnant and “married” while in MOVE. Ramona admitted as much and nobody in MOVE has ever stepped up to call me a liar. They know the truth about the matter more so than I do and they know that to many people in their midst already know about it, so they don’t even bother with the lies. There is no difference to be split, or a truth hidden between two opposing parties.

MOVE’s explicit policy, or religious dictums if you will, with regards to these girls and the slightly older boys who are in only a slightly less oppressive state is as unambiguous. The cult leaves the c“voiceless” children of MOVE, who can only mouth the lies of those around them and who must live in fear of their crimes of thought manifesting on their faces.

It is the deluded MOVE supporter who is left unable or unwilling to imagine their comrades taking little girls who can barely read or write, who if the words of children who have been able to get away from MOVE are correct, want nothing more to be like the “normal” kids around them. It is the apotheosis of the ostrich in the form of MOVE’s supporters, that allow for this kind thing to go on.

Can you imagine the fear of a 11 year old girl, who has no semblance of a real education in anything of substance, but who does have an un-healthy respect for the leaders of the cult which rapes them of their souls, their youth, their minds, and hope. You can’t say that their freedom has been taken because if they were raised in MOVE, they have never breathed the free air. They have been reared in an environment that is impossible for you to understand. Barely possible for me to understand and I was up in it for years. The deliberate, emotional crippling inflicted upon the children by the cult’s leaders is so very soul crushing and starts at such a young age, that from my view, the desired result is a person ready to be either cannon fodder just like MOVE did to it’s children in 1978 and 1985 . In 2002, when in a “confrontation” with John Gilbride, who dared to challenge MOVE’s leader, Alberta Africa, MOVE again quite literally had their children held aloft in front of the cameras like a prelude to some awful human sacrifice. The message to the City of Philadelphia was clear and chilling to the city’s leadership as it had to have been understood that if a “confrontation” went down, those girls, women, and children, would be placed in the line of fire, just as they had been in previous confrontations with the group. Human shields are needed in a martyrdom cult.

I include the comment that illicited this post for a couple of reasons. Note the evasiveness of the “anonymous” poster and the kind of arrogance and self-centeredness of the typical cult apologist.

There are also a couple of examples of sheer ignorance that scream for a response. The MOVE apologist opines that I am offering the “same article” written over and over again. According to them, “like 20 times or something”. That is a slight against me, but not in way it is intended. If I have only written 20 times about MOVE’s abuse of children since my departure from the group four years ago, than I am failing those kids. Their abuse should be exposed for what it is and should I be calling out this injustice alone in the wilderness, than that is the way it is. I would be wholly remiss should I fail to mention the nightmare that is the life of children in MOVE in each and every discussion of them. I owe them more than that, but I am one person, it is time for other people to raise their voice, say their names, and to say “enough is enough”. The children of MOVE are not really “children of MOVE”, nor are they members of MOVE, they are little kids, no more or no less than your children and mine. The vulgarity and crass ugliness that is MOVE, is not what these children are. They, very well could be something if they were freed from MOVE.

Moreover, a MOVE or Mumia supporter has cajones of cast iron steel to mark my advocacy on behalf of MOVE children to be some kind of “narrow obsession”. Check the Philly IMC and you will find article after article and feature after feature dedicated to the unquestionable cult of personality surrounding everybody’s favorite cop-killer. During my years with MOVE, nobody in that creepy world offered any complaints about my persistence. How quickly the self-pointed heroes of free speech will show their true colors when their heroes are challenged to defend their own actions. How quickly they scramble to quiet those who ask the hard questions. Free speech it seems for convicted murderers and their defenders and none for you if you disagree. Rank hypocrisy in it’s more odious of forms.

Am I “obsessed” with MOVE marriages? I do have a searing contempt towards adults who bad enough, sell themselves out to MOVE, but also readily sell out their own children to adults who impose their own twisted world-view and race around constructing walls of fear to keep these children insulated against the world.

It was my hatred of injustice that brought me into MOVE and which led me out. No personal failure or success spurns my work here. Thankfully, and in spite of what I probably deserve, I am successful in so many ways, and the ways I am not, I am working on without some deranged, John Afirca junkie, to monitor and comment upon and direct my life.

One thing that has been written about me and often is that I had a “failed marriage”. The reality is that I had a very successful marriage as it brought about the single most important entity in the world for me, the biggest motivator, and whose light is the one that shines through the fog of uncertainty. Also, my ex-wife is free of MOVE and has moved on. I still love her and always will, as the mother of my child and the woman whom I would stilIn leaving MOVE, I knew that there was a big chance my relationship would end. I had studied enough about cults and the processes of leaving them and had seen the grim statistics for post-sect relationships.

For many, the seed of discontent in the heart is planted as freedom takes center stage. There are a multitude of reasons why so many ex-cultists end up broken up and divorced, the desire to purge everything in your life relating to the group, the assertion of independence after years or repression and self-censorship. There is the desire to shake of the puritanical tendencies and chase down a chemical romance while you try to bring “romance” and other previously prohibited things people take for granted. It shouldn’t surprise anyone when your world gets turned upside down that things and people can sometimes break.

Marriage is hard enough, enter the issue of a former cult, a relationship that started young, that was being “directed” as much as possible by MOVE members. And than the realization she had to face that I had not confided my feelings about MOVE to her, but to a stranger. The loss of my marriage counts as my darkest time, that I am still reeling from, but what came of that marriage was hope.

That hope came in a tinny little person whose very existence caused me to re-evaluate my priorities, myself, and to, for the first time, really look the future square in the eye. I had a daughter, but she would and will never be relegated to the mind killing youth programs of MOVE.

The commentator offers the view that the very photo I included in my post somehow invalidated my position. Indeed, the picture is of a young couple. The “husband” of Pixie Africa, age 11 or 12 in the picture is to be sure, several years older than his bride, but they are both still kids in age, and certainly in the mind. And as much as MOVE’s leaders like to flaunt their “beliefs” in front of people who they feel comfortable with, they are not so naive as to advertise the fact that they are actively engaging in criminal activity. I guess Pam Africa’s daughter does perhaps look older than she is. MOVE members, despite protestations otherwise, do love their cosmetics, from Ramona Africa’s hair dye, to Pixie’s homage to Jon Benet Ramsey on her wedding day.

And as I wrote before, MOVE admits these things go on, so this photograph is just an example of what MOVE really is about. My “proof” of child-rape is born out of living with MOVE members, working with MOVE members, my understanding of MOVE’s belief as it was taught to me. Also, the words of Ramona Africa herself. For those of you reading about this for the first time, or as a reminder, here is the benign sounding defense of the rape of children as offered by “Mona” as she is known in MOVE.:

“Women in MOVE do marry and have babies at what this american society might now consider to be a young age but we follow the coordination of Mother Nature who coordinates it such that she determines when a woman is ready for marriage and babies”

With due respect to Ramona, for the record, “Mother Nature” has nothing at all to do with the forced impregnation of young girls in MOVE. The coupling in the group is not the result of hormones gone wild, nor is it the result of curiosity gone too far. MOVE’s leadership arrange marriages of the children in the group. Even adults in MOVE and close supporters can find themselves being goaded into relationships they don’t want. As ever with the group, what is perceived best for the group’s leaders, is ostensibly the best for the individuals. It is an explicitly authoritarian enterprise that masquerades as a viable alternative to “the system”, all the while maintaining something more akin to a modern day institution of slavery than one that fosters free thought and choice, neither of which are valued comodities in MOVE.

It is interesting to me the issue of my being banned from other IMC’s is brought up. After all, aren’t MOVE members and Mumia the vanguards of “free speech”? Yet they and their supporters continue to press for me to be silenced under the false pretext of my being a “right wing flamer” etc...I don’t know exactly why the Philly IMC has not banned my articles. But I will speculate that it has nothing at all to do with anybody being “threatened” by my articles. That said, over the years there have been numerous attempts to have my work censored, including attempts by MOVE supporters to have me banned from the Philly IMC. I know the lies of MOVE inside and out and they and their supporters know it.

I may rant and maybe I am “insane”, but what that does not negate the reality of what MOVE is, nor will I be compelled to silence by insults from cowards so unimaginative and weak that they cannot even come forward and be named and stand behind what they write. It is far easier to sit back and fling arrows from the shadows, but I doubt anyone will believe someone that doesn’t have it in them to muster the courage to stand up.

Finally, I don’t write this with the intent of making MOVE “look” like anything. Certainly, had that been the case, I would have came out talking about all the guns and bombs and foul plans set in motion by the cult, but that was not the reality and I came to tell the truth about MOVE, not to lie or make the group out to be something it isn’t.

I can’t “make” MOVE look like anything. They are what they are. And today, as I write these words, a girl/child is being prepped for her life of subjugation and the brutal reality sinking in that you own nothing in you are a child in MOVE, not your mind, and not your body.

In the 1960's and before, progressives, and revolutionaries banded together to try and shake off the yoke of a patriarchal society and ensure that basic rights of women in all strata of society be protected and enshrined in the law. Without a doubt, both men and women take these hard fought and sometimes, barely won, for granted. Also, some will fall thru the cracks, but all should be done to save them.

When it comes to MOVE, the feminist, the “freedom fighters” who rail against the stupid superstitions of the Church and their attempts to deny choice to women around the world have and are failing the children in MOVE. But they are not alone in this failure. The bureaucracy in Philadelphia, which maintains a un-spoken policy of accepting the criminality of MOVE has also failed these children by ignoring the situation and pretending that what is going on really isn’t.

This failure to protect vulnerable children from MOVE members is a failure in so many ways, but my faith in the inevitable force of change. Till the day that the children of MOVE members and supporters are free of their oppressors, I will continue to write, to speak out, and to never let those responsible for what is going on with these kids get away with what they do un-challenged.

Here is the comment from the Philly IMC that prompted this blog post.

"this seems like the same article written over and over and over, like 20 times something.... Got anything new beyond this narrow obsession you have? Does your obsession with MOVE marriages somehow take the place of your own failed marriage?
By the way, the couple in the wedding photo looks about the same age to me---- this is your proof of "child rape"?

It is interesting that the PhillyIMC is the only IMC that hasn't permanently banned you for being a right wing flamer and smear-artist.
That's probably because MOVE and their supporters in Philly don't feel the slightest bit threatened by your insane rants----if anything, you make MOVE look good!"

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Five “Mumia’s Innocent!” Scenarios


(BY John Hayden for antimove.blogspot.com)

There have been so many “Mumia’s Innocent!” and “Mumia Was Framed!” scenarios since the gun owning journalist’s 1982 murder conviction, it’s a Sisyphean task to keep track of all of them.

The ones with legal implications are the three that have been made under oath either in or out of court.

The most recent fantasy was published on May 1, 2008 by the editor of Crime Magazine, J. Patrick O’Connor, in his highly imaginative well written book, The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal. It’s available for a mere $16.95 (Canada $18.95) at your local book shop, Barnes & Noble, and Borders in the section that features Grimms Fairy Tales and an biography of Pope Benedict entitled Confessions of a Life Long Atheist.

Space doesn’t permit a discussion of the delusional scenarios depicted in the pro Abu Jamal Indie movies that have played to miniscule audiences in the past decade, The Voice of the Voiceless (by Tania-Cuevas-Martinez), and Mumia The Movie (by an independent Canadian film maker).

Although differing in some respects, these cinematic masterpieces depict the murder victim as a brutal white cop beating Mumia’s brother’s head like a drum with his magnum flashlight, that Abu Jamal ran to the rescue, and that if –and only if - their hero did indeed shoot the cop, it wasn’t a 1st degree murder. The homicide was merely voluntary manslaughter, i.e., an older brother seeing a younger brother being “brutalized,” thereby provoking the gun owning ex Panther into an uncontrollable fit of homicidal passion that resulted in a 25 year old cop’s death.

Under this theory, the incarcerated radio journalist should have been released from prison many years ago.

1982 Jury Trial

No one, including the cop killer himself, his brother, William Cook, or any “Free Mumia!” volunteer from Central Casting had the cojones to give the racially mixed jury a “Mumia’s Innocent!” or a “Mumia Was Framed!” scenario at his June-July 1982 murder trial.

But 13 years later, after more than sufficient time to create a scenario that passed the giggle test, William Singletary valiantly volunteered to exculpate Abu Jamal. Singletary testified at the July-August 1995 hearing based on “newly discovered evidence of innocence.” Unfortunately the testimony and the pre-hearing statements of the local Philadelphia businessman demonstrated that he’d either suffered from an incurable mental illness precipitated by a 3:51 AM, December 9, 1981 hallucination and actually believed what he swore was true, or he was just a liar. A very bad liar


“Mumia’s Innocent!” Scenario #1 By William Singletary
Singletary swore that he’d seen a male Black with dreadlocks get out of William Cook’s VW, pull a “small caliber handgun” out of his pocket, “point the gun” at Officer Danny Faulkner, and “shoot the cop in the eye.” The real cop killer then “tossed the gun on the right side of the VW,” and “he ran east on Locust.”

Abu Jamal arrived.

The gun owning cabbie-radio journalist and the Black Sunoco station manager walked over to a wounded cop laying on the ground with a bullet hole in his face. Abu Jamal, the quintessential cop-loving Good Samaritan, leaned over the shooting victim, exclaimed “Oh, my God, we don’t need this,” and spoke thusly to the alive shooting victim:

Is there anything I can do, anything I can do to help you?
Whereupon the officer replied: Get Maureen, or get the children.

The cop’s gun – which was in his lap “sort of…pointing up” like “an erection” – discharged. The bullet hit the luckless Good Samaritan in the chest.

Another egregious example of the cruel truism:

No good deed goes unpunished.

The reality-grounded hearing Judge refused to believe Singletary’s delusional yarn for several reasons.

No. 1 - A Black cop, Vernon Jones, testified (without contradiction from Singletary or Abu Jamal) that he’d met Singletary at the crime scene about “two minutes” after the murder, “asked him if he had seen the shooting,” and Abu Jamal’s exculpatory witness had replied categorically:

"No."

Singletary asked Officer Jones “what happened?” Jones told him “a policeman had been shot.” Singletary said he’d “heard some shots but I thought they were firecrackers.”

No. 2 - It would have been medically and physically impossible for the shooting victim to have spoken to Abu Jamal or to have fired his weapon. The 1981 autopsy physician, Dr.Hoyer, who’d removed the fatal bullet from the victim’s brain, and Dr. Hayes, the pathologist hired by Abu Jamal for the 1995 new trial hearing, both concluded that the shot into the cop’s brain had caused “instantaneous complete disability and death.”

Two progressive authors who believe Abu Jamal was framed have published their take on William Singletary’s scenario and his credibility – or lack thereof.

Two Left-Wing Views

Author Dave Lindorff conducted a two year “independent” investigation of the case and published an extraordinarily well written, but hopelessly fact-challenged book in 2001 entitled Killing Time-An Investigation Into The Death-Row Case of Mumia Abu Jamal.

Lindorff, unlike the editorial page boards of four liberal, pro civil rights, pro minority, anti death penalty papers (the N Y Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, and the Philadelphia Inquirer) concluded that Abu Jamal “is almost certainly innocent.”

However, Killing Time says some things about Mr. Singletary that didn’t gain the left-wing author any friends in the “Free Mumia! Free All Political Prisoners!” crusade.

For example:

A) the book quotes with approval a statement in Executing Justice, An Inside Account of the Case of Mumia Abu Jamal, another pro Abu Jamal book written by Abu Jamal’s ex-lawyer, Daniel Williams. In 1995 the lawyer was opposed to putting Singletary on the stand because his bizarre account of the shooting was not “plausible,” it was “a mistake to commit ourselves to such a preposterous version of events,” and that “using Singletary was akin to putting up a billboard (for the prosecution) with a bull’s eye drawn on it.” (Executing Justice, p.250)

B) Killing Time describes Abu Jamal’s principal exculpatory 1995 hearing witness as giving an “incredible version of events.” (p.251)

C) Lindorff’s book informs the reader that Singletary’s scenario involved Mumia Abu Jamal speaking to a shooting victim who was dead, and the dead cop responding “get Maureen” (the victim’s widow) and saying “something about some children.” It favorably mentions that “according to a doctor’s testimony at the trial, once Faulkner was shot in the face right between the eyes, he died instantly …. Faulkner could not have been….talking.” (p.251)

D) Killing Time mentions that “the police did not own a helicopter” on the night of the murder, and thus – by implication – Singletary was not believable when he testified that a “helicopter appeared and shined a bright light down.” (p.253)
-3-
Nevertheless, for reasons that don’t appear in the book, and that make no sense whatsoever in view of A), B), C), and D), the investigative journalist’s two year investigation concludes, paradoxically:

Singletary was unquestionably a witness to the shooting. (p.250)

Author J. Patrick O’Connor’s newly published 2008 book also discusses Singletary’s whacko scenario.

The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal mentions that several persons weren’t called by the prosecutor at the 1982 murder trial, and one of them was “William Singletary, a tow truck operator who told police within hours of the shooting that he saw someone
other than Abu Jamal shoot Faulkner.”

That language seems to accord credibility to Singletary’s fairy tale that he’d told police officers at the station that he’d seen the shooting, and that it hadn’t been done by Abu Jamal. That language implicitly rejects as incredible – or at least unworthy of comment - the 1995 new trial hearing testimony of the African American cop, Vernon Jones, who testified that he’d met Singletary shortly after the murder and Singletary had told him “no” he had not seen the shooting.

However, mirroring author Lindorff’s writing, O’Connor implicitly deems Singletary’s account to be incredible because of his 1995 testimony under cross examination that an innocent Abu Jamal leaned over the dead cop, spoke to him, and the dead man told him to “get Maureen.”

The Framing concludes – correctly – that:

Singletary’s claim that Faulkner spoke to him greatly undermined his
credibility on two counts: Faulkner died instantly from the gunshot to
his forehead, and he and his wife, Maureen, had no children.

“Mumia’s Innocent Scenario!” Scenario #2 By Mumia Abu Jamal

In the summer of 1995 the 41 year old Death-Row prisoner was present in court when William (“Helicopter”) Singletary testified. He never took the witness stand to contradict his “Mumia As Good Samaritan” talking with a dead cop scenario.

But six years later the “framed” convicted cop killer published his May 3, 2001 sworn Declaration which materially contradicted Singletary’s exculpatory account, and replaced it with an entirely different description of the shooting.

The gun owning ex Panther claimed that he’d heard shots, got out of his parked cab, saw
his brother staggering in the street, ran to help him, saw a cop aim a handgun at him, got shot in the chest, temporarily passed out, and woke up to a rather severe beating by racist policemen.

The gun owner’s account never mentioned his five shot 38 or the incontestable fact that it was seized near his feet with five spent cartridges in its revolving cylinder.

In Scenario #2 the gun owning ex Panther didn’t mention the presence of his 1995 exculpatory eyewitness, William Singletary. He didn’t claim to have been a Good Samaritan. He didn’t claim to have spoken to the cop, and the latter didn’t tell him to “get Maureen” or get the children.

Obviously, at 3:51AM on December 9, 1981 Singletary must have seen a different cop killing in another part of town - or perhaps somewhere in a parallel universe.

Because the 1995 hearing Judge (and all subsequent state and federal appeals courts) didn’t believe Singletary’s bizarre hallucinatory description of Abu Jamal’s innocent presence at the crime scene, no refutation of it is necessary.

However, Abu Jamal’s sworn 2001 account obviously completely contradicts Singletary’s sworn 1995 account.

Thus, historically, the remorseless cop killer has been placed in a rather uncomfortable position. He’s a rebuttal witness to a “Mumia’s Innocent! Mumia Was Framed!” witness whose account is gospel truth according to “mumia.org,” “freemumia.com,” other pro cop killer Websites, and which, despite language in Lindorff’s book about Singletary’s lack of credibility that logically should have compelled a different conclusion, the author maintains that:

Singletary was unquestionably an eyewitness to the shooting.

What’s equally illogical – and perhaps even bizarre - is that progressive investigative journalist Dave Lindorff doesn’t believe Abu Jamal’s fairy tale either.

Here’s Killing Time’s take on the “I did not shoot the policeman” scenario set forth in The Political Prisoner’s May 3, 2001 Declaration:

The problem with Abu Jamal’s Declaration is that it flies in the face of much of the testimony at the trial and at the PCRA (new trial) hearing, testimony that rightly or wrongly, has already been affirmed by state and federal courts as being credible and believable. The biggest difficulty is that Abu Jamal’s affidavit, taken at face value, has him crossing the street to go to the aid of his brother after shots had already been fired.

This sequence of events conflicts with the accounts of all the major prosecution witnesses at the trial. But, more importantly….it also conflicts with the testimony of key defense witnesses. For example, it contradicts the testimony of trial defense witness Hightower, who, if he had looked around the corner (of a building) after hearing a series of shots as he testified, should, by Abu Jamal’s account, have seen him crossing the street….It conflicts with (motorist eyewitness) Scanlan, who says he heard the first shot and saw an accompanying flash of light as a man, Abu
Jamal presumably, was crossing the street. It also conflicts with the testimony
of PCRA hearing defense witness Robert Harkins (who) had a clear view of
all of 13th street, and testified (that he)… saw no one get shot in the street in
front of him.

Question: Does progressive author J. Patrick O’Connor credit Abu Jamal’s 2001
“I’m innocent” Declaration with telling the truth?

The answer – like some of the author’s writing – is ambiguous.

The Framing gives the reader a verbatim copy of Abu Jamal’s 19 years too late explanation of his “innocent” presence at the crime scene immediately after the murder when two Swat Team cops arrived less than a minute after Officer Faulkner’s 3:51:08 call for a wagon.

But this Abu Jamal admiring author – unlike author Lindorff – completely cops out on whether or not he believes Abu Jamal is telling the truth.

Indeed, the crime journalist doesn’t inform his reader whether Abu Jamal’s “I’m innocent” scenario is even plausible.

The author seems content to rip apart as perjury everything said by the state’s 1982 eyewitnesses at the 1982 trial, but refuses to say what he thinks about Abu Jamal’s account, especially the part criticized by Lindorff about the sequence of the shots.

The Framing simply prints the entire 34 paragraph Declaration and lets the reader decide if it passes the giggle test.

“Mumia’s Innocent!” Scenario #3 By William Harmon

This pathetic joker testified at the same 1995 new trial hearing where Singletary was the star witness for the “framed-up and railroaded” new trial petitioner.

Harmon’s account directly contradicts William Singletary’s incredibly bizarre “Mumia As Good Samaritan” scenario. It also contradicts Abu Jamal’s 2001 fairy tale.

The well meaning career criminal, a current inmate – whoops, “resident” – of a maximum security prison, swore that Abu Jamal was innocent. But, unlike Singletary, this self styled eyewitness claimed that he’d observed not one, but two assassins.

The first male Black shot the cop in the back and fled the crime scene.
The second male Black – who must have been invisible to both Singletary and Abu Jamal– pulled up in a car, got out, screamed and yelled, stood over the wounded officer, shot him in the face, and split.

Abu Jamal was present in court when this truth-challenged lad testified, and never took the stand to contradict his two assassins scenario.

Both progressive pro Abu Jamal authors have discussed his testimony and wisely found it to be totally unworthy of belief by the courts and the public.

”Mumia’s Innocent!” Scenario #4 By The Mob Hit Man

Arnold R. (“Reliable”) Beverly shared Harmon’s haute monde social status. This career criminal’s impressive resume included convictions - and long prison sentences - for robbery, grand larceny, fraud, receiving stolen property, conspiracy, weapons possession, and a few other socially frowned upon pastimes.

In an affidavit – and in a video taped “confession” - Beverly swore that at 3:51 AM on December 9, 1981 he was at the crime scene with another hired assassin. They’d both been hired by the Mafia and corrupt police brass to assassinate 25 year old Officer Danny Faulkner because he’s interfered with their lucrative graft from prostitution. Beverly’s unnamed accomplice shot the cop in the back. Then Beverly shot the cop in the face. And, oh yes, “Mumia Abu Jamal did not shoot police officer Faulkner.”

The cab driving gun owner didn’t come on the crime scene until after the last shot had been fired.

Two lawyers, Leonard Weinglass and Daniel Williams, who’d placed Singletary on the stand in 1995, and who’d obtained a state and a federal stay of execution of the jury’s 1982 death sentence, received Beverly’s Twilight Zone account in 1999 (the year after they’d lost Abu Jamal’s appeal from the 1995 hearing Judge’s dismissal of his new trial petition).

But the “2-W’s” refused to bring Beverly’s creative Mob Hit Man scenario to the attention of a state or a federal court because, according to Williams’ book, they considered his tale to be “a fraud,” an “assisted suicide,” and an “implausible fraud.”(Executing Justice-An Inside Account of the Case of Mumia Abu Jamal (2001 Edit.)

Thus, unlike Singletary and Harmon, Beverly never had the opportunity to make a fool out of himself in a court of law.

However, The Mob Hit Man’s grainy video-taped confession is still available at the People’s Video Store on 14th Street in Manhattan, and at various other progressive venues in San Francisco for only $10.00.

Or, make an offer.

Authors O’Connor and Lindorff mention this 4th scenario proclaiming Abu Jamal’s innocence.

Neither one buys it.

Author Lindorff describes Beverly as “a self-described African American mob ‘hit man’ and career criminal.” (p.250) He wrote in Killing Time that if Beverly’s description of the cop killing were “correct, why wouldn’t Abu Jamal, and his brother, who certainly would have seen the whole thing, have reported it to the police right away? Billy Cook, when police arrived, reportedly said, ‘I had nothing to do with it,’ not, ‘The guy who did it ran off into the subway entrance.’” (p.22)
Author O’Connor claims in The Framing that Beverly’s June 8, 1999 sworn confession was “bombshell exculpatory evidence.” (p. 225) But, without expressly saying so, he doesn’t believe Beverly’s Mob Hit Man scenario because it conflicts with “credible eyewitnesses Michael Mark Scanlan and Robert Harkins” who “saw no such unfolding of events.” (pp. 224-225)
Scenario #5 By Crime Author J. Patrick O’Connor

26 years after Abu Jamal failed to take the stand and give 12 fact-finders the “I’m innocent!” account he published 19 years after the murder, an admirer of the cop killer in the journalism profession came forward and solved the mystery of who had really murdered Officer Faulkner at 3:51 AM, December 9, 1981.

Hallelujah!

According to The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal published on May 1, 2008, the real killer wasn’t the dude that William Singletary saw shoot the cop “in the eye.”

It wasn’t the two assassins that William Harmon saw shoot the cop.

It wasn’t the Mob Hit Man who shot the cop in the face after his accomplice had shot him in the back.

It was – you guessed it – the passenger in William Cook’s VW, Kenneth Freeman!

O’Connor is an excellent writer and a 1st rate story teller. However, like Mumia Abu
Jamal, William Singletary, William Harmon, Arnold R. (“Reliable”) Beverly, and the
several lawyers who’ve had the distinct honor of representing the remorseless cop killer for the past 26 years, he failed to give the pubic a plausible explanation for the presence of five spent shells in Abu Jamal’s five shot 38.

The Framing simply avoids the extremely incriminating phenomenon by reciting decades old bromides calculated to instill doubt about the murder weapon and Abu Jamal’s use thereof:

the police didn’t smell the barrel of Abu Jamal’s gun – the one with five spent shells in its revolving cylinder; and the police didn’t perform any scientific tests on Abu Jamal’s hands to ascertain whether he’d fired his own handgun – the one seized at the crime scene a short distance away from a uniformed cop with a fatal bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.

Author O’Connor starts out with some anecdotal evidence from various folks in radio journalism and in the Black community who knew “peaceful” Abu Jamal and believe that he wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less shoot another human being in the back.

He emphasizes that before the 1981 murder, when he knew Abu Jamal, the radio journalist used to answer the phone:

Peace.

At the video taped news conference he gave to the public on May 1, 2008 – the
publication date – author O’Connor said:

It just didn’t fit his nature to get involved in something like this. (i.e., shooting an innocent fellow human being in the back and in the face.)
This perception of the cop hating ex Panther permeates the entire book.

Indeed, The Framing is a classic example of a well meaning, utterly sincere journalist imputing his own preconceptions and prejudices onto his subject matter.

But it’s still a good read.

O’Connor cleverly blends in a little colorful history of the former Philadelphia Mayor, Frank Rizzo, who was notoriously rough, and occasionally brutal towards male Blacks.

The Framing suggests that Rizzo was somehow connected to the conspiracy to frame the local radio journalist. But it never directly links Rizzo to the frame-up. The book neglects to tell the reader that Rizzo was not the mayor of Philadelphia at the time of the murder. Thus, the ex Mayor and ex Police Commissioner had no influence over the police department that supposedly framed a “peaceful” radio journalist because of his journalistic criticism of police brutally and police corruption.

The book’s narrative cleverly blends a known corrupt police official, Inspector Alphonse Giordano, who was convicted and imprisoned for bribery, into the “frame-up” story. The Framing claims that the conspiracy started at the 3:51 AM crime scene moments after the dishonest cop arrived at 1234 Locust St. Giordano not only physically abused a handcuffed Abu Jamal in a police wagon by hitting him in the head with a metal walkie-talkie. Giordano, says O’Connor, “took command of the crime scene and personally set in motion the framing of Abu Jamal. It would be Giordano who claimed that Mumia told him in the paddy wagon that he dropped his gun after he shot Faulkner.”

There’s a source for the admission or confession, namely Giordano’s testimony – true or false – at a preliminary hearing in January 1982.

Of course, whether the corrupt Inspector did or did not fabricate Abu Jamal’s crime scene admission was of no consequence in this murder case. It simply didn’t matter.

True, or fabricated, it didn’t impact the 14 day jury trial. It didn’t cause the racially mixed jury to convict Abu Jamal of murder and criminal possession of the instrument of the crime because Giordano didn’t testify at the June-July 1982 trial.

Whether or not the dishonest cop fabricated the gun owner’s incriminating statement had no impact on the post conviction litigation either. Giordano didn’t testify at the 1995 new trial hearing.

O’Connor’s research produced the claim that the Inspector made contact with trial witnesses Cynthia White and Robert Chobert at the crime scene, and somehow got them to claim they’d been eyewitnesses to Abu Jamal’s murder of the cop despite the “fact” that neither one had seen the shooting:

It would be Giordano who arranged for prostitute Cynthia White and felon Robert Chobert to identify Abu Jamal as the shooter. He coerced her at the scene to identify Abu Jamal as the shooter. That makes for good copy.

Crime Solver’s Source?

But the book author doesn’t give his enthralled readers the source of that astounding “fact.”

The source certainly couldn’t have been the Black pedestrian eyewitness who’d sworn at trial that she’d watched Abu Jamal shoot the cop from her vantage point on the southeast corner of 13th and Locust.

Cynthia White has been dead since about 1992.

It couldn’t have been a conversation with Giordano or cabbie-eyewitness Robert Chobert or the author would have mentioned it.

It couldn’t be a court record. None exists to establish that “fact.”

Perhaps it was divine inspiration.

The most imaginative aspect of author O’Connor’s superb work of fiction is the creative way that the crime author, a rival to Chief Inspector Clouseau in solving mystery-murders, figured out all by himself that the passenger in the VW killed Officer Faulkner.

Crime Reporter’s Conclusion

How in the world did an experienced crime journalist like J. Patrick O’Connor come to the conclusion that it was William Cook’s VW passenger who shot the cop?

Unfortunately for anyone looking for something other than advocacy journalism, The Framing’s author started with a presumption, a conclusive presumption, not a rebuttable one (like the presumption of innocence) that can be overcome by cold hard facts:

It just doesn’t fit his (Abu Jamal’s) nature to get involved in something like this.

For starters, the crime journalist certainly didn’t get his unique “Freeman did it” insight from the “real killer” himself.

Kenneth Freeman (“Poppi”) had been dead for several years when author O’Connor began his one man Abu Jamal exoneration project.

The author certainly didn’t get it from testimony of the driver of the VW.

William Cook didn’t testify at his older brother’s murder trial, or at his July 3, 1982 penalty trial. He didn’t testify at Mumia’s disastrous July-August 1995 new trial hearing based on “newly discovered evidence of innocence.” Thus, author O’Connor didn’t have any transcripts of Cook’s testimony on direct and on cross examination to solve this 26 year old murder case.
More importantly, the Mumia-friendly crime sleuth never took the trouble to track down Abu Jamal’s brother, query him, see what he had to say, and then make an investigative journalist’s credibility determination before he leaped to his remarkable conclusion that the VW passenger – not the VW driver’s brother - shot the cop.

The crime author’s failure to interview a live person made it impossible for him to assess Cook’s credibility and his motives.

All O’Connor had to work with in his multi-year search for the “real killer” was Cook’s pathetically phony April 29, 2001 written Declaration in which he swore that “I never raised my hand to the policeman,” despite: being found guilty in March of 1982 of punching the cop in the face with his closed fist; and thereafter pleading “guilty, Your Honor,” several months later after an appeals court reversed his assault conviction on a procedural ground, and he appeared again in the trial court for a 2nd assault and resisting arrest trial.

For anyone familiar with the 1982 murder trial testimony and the testimony of Cook’s March 1982 assault trial, not only was William Cook’s 2001 denial of hitting the murdered cop hard to believe, but the younger Cook brother’s account of the murder materially contradicted the older Cook brother’s account of the same event.

Abu Jamal –Wesley Cook - claimed in his May 3, 2001 Declaration that after he’d “heard what sounded like gun shots” he’d observed his brother outside his VW “standing in the street staggering and dizzy.”

He “immediately exited the cab and ran to his scream.”

As he “came across the street” a “uniformed cop” (i.e., Officer Faulkner) shot him, he “went down to his knees,” and went into a “stupor.”

This language obviously doesn’t place Abu Jamal close to the uniformed cop who was on the sidewalk with his brother.

It obviously doesn’t comport with the non contradicted trial testimony from a forensic expert who established in 1982 that the muzzle of Officer Faulkner’s gun that fired a bullet into Abu Jamal’s jacket (exhibit “C-54”) was less than 12 inches from Abu Jamal’s outer clothing.

That’s why primer lead residue was found surrounding the bullet hole on the defendant’s jacket.

Plus, according to Cook’s Declaration, Officer Faulkner was standing in front of his VW – several yards away from his brother – when Cook supposedly saw his brother get shot in the chest.

In effect, the Declaration of Abu Jamal’s younger brother calls Mumia – Wesley Cook -a liar.

William Cook swears that all of the shots occurred after his brother, Mumia, was racing across the street. Abu Jamal swears that the shots occurred before he left his cab and raced towards his brother.

Cook doesn’t claim that he was “in the street staggering and dizzy” where his brother could see him.

William (with 19 years to prepare his transparently phony scenario) swore in his April 29, 2001 Declaration that before any shots had been fired, and while he was inside his VW, he’d observed his older brother “running” across the street, he was “feet away from me.”

William heard one shot (while he was still inside his automobile). It hit his brother. After hearing the first shot Cook said he heard some more “gun shots.”

William “got out” of his VW, saw his “brother down on the ground,” saw a “gun on the street,” and “kicked it under” his VW.

Prior to that happening, Cook’s Declaration would have you believe that after the cop brutalized him by beating him over the head and causing “intense bleeding,” he went back into his VW where the passenger, Kenneth Freeman, was still in the front passenger seat.

While Cook “was in the front seat” – next to Freeman – he was “looking in the back seat” to “get his paperwork” to “give to the cop.” Officer Faulkner was outside the VW “in front of the car by the hood where he had stopped me and frisked me.”

While still “looking in the back” Cook claims he “heard shots and saw sparks, but I didn’t see him (Officer Faulkner).”

When the cop was shot Cook swears:

When I was looking at the back seat Poppi (Kenneth Freeman) was still there, and then I looked and Poppi’s door was open….He left the arearight after this happened.

One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist, a criminal appeals lawyer, a crime journalist, an investigative reporter for the New York Times, or a regular coach potato observer of Law & Order or Bones, to figure out that Cook, the brother of the framed man in prison, sharply contradicts the startling conclusion of The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal.

According to Cook’s Declaration the VW passenger, Freeman, was still there, i.e., still inside the VW when Cook heard someone shooting the cop as Cook was looking in the back seat.

Freeman – “Poppi” – couldn’t have been the person who shot the cop.

Freeman couldn’t have been in two places at the same time.

The armed and dangerous VW passenger couldn’t have been outside the VW shooting the cop in the back and in the face, and simultaneously been inside the vehicle (i.e., “still there”) as Cook heard the gunshots that killed the policeman.

Obviously someone from Mumia’s supporters in the Hollywood elite should have given Cook some script writing assistance before he published his 19 years tardy scenario.

Real Killer’s Confession

Cook also claims in his 2001 Declaration that Kenneth Freeman – “Poppi” – told him sometime after the shooting that he’d “talked about a plan to kill Faulkner. That he was armed that night and participated in the shooting.”

Author O’Connor naively accepts this baloney story as gospel truth.

But even fellow progressive author and Abu Jamal defender David Lindorff doesn’t believe William Cook’s account. He wisely opined in Killing Time that:

It strains credulity to imagine that Cook would have allowed Abu-Jamal to suffer through the setting of two execution dates, and to exist in the living hell of a super-max penitentiary death-row, if he had information (from 12/9/81 through 4/29/01) that could have saved him. (p.23)

The Framing fails to address - and give the reader an answer - to a few questions that a 1st year journalism student would have addressed in researching this 1981 murder case.

Cook’s Strange Delay

If the fatal shooting occurred the way the convicted murderer’s brother claims it occurred, then surely the VW driver – Abu Jamal’s brother – would have been a valuable eyewitness and ear-witness source of credible evidence of Abu Jamal’s innocence at his 1982 murder trial. After all, Cook’s Declaration not only exculpates his older brother of 1st degree murder, it also contains a verbal confession from the “real killer,” the VW passenger.

If that 2001 scenario were true, how come the younger Cook brother waited until 19 years after his brother had been convicted of capital murder before he decided to reveal that the passenger in his VW – Poppi – was the real killer?

William Cook wasn’t in a coma or on safari in central Africa from December 9, 1981 until jury selection began in early June of 1982. He still lived in Philadelphia.

If his exculpatory account were true in 2001, how come Cook didn’t bring his “Freeman did it and confessed he did it” scenario to the attention of Abu Jamal’s African American trial lawyer, Anthony Jackson, before the 1982 trial started?

If true, how come he didn’t bring it to the attention of his and Wesley Cook’s (Mumia Abu Jamal’s) mother, Edith Cook, or their sister, Edith Wallace, who were present in court every single day of the June 17th through July 2nd trial?

If Cook’s description of the 3:51 AM, December 9, 1981 murder were true when he published it in writing in April of 2001, how come he didn’t tell his beloved brother’s lawyer his exculpatory story after the jury was sworn in on June 16, 1982?

If the lawyer wasn’t accessible, how come Cook didn’t reveal his scenario to the free press, or the NAACP, or some local Black office holder, or to someone in the Philadelphia branch of the National Association of Black Journalists?

His brother Wesley – Mumia - was the past president of the local chapter of the NABJ.
Its members had contributed to Abu Jamal’s defense fund.

The 1982 trial transcript demonstrates that William Cook was physically present as a spectator in courtroom #253 on the 1st day of his older brother’s capital murder trial. He and Mumia’s twin – Wayne Cook – were held in contempt of court on Thursday, June 17, 1982 for punching and fighting with a deputy sheriff in the courtroom, and for yelling:

This is a fucking railroad!

So we know that Abu Jamal’s younger brother didn’t have laryngitis in 1982 – and so does the crime author who claims that he’d perused the 5,000 page trial transcript.

From June 17th through Friday, July 2, when the jury convicted his beloved older brother of 1st degree murder, William was available to testify, and there was nothing wrong with his vocal chords.

He was either out on bail for the contempt citation or still in the local hoosegow.

Yet he never came forward to tell the 12 fact-finders that he knew of his own knowledge that it wasn’t his older brother, the gun owning radio journalist, who’d shot the cop – it was his passenger in the VW – Poppi – who was still alive.

Surely author O’Connor must have pondered Cook’s unexplained 19 year delay before he decided to accept a scenario that Cook supposedly kept secret for almost two decades, and then “solved” the murder by claiming that Kenneth Freeman was the real killer.

In July-August 1995 William Cook was in Philadelphia for his brother’s new trial hearing. He was listed on the typed witness list prepared by Abu Jamal’s lawyers, Weinglass, Williams, and Wolkenstein. He’d spoken to attorney Rachel Wolkenstein about testifying (according to Cook and the lawyer).

In June, July, and August of 1995 it was common knowledge in Philadelphia that the newly elected Republican Governor, Tom Ridge, had signed a death warrant for Cook’s brother to be executed on August 17, 1995.

If the contents of Cook’s 2001 Declaration were true in the summer of 1995, how come he didn’t come to court and testify that Freeman was the real cop killer, not his incarcerated older brother?

Did it make sense to the author of The Framing that a younger brother would remain silent in July and August while his beloved brother was in imminent danger of death by lethal injection?

Of course not.

Moreover after Abu Jamal lost his petition for a new trial in September of 1995, and after he’d lost his state appeal from that decision in the Pa. Supreme Court in October of 1998, Abu Jamal’s lawyers, Weinglass and Williams, prepared and filed a federal petition for habeas corpus relief. The Republican Governor, Tom Ridge, signed a 2nd death warrant for Cook’s brother to be executed in December of 1999 thereby again placing him in imminent danger of execution by lethal injection.

If the contents of Cook’s 2001 fairy tale were true in 1999 – before the 2nd death warrant was stayed by court order – how come Cook didn’t bring his “Mumia’s innocent” scenario to the attention of attorneys Weinglass and Williams?

It should be obvious to anyone without an agenda that William Cook’s 2001 account smacks of fabrication.

Transparently phony, utterly silly fabrication.

It’s a 19 years too late attempt to get the public to buy a new “Mumia’s Innocent!” scenario after no one in his or her right mind accepted William Singletary’s, William Harmon’s, or The Mob Hit Man’s fairy tale descriptions of the December 9, 1981 cop killing.

It’s difficult to believe that a journalist of O’Connor’s experience and intelligence didn’t address any of these delay in coming forth and credibility issues in his 274 page book whose “Mumia was framed!” thesis was based on a typed piece of paper signed by someone he never even bothered to interview.

Perhaps the author was afraid that if he met and interviewed Abu Jamal’s brother he wouldn’t believe Cook’s reality-challenged scenario the same way that fellow progressive author Dave Lindorff hadn’t believed Abu Jamal’s 2001 scenario or The Mob Hit Man’s 1999 scenario, or William (“Helicopter”) Singletary’s 1995 scenario.

Zero Interviews

More importantly, the Crime Magazine editor who claims to have solved the mystery of who “really” killed the cop - never spoke to the person his book attempts to exonerate: – Mumia Abu Jamal.

Thus, it was impossible for him to assess the credibility of the scenario the peace-loving “framed” murderer spun in his 2001 Declaration.

The victim of the 1981 police-DA frame-up wasn’t hard to locate.

He wasn’t on Devil’s Island. He wasn’t being water-boarded at Club Gitmo.

While Chief Inspector Clouseau’s rival in solving mysterious murders was working on his book, the subject of The Framing was domiciled at State Correctional Institution Greene in Waynesburg, Pa., about six-seven hours drive on the interstate from Philadelphia.

Abu Jamal was accessible to journalists – especially ones willing to promote The Political Prisoner’s “I was framed-up and railroaded” myth.

That’s obvious because a British journalist, Ms. Laura Smith, interviewed the convicted cop killer in October of 2007. Her puff piece interview is published on “mumia.org.”

Author O’Connor never visited the frame-up victim.

He never made an attempt to get on Mumia’s visitor list.

He never wrote to the Death-Row prisoner authorizing him to call his potential savior collect, to discuss the 3:51 AM, December 9, 1981 event.

Indeed, author O’Connor apparently never tried to communicate with the “peaceful” fellow journalist who’s been behind bars for over 26 years for a crime he supposedly didn’t commit.

The Framing author admires progressive investigative journalist Dave Lindorff who
wrote another “Mumia’s Innocent!” book, Killing Time-An Investigation Into The Death-
Row Case of Mumia Abu Jamal. O’Connor lauds him in his book’s Acknowledgements for “a seminal exploration of the case.”

Lindorff – who, like just about everyone else who’s read it - doesn’t believe Mumia’s May 3, 2001 phony account of the 1981 murder. But he at least tried to interview the “framed-up and railroaded” Political Prisoner as part of his investigation. (Abu Jamal refused to see him.)

Lindorff’s reality-challenged work, based on a two year investigation, and despite not believing Abu Jamal’s account of the shooting, concluded (on the last page of his 345 page book) that:

Meanwhile, a talented and potentially very influential Black man sits
on death-row on a charge – 1st degree murder – of which he is almost certainly innocent.

O’Connor doesn’t hedge the result of his investigation. The Framing doesn’t use the term “almost” in reference to Abu Jamal’s innocence.

It flat out asserts that “a blacked-out Abu Jamal” was in a stupor while the passenger in William Cook’s VW shot the cop in the back and in the face and then escaped. (pp.12, 115).

The crime reporter is certain of that despite the fact that he never spoke with the gun owning radio journalist, to his brother, William Cook, to a single one of the 1982 murder trial witnesses, or – most importantly – to the crime eyewitness who didn’t testify for the prosecution in 1982, Robert Harkins, and who, according to The Framing, is “one of the keys to everything about this case.”

Yet, the progressive author of The Framing is absolutely, positively, 100% certain that someone other than Mumia Abu Jamal was the “real killer” and that the owner of the hand gun seized at the crime scene – with all five bullets fired – is “innocent.”

The Framing’s Methodology

Here’s the unique, creative, highly imaginative way that J. Patrick O’Connor came to the conclusion that Kenneth Freeman, the passenger in Cook’s VW, shot the cop (although he never tells the reader whether Freeman shot him with the 38 Cook claims his passenger told him he was carrying, or with his brother Abu Jamal’s gun, and if the latter, just how Freeman had the time to exit the VW, go over to the “blacked-out” Abu Jamal, grab his five shot 38, and shoot the cop. More importantly, he never tells us exactly how did Freeman know that Abu Jamal had a concealed handgun in his shoulder holster under his outer jacket).

1st, the author decided that crime eyewitnesses Cynthia White and Robert Chobert didn’t see what they swore they’d seen at the 1982 murder trial. They lied.

2nd, the author read Robert Harkins 12/9/81 and 12/18/81 statements to the Homicide Unit detectives.

3rd, O’Connor concluded that the passenger in Cook’s VW and cabbie Robert Harkins “an eyewitness the prosecution didn’t call to testify are the keys to everything in this case.” (p.11)

4th, he concluded that because Harkins’ description of the shooting wasn’t consistent with the trial testimony of three state eyewitnesses, the prosecutor deliberately and dishonestly didn’t call Harkins to the stand “because his statements exculpated Abu Jamal as Faulkner’s killer.” (p. 63)

5th, he concluded that Abu Jamal’s lawyer (who was aware of Harkins’ pre-trial statements) didn’t call Harkins as a defense witness “because the defense was
underfinanced, overwhelmed, and in total disarray.” (p.63)

6th, the author quotes from both pre-trial statements and then cleverly infers from some of its language that Harkins “description of the shooter …points directly to the burly Freeman” and, more importantly:

It also excludes both Abu Jamal and his brother, Billy Cook, from being
the shooter. (p. 14)

7th, he states that Abu Jamal only weighed “170 pounds” and that trial witness Robert Chobert admitted that he’d told the police right after the murder that the shooter weighed about “200-225 pounds.”

Of course there’s zero in the trial record – or anywhere in the post conviction record – to prove that Abu Jamal weighed 170 pounds on December 9, 1981.

And, of course, the author conveniently neglects to tell his readers that trial exhibit

“C-28,” the federal firearms purchase document filled in and signed by the gun purchaser, stated that Mumia Abu Jamal’s weight was “200 lbs.”

Did author O’Connor ever speak with or write to the so called exculpatory witness?

Of course not.

But he did read Harkins “exculpatory” testimony at the 1995 new trial hearing based on “newly discovered evidence of innocence.”

Unfortunately for The Framing author, the transcript unambiguously indicates to any
sane person with a basic understanding of the English language - and no agenda - that the person Harkins saw shoot the cop couldn’t possibly have been the passenger in William Cook’s car, who, according to O’Connor’s other prime source (William Cook’s April 29, 2001 Declaration, para. 24) “left the area right after this happened.”

Harkins was called as a defense witness in 1995. He responded to a question from the convicted cop killer’s own lawyer, Daniel Williams, as to what happened after he saw the cop on the ground:

HARKINS: Well he (the shooter) leaned over and two, two to three
flashes from his gun. But then he (the shooter) sat down on the curb.

ATTORNEY WILLIAMS: (astonished by that answer) The guy that done the shooting walked and sat down on the curb.!?!

HARKINS: On the pavement. (Transcript – 8/2/95 – p. 210)

Abu Jamal’s flabbergasted lawyer wasn’t expecting that answer which obviously pointed directly at his gun owning client as the person Harkins had seen shooting the cop.

Attorney Williams immediately moved to strike the testimony he hadn’t wanted the hearing Judge, or the press, or Mumia’s adoring public to hear.

The Judge refused.

The Harkins As Exculpatory Witness trial balloon had burst. It was O-V-E-R. At least it was from August 2, 1995, to May 1, 2008, the publication date of The Framing.

In retrospect, although Harkins description of the shooting itself – as opposed to what Abu Jamal did after the shooting – differed materially from the description of the shooting by the prosecution’s four trial witnesses, he obviously corroborated the trial testimony of pedestrian eyewitness Cynthia White and cabbie Robert Chobert and pedestrian Albert Magilton.

White had testified (without contradiction from Abu Jamal or his brother, William Cook) that after she’d seen Abu Jamal shoot the cop in the back and the cop fell to the sidewalk:

Then he (the shooter) came on top of the officer and shot some
more times. After that he (the shooter) went over and slouched
and he sat on the curb. (Transcript, 6/19/82, p. 95).

Chobert testified – without contradiction from either of the criminally violent Cook brothers – that after he’d watched the shooter fire downward at the prone cop:

Then I saw him walk about 10 feet and he just fell by the curb.
(Transcript 6/19/82, p. 3.212)

Pedestrian eyewitness Albert Magilton testified – again without contradiction from either of the two “innocent” Cook brothers – that after he’d heard the shots, he’d walked towards where he’d previously seen the cop and the VW driver. The man – Mumia Abu Jamal - he’d seen racing across the street at the cop’s back “was like sitting on the curb…by the front of the Volkswagen.” (Transcript 6/25/82, p. 78).

It’s unfortunate for the framed up and railroaded Political Prisoner that author O’Connor wasn’t in contact with William Cook just before he signed and published his April 29, 2001 Declaration.

The Framing author could have drafted this scenario for Cook’s signature:

Freeman was still sitting in the passenger seat when Cook, blood trickling down his neck, got back into the VW to look for his car’s registration papers. Freeman, a hardscrabble U.S. Army veteran, saw Abu Jamal running toward the VW, being shot point-blank range in the chest by Faulkner, and collapsing to the ground. Freeman got out of the VW.

That’s exactly what author O’Connor claims in his fact-challenged, zero interviews book at p.12.

Where did he get the “fact” that Freeman, the real killer, saw Abu Jamal get shot?

He didn’t get it from either Cook brother, or from Robert Harkins.

He didn’t get it from Freeman who’s been dead and buried since 1978.

Freeman didn’t leave a diary – or an Arnold R. Beverly style video – saying this.

Author O’Connor just made it up.

The crime author’s scenario makes for a scintillating screenplay for still another “Mumia Was Framed!” movie, or for another pro cop killer infomercial like HBO’s 1996 so called documentary, Mumia Abu Jamal-A Case For Reasonable Doubt.

But The Framing is not objective journalism.

It’s not investigative journalism.

It’s well-crafted, pure unadulterated fiction.

But fictionalized accounts of the 26 year old murder aren’t going to get the remorseless cop killer a "Get of Jail Free" card.

What Mumia needs more than anything else is for someone like yourself to invent for him an “innocent” scenario that, unlike The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal, passes the giggle test.

So please, p-u-h-l-e-e-z-e, crank up your PC, get into Microsoft word, take a few extra puffs on that blunt, get your creative juices flowing, and create a “Mumia’s Innocent!” scenario that’s better than J. Patrick O’Connor’s, William Singletary’s, William Harmon’s, William Cook’s, the convicted cop killer’s, and the Mob Hit Man’s, and send it certified mail to:

The Political Prisoner
Mumia Abu Jamal - # 1350
c/o The Warden
Greene State Correctional Facility
160 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, Pa. 15370

If the “framed-up and railroaded” radio journalist decides to use it, he’ll publicly give you credit for it on his next scheduled weekly broadcast on Prison Radio.

He may even give you a 10% discount on his soon to be published 6th book, The Jail House Lawyer.

Even if no state or federal court believes it you may very well be commencing a newly successful career as a fiction writer – like crime author J. Patrick O’Connor.


JOHN HAYDEN

Author: Mumia Abu Jamal-The Patron Saint of American Cop Killers (2006 Edit)
(Available at “amazon.com” and“barnes&noble.com.”

The 2nd book on the gun owning radio journalist, The Political Prisoner-Mumia Abu Jamal, will be published in the autumn of 2008.

Monday, June 16, 2008

A Running Man and: "The Framing Of Mumia Abu-Jamal



(Editor's note: Although this article was written by writer, Christian Peheim months before the release of "The Framing Of Mumia Abu-Jamal, it is a firm rebuttal of the book's premise. That is the falsity of Kenneth Freeman or anyone other than Jamal shooting Officer Faulkner. This post is the second dealing with the myths presented by the absurdity titled "The Framing Of Mumia Abu-Jamal". There will be more to come including the outright lies concerning Frank Rizzo's alleged threat against Mumia regarding media coverage as well as some new information I have obtained concerning Billy Cook.)

As always, Christian Peheim delivers a unique perspective on the Jamal case that is refreshing and well thought out. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, his positions are not ideologically driven, but based on investigations and common sense. Visit his site to see this article, complete with diagrams that illustrate his point)

During an interview, former Jamal attorney, Leonard Weinglass said “4 people at 4 different locations who did not know each other, reported seeing the shooter flee, and all had him going in the same direction.” Stewart Taylor Jr. wrote about 5 such eyewitnesses. Other commentators and authors made similar claims with different numbers of witnesses. According to these comments the fleeing man ran east on Locust and disappeared through Camac Street, which is close to the crime scene.

In various publications in total 7 persons have been named in order to support the theory of the running man. These persons were Dessie Hightower, Robert Chobert, Veronica Jones, Deborah Kordansky, William Singletary, William Harmon, and Marcus Cannon.

The Witnesses

All witnesses were within a maximum distance of 120 meters (130 yards) from the crime scene at 13th and Locust (39° 56' 52.5''N and 75° 09' 44.5''W). A sufficiently good overview of that area can be taken from Google Earth. The location of witnesses can be based on their testimony, which was not always precise. Additionally, some of the witnesses moved within the relevant period of time.

Dessie Hightower

Dessie Hightower was at the parking lot behind Club Whispers when he heard the shots. This is roughly 60 meters (70 yards) west of the crime scene at the north side of Locust. At the beginning he heard three consecutive shots and after a pause he heard two more. He went to the corner of the building and glanced at the scene where he saw a person running towards 12th street. He described the male as being 1.75-1.83m tall (5'9"-6'), wearing a black and red sweater, and having dread locks. Due to the hairstyle it could have been a woman. He said the person was about 4 car lengths in front of Daniel Faulkner’s police car.

Hightower said he glanced at the scene for a moment and put his head back behind the wall. In total he glanced a couple times before he saw the first police car arriving. Then he went towards 13th street. He estimated that he first looked at the crime scene some 15 seconds or less after he heard the last shot.

Hightower’s description of the running man fits quite well to Abu-Jamal since he had the same height, hairstyle and jacket. Referring to this description, ADA Charles Grant asked him at the PCRA hearing, “You didn't see two people wearing the same things looking like twins, did you?”

He saw him only for a moment and went back behind the wall. When he finally went towards the scene the running man has disappeared. This also would fit to Abu-Jamal who was sitting at the curb behind the cars. On the other hand, Hightower said that man was running towards 12th street and he was at a distance of four car lengths from Faulkner’s car. Abu-Jamal was walking about one car length in front of Faulkner’s car.

Robert Chobert

Robert Chobert had parked his taxicab on Locust Street about a car length behind Daniel Faulkner’s car. At this location he observed the last shots. According to inspector Giordano he first said the shooter ran away. In his first written statement he claimed the shooter ran 30 to 35 steps before sitting down at the curb. Subsequently he reduced the distance to 9 meters (30 feet) and 3 meters (10 feet). This completely wrong estimation casts doubts whether he really saw everything he testified to. If he really had seen Abu-Jamal sitting on the curb he never would have mentioned a distance of 30 to 35 steps because the difference is too obvious. Therefore, I’m sure he used his imagination.

When Abu-Jamal sat down at the curb he disappeared from Chobert’s field of vision. Maybe Chobert assumed that he ran away. However, it is also possible that Chobert saw a man running at a distance of 30 to 35 steps. Afterwards he connected all items of information and he assumed this running man was Abu-Jamal.

Veronica Jones

Veronica Jones was at the northwest corner of 12th and Locust some 120 meters (130 yards) east of the crime scene. She offered three different accounts of her testimony. In her first statement given to police officers on 15 December 1981 she talked about “two black males walking across Locust Street and then they started sort of jogging.” Later the officer doing the interview asked her how close did the two black males who jogged across Locust Street get to the fallen officer. Her answer as reported was “not close enough, maybe two or three steps away.” This clearly indicates that these two males walked towards officer Faulkner.

At the trial she surprised Anthony Jackson by telling him that she did not make that statement. She only remembered two black males who stood there and did not move. Additionally, she testified that she was intoxicated when she did that interview. She said she was “half a nickel bag high,”.

At the PCRA hearing in 1996 she came up with a third version. She insisted that she told the police in 1981 she saw two men running away.

It’s not possible to find out what she really saw. Her distance from the crime scene was rather big. Therefore, her ability to watch the scene was very restricted. According to her testimony she waited some time before she peeked around the corner of Locust and 12th Street. At that time the shooting was already over. Then she saw two persons crossing Locust Street. These persons could have been Dessie Hightower and Robert Pickford. Even if her testimony at the PCRA hearing was correct she could not have seen the same man that Dessie Hightower claimed he has seen because his “running man” ran eastwards on the south side of Locust Street.

Deborah Kordansky

In 1981 she lived at the St. James house at 13th and Walnut Street (north of Locust). From her apartment she could overlook the crime scene because she lived at the 10th floor. The distance between her apartment and Locust Street was about 90 meters (100 yards). Her testimony was as follows:

"Well, I told them the sequence of events. First hearing the gunshots. Then hearing sirens. Going to my window. Looking out seeing police cars and vans. And then seeing someone running."

Deborah Kordansky, 3 August 1995, p. 241&249

During her testimony she insisted that she heard the sirens before she went to the window, and she did not know in which direction the person was running. In total, her testimony does not indicate that she saw someone fleeing the scene.

(Editor's Note: I doubt anyone was up to anything good at that time of the morning in Center City Philadelphia. At the sound of gunshots, police sirens, etc...I have no doubt that there were plenty of people who were in a big hurry to get out of Dodge)

William Singletary

William Singletary was one of the most important witnesses in 1995. He claimed he has seen the entire shooting while standing at the corner of Locust und 13th street, which was some 30 meters (35 yards) west of the crime scene. According to his testimony a black male emerged from William Cook’s VW, shot officer Faulkner and disappeared towards 12th street. Later he made a handwritten report but the detective did not accept that report and threw it away. Singletary claimed that he has been threatened and finally he gave in to the threats and wrote down what the detective wanted him to write. Since that time he has been harassed by the police and was forced to leave Philadelphia.

Even though his testimony sounds like evidence of a police conspiracy, his story is simply unbelievable. He saw a helicopter above the crime scene, which was not there, he said Abu-Jamal wore green trousers like Arabs, and he reported Daniel Faulkner spoke after he has been shot in the face. At that time, however, Daniel Faulkner was dead or close to death, either way, it was impossible for him to have spoken.

According to Singletary, Abu-Jamal went to Faulkner and asked him whether he could help him. At that time Faulkner’s gun discharged and hit Abu-Jamal in the chest. The lawyers later claimed these events are supported by the testimony of Dr. Hayes. At the same time they used Dr. Hayes’ testimony to refute the theory that Faulkner could have shot Abu-Jamal when he was on the ground. Judge Yohn offered the following commentary on this issue in his ruling:

"It is unreasonable and frivolous for the same counsel in the same case representing the same petitioner and seeking the same relief to suggest first that Hayes’ testimony permits a finding that the shooter shot up toward Jamal and then later to argue, without acknowledging the prior statement, a shot directed upwards is impossible."

Judge Yohn, 18 December 2001, p. 42

Singletary’s entire testimony was without any credibility. Not even Weinglass and and his co-counsel Dan Williams believed his story. Weinglass said, “We believe his recollection today is not entirely accurate” while Williams called it a disaster. He was so incredible that ADA Arlene Fisk offered officers and police cars to bring him to court. Daniel Williams assumed she wanted to embarrass the defense with this witness.

Highway patrol officer Vernon Jones who knew Singletary gave the most believable account of Singletary’s observations. Singletary approached Jones at the crime scene and asked him, “Jones, what’s happening?” Then Jones asked him whether he has seen anything and Singletary replied “No.”

William Harmon

William Harmon was a well know scam artist. He became so infamous throughout the city for dropping bad checks that his picture was sent to every bank in the Philadelphia area.

William Harmon testified at the PCRA hearing that he was in the parking lot at the north side of Locust together with Abu-Jamal when they heard a loud argument between a police officer and another person. Then they heard a shot, the officer fell to the ground, and the other man ran east on Locust Street. After they heard the first shot Abu-Jamal started running towards the scene. When Abu-Jamal was on the sidewalk the officer on the ground shot at him and he fell to the ground, as well. A car with two black males inside pulled up beside the police car, the passenger got out of the car and shot the wounded officer with a single shot. Finally, this car pulled back and disappeared towards south on 13th Street.

Harmon did not testify at the original trial in 1982 because he has promised his mother to not get involved with this.

Harmon’s testimony was pure nonsense. He didn’t see William Cook standing at the sidewalk but he saw the man discuss with officer Faulkner run away. He didn’t see other people on the street but he saw a car with two black males, which no one else saw. Abu-Jamal’s lawyers got the same impression because Harmon did not even appear in their various petitions.

Marcus Cannon

Another of Jamal's ever-changing stable of lawyers, Rachel Wolkenstein, had introduced Marcus Cannon during the PCRA hearing in 1997 but due to an objection by the District Attorney he was not allowed to testify. Therefore, we know only a portion of his alleged testimony and it never has been subject to a cross-examination.

According to Wolkenstein he was in Club Whispers on 9 December 1981 and upon leaving that club and walking north on 13th Street he passed two men, one of them appeared to be like a bum. As Cannon proceeded north on 13th Street he heard shots, he saw a flash of light, he turned and looked back towards 13th and Locust Street. As he turned back he saw a black male running very fast east on Locust Street.

He continued and claims to have seen two men suddenly stand up and pull out weapons and proceed very quickly to the corner of 13th and Locust Street. He was frightened and he immediately turned and continued up 13th Street towards Walnut.

His declaration has not been published and Abu-Jamal’s lawyers never again tried to put him on the stand. In contrast to the testimony of Veronica Jones and Pamela Jenkins they did not go to the Supreme Court in order to force judge Sabo to hear his testimony. Obviously, Cannon was not important enough or he was not reliable. However, his alleged testimony has been used in some publications and in petitions made by Eliot Grossman, another ex-Jamal lawyer.

William Cook

In his sworn declaration William Cook claimed Kenneth Freeman was with him in the Volkswagen. When he went back to his car, Freeman was still in the passenger seat but when he looked again a few seconds later, the passenger door was open and Freeman was gone.

It’s more than unlikely that Faulkner would have allowed Cook to go back into the VW. Only a suicidal officer would have done so because in this situation he could not have seen Cook’s hands. Even though the entire declaration is doubtful, it provides the alleged identity of the “fleeing man.”

Albert Magilton

Albert Magilton saw Abu-Jamal starting to cross the street but turned away because he himself intended to cross the street at the traffic light at 13th and Locust. At this location he was about 30 meters (35 yards) west of the crime scene. After he has heard the first shots he turned around, proceeded to the sidewalk on the south side of Locust Street and looked at the crime scene. When he got to the pavement he saw the police officer lying on the ground, Abu-Jamal sitting on the curb and William Cook standing close to the wall.

He reached the pavement only a second or a few seconds after the last shot but he did not see anyone fleeing the scene.

Robert Harkins

Robert Harkins was an eyewitness to the shooting but did not testify at the trial. He passed the crime scene in his car going east on Locust. At the PCRA hearing in 1995 he said that the shooter shot at the officer on the ground, walked a few steps and sat down at the curb. Some thirty seconds later officers Shoemaker and Forbes arrived at the crime scene and found Abu-Jamal sitting at the curb close to the front of the Volkswagen. Harkins did not see a person running from the scene.

Michael Scanlan and Robert Chobert

Both, Scanlan and Chobert, watched the murder from their cars. Due to their locations they only could see the south side of the sidewalk (close to the building) but not the curb on the north side. Both of them saw the shooter standing over Daniel Faulkner and shooting at him. At this time only Daniel Faulkner, the shooter and William Cook where within their field of vision. They clearly testified that no one else was there.

Roy Land from the Mobile Crime Detection Unit collected blood samples at two different locations. Both locations where at the south side of the sidewalk close to the building. Since only two persons were bleeding at the crime scene (I do not count Arnold Beverly and by all available accounts William Cooks cut in the ear could not have generated the clearly visible trail of blood) it is simple to determine the blood types without having a DNA-test. Blood type O came from Daniel Faulkner (it has been found at the back of his tie and on his t-shirt) and blood type A came from Abu-Jamal (it has been found on his clothing and 2 vials of blood have been taken). Please note that Rachel Wolkenstein’s statement that Cook, Abu-Jamal, and Faulkner all had type A blood contradicts the trial record (26 June 1982, p. 28 and 30).

The approximate limit of Chobert's and Scanlan's field of vision is somewhere in the center of the sidewalk. Therefore, both were able to see the shooter who left blood stains at the south side of the sidewalk. The curb on the north side of the sidewalk and the passenger door of William Cook’s VW was not within their field of vision.

According to the blood samples this shooter was Abu-Jamal. Even if Freeman really has been in the VW he never entered Scanlan’s and Chobert’s field of vision. The shooter was Mumia Abu-Jamal, which is confirmed by Harkins who testified that the shooter sat down on the curb.

All That Remains (And Of Most Importance)

The evidence for a running man is very weak. Veronica Jones saw 2 men crossing the street, Deborah Kordansky looked at the scene a long time after the shooting, Singletary and Harmon told mutually contradicting fairy tales, and Marcus Cannon never testified.

Even though Robert Chobert could have seen a running man it is rather unlikely. He said that he saw that running man before he got out of the car but from inside the car his ability to see anything was limited. From his point of view, he saw the shooter disappearing but could not see how far he went.

Dessie Hightower’s observation was inconclusive, as well. He only glanced at the scene a couple of times and afterwards that person was not visible anymore. His description of the running person fits quite well to Abu-Jamal. The running person according to his testimony had the same height, clothes, and hairstyle as Abu-Jamal. Only the distance from the police car was about four car lengths instead of one car length. In total, it’s quite possible that he saw Abu-Jamal walking from the scene and made a wrong estimation regarding the distance.

Albert Magilton watched the crime scene earlier than Hightower and he was much closer to Abu-Jamal and Faulkner but he did not see anyone running.

Robert Harkins passed the crime scene and could see Abu-Jamal sitting down on the curb. Within this period of time he did not see another person on the sidewalk.

The entire evidence renders the theory of a running man very unlikely. Even in the unlikely case that Kenneth Freeman has been there it is completely impossible that he was the shooter. Eyewitness accounts provided by Scanlan, White, and Magilton together with the gun shot traces around the entrance of Locust 1234 prove beyond any doubt that Abu-Jamal fired the first shots from the street (see also Abu-Jamal's Gun and The Shots Towards Locust 1234). The blood traces together with the accounts given by Scanlan, Chobert, and Harkins prove that Abu-Jamal fired the last shots, as well.

Copyright © 2005-2008 Christian Peheim

Thursday, June 12, 2008

The Fraud That Is "The Framing Of Mumia Abu-Jamal"



(Editor's Note: In the near future will be posts further exploding some of the myths presented in J. Patrick O'Connor's "book" on Mumia's case. He will be appearing with Pam Africa and Ramona Africa in NYC to promote his book on June 24th at 6pm at the Brecht Forum 451 West St. They are asking for people to bring questions. I would challenge people to call O'Connor out on some of the issues I am raising regarding his book and to ask MOVE about their abuse of children and their role in the murder of John Gilbride)

“The Framing Of Mumia Abu-Jamal” by J. Patrick O’ Connor, has to be the worst book on the issue ever written.

Previous books about the case at least rose up to one’s expectations of the author. “Race For Justice” by former Jamal attorney, Leonard Weinglass, was essentially Jamal’s case for innocence written by a man paid to free his client. You did not expect two sides to that story to be presented. The same went for the book written by another Jamal attorney, Dan Williams called “Executing Justice” , which was decidedly pro-Mumia, but understandably suspect of the cult-like atmosphere surrounding the man who would fire him. Dave Lindorff, feigned objectivity, but his political bias was as transparent as could be in his book on the case “Killing Time”. The most thorough of all of the books on the Jamal case would be the lengthy “Mumia Abu-Jamal “The Patron Saint of American Cop-Killers” by John Hayden. Hayden is working on his second book on the case, and in the interest of disclosure, Hayden is a contributor to this site. Maureen Faulkner’s book (again in the spirit of disclosure, I contributed a few words to) offered the view from the vantage point of the widow and was by far the most successful of all of the books on Jamal’s case.

The problems with O’Connor’s book are so many and so egregious that I found myself unable to write a book review of it in the traditional sense. While reading it and taking notes, I discovered that it would take a book greater than the length of “The Framing Of Mumia Abu-Jamal” to itemize and correct all of the falsehoods, half-truths, and the tyranny of assumptions that make up the core of this unfortunate book.

On the surface, it’s author, J. Patrick O’Connor seems as if he doesn’t have a dog in the fight. There is no obvious political agenda in the way that Lindorff and Weinglass did, with both of their books being published by the far-left Common Courage Press, however O’Connor is on a different trip all together. He is the publisher of an online magazine simply known as “Crime Magazine, that purports to report on the following topics: “true crime: organized crime, celebrity crime, serial killers, corruption, sex crimes, capital punishment, prisons, assassinations, justice issues, crime books, crime films and crime studies.”

O’Connor, who in his book claims that the deceased Kenneth Freeman and not Mumia killed Officer Faulkner, has a habit of blaming dead people for murder. In an article about the killing of Jon Benet Ramsey, the patron saint of pretty, murdered, white girls, who garner world wide interest, O’Connor blames the girl’s dead mother who was never charged with anything for the crime of killing her child This, on his ironically titled “Crime Magazine” website.

And while O’Connor has no clear-cut, political, proclivities, his pro-Mumia bias seeps out of every page of his book and the fact that he is clearly enamored by MOVE is disturbing to say the least. He is also given to some pretty baseless ideas that he seems to enjoy inflicting on his readers. O’Connor also has what seems to be a savage streak as in his acknowledgments, he thanks the “Justice For Daniel For Daniel Faulkner Website” and writes of his “hope...his book...may aid...Faulkner’s family...in achieving justice”. It is the kind of grotesque cynicism that does not even warrant a response, only an observation that O’Connor fails to mention the address of the Faulkner site, or that it contains the trial transcripts, and he certainly fails to mention that much of pro-Jamal rhetoric in his book has already been thoroughly been debunked on the Faulkner website.

In the face of overwhelming and inexcusable “Free Mumia” falsehoods, I am going to go beyond merely pointing out and challenging the mountain of O’Connor’s falsehoods, and cut to the heart of the idea that Mumia was “framed” head on with facts, some of which have yet to be discussed.

Also, I will show that the idea of Kenneth Freeman as the killer of Officer Faulkner is patently absurd, not supported by facts, and is not even one that is endorsed by Jamal or his legal team. Another conspiracy theory in O’Connor’s treatise is that of now deceased , former Police Commissioner and Philadelphia Mayor, Frank Rizzo had a role in Mumia’s frame-up. O’Connor asserts, falsely, that the former Philadelphia Mayor “threatened” Mumia.

These two false assertions by O’Connor are by no means the only ones in his book, but they do stand out as examples of myth making so irresponsible and reckless that they are worthy of meticulous repudiation. As they not only represent concepts rejected by prosecutors, but apparently be the revolving door, scheme teams, that comprise Jamal’s legal defense apparatus.

A few other examples of O’Connor running roughshod over the facts are as follows:

-He claims that in 1978 that Police fired “10,000 rounds of ammunition into the MOVE house and that the nine MOVE members were convicted for the killing of Officer Ramp. In another paragraph about MOVE, O’Connor claims that there was “no ballistics to prove that Officer Ramp was killed by a bullet from the compound”

The fact is that he pulled the “10,000 round s fired out of the MOVE confrontation in 1985. MOVE members were not just convicted of killing Officer Ramp, but for the attempted murder of several other Police and Firefighters, some who were gravely wounded by MOVE gunfire, one of them disabled and forced into retirement

Officer Ramp was shot by a gun taken from the MOVE compound. The bullet matched a MOVE weapon removed from the basement and was of the same type of gun MOVE members were observed with in the basement and purchased by a MOVE member. Ballistically speaking, you can’t get much more of a smoking gun than that.

-He claims that Mumia carried a gun because he had “been robbed at gunpoint”

Mumia purchased that gun two years and five months prior to him using it to kill Officer Faulkner. It was a gun he purchased well before he was a cab driver. I have also not ever heard of any police reports of Jamal being robbed. As a cab driver, working for any company, the policy would have demanded his reportage of such an event. Moreover, when the Police had secured Jamal’s gun, all of the rounds were reported to have been fired, a fact that neither Mumia nor his defense team have ever approached. Was he going to throw an empty gun at robbers? If he fired the weapon at a gun range, certainly staff would have recognized him and could vouch for him, just like the gun dealer had remembered the well-dressed, articulate, dread locked man, had from two years earlier The unavoidable fact however is that Mumia had fired that gun the night he killed Officer Faulkner and no amount of avoiding the issue of the gun can alter that fact. In a twist of words, O’Connor tells readers that an Officer kicked Jamal as he was reaching towards “a gun”, when in reality it was Mumia’s gun. A very subtle, but deliberate attempt at manipulation.

-Although Billy Cook is mentioned numerous times in his book O’Connor omits a few key facts concerning Jamal’s brother

O’Connor leaves out the fact that Billy told arriving Officers that he “aint got nothing to do with it”, exonerating himself, but not his brother Mumia. He fails to mention Cook’s affidavit contradicts that of his brothers.

-Typical of all Jamal supporters, O’Connor thinks little of Jamal’s supposed “confession”.

Certainly, reasonable people need to ask just exactly why it took trained, Police Officers months to come forward with an allegation of a murder confession from a cop-killer. However, if you take the confession evidence in it’s entirety, it does gain a level of believability not so easily dismissed. For example, should Jamal get the new trial O’Connor and others think he deserve, he will have to deal with a whole new set of issues regarding the confession.

A problem for Jamal lay in the sheer number of
“earwitnesses” who heard Jamal confess in one fashion or another.
Priscilla Durham, Officer Alphonse Giordano, Officer Gary Bell, Officer Thomas Bray, Officer Gary Wakshul, Officer Tom Brady, and NBC Producer Kathleen Gerrow all made statements to the effect that Jamal confessed to killing Officer Faulkner.
Back in 1981, Kathleen Gerrow was a radio reporter when she went to the hospital to cover the story when she heard a very distinctive voice shouting, 'I shot the mother f----er, I shot the mother f----er,” said Gerrow. That voice, Gerrow said, belonged to Abu-Jamal.

In total, that means that seven people who allegedly heard Jamal confess. Are they all lying?

-Chapter 32 of O’Connor’s book asks the question “Was Faulkner An FBI Informant”. Although he admits himself that this was “highly unlikely”, he follows crackpot, former Jamal attorney Rachel Wolkenstein right down the conspiratorial rabbit hole when he casually reprints her hearsay, alleged anecdotes, and un-named sources, that combined amount to nothing more than the desperation of a crack-pot attorney who was just lucky to be where she was at the time.

To add insult to injury, O’Connor lists two Philadelphia Police Officers that he believes were killed “under circumstances suggesting a directed hit”.

In May of 1985, not long after the MOVE confrontation on Osage Avenue, Police
Officer Thomas Trench was shot while sitting in his patrol car. To O’Connor this must have been a “hit” and further evidence that Officer Faulkner may have been done in the same way. There is a problem with this alleged “hit” scenario. The now twice convicted murderer of P.O. Trench, Willfredo Santiago was not out to silence an informant or a corrupt cop, but rather was out to settle a score with another police officer who had been driving the same patrol car -- number 912 -- just hours earlier, and that Santiago rode up on a bike and shot Trench in the face. It was a case of mistaken identity that has nothing at all to do with Officer Faulkner of Mumia.

The other Police Officer mentioned by O’Connor was Police Officer James Mason. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get much in the way of information in the media regarding Officer Mason. I did, however, manage to get in contact with a Police Officer who actually had worked in the same district as Officer Mason and was sadly familiar with the circumstances of Mason’s murder. He sent me the following statement on the matter:

“Officer James Mason and Officer Singletary were finished handling a “Disturbance House” radio call on 36th street. The house faced the Mantua Hall housing project. The building “was” 18 floors high and a juvenile was in his apartment window with a rifle. He has discovered the rifle under his mother’s bed and was playing with it and pointing it out the window. The juvenile was watching the police activity across the street and when the two Police Officers had returning to their police vehicle and were filling out paperwork. The juvenile fired the rifle and the bullet struck Officer Mason in the side of the head. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Presbyterian Hospital. The courts found the juvenile guilty of manslaughter and he was sent to a juvenile home until he was 19 years old. He was 15-16 years old at the time of the shooting.”

Clearly, O’Connor, has not just shown himself to care nothing for facts, but also a callous disregard for the families of murder victims other than just the family of Officer Faulkner. His fatuous and disingenuous attempts to link the completely unrelated murders of James Mason and Thomas Trench with that of Daniel Faulkner make that much clear. More than just a poor writer and an inveterate liar, he has shown himself to be a pitiful researcher who has just cut and pasted enough pro-Mumia blather to cobble together a book. Victims, truth, reality be dammed

-O’Connor paints Jamal as a man of “peaceable nature” and notes how shocked Jamal’s friends were at the news that he was arrested and charged with murder. This portrayal of Mumia as a man of peace is disingenuous to say the least, but even if it were true, it underestimates the influence a group like MOVE has upon those in it’s orbit. Certainly cults, especially those like MOVE, are known for altering their adherent’s personalities. Moreover, at the time of Officer Faulkner’s death, Jamal’s personal and professional life had effectively hit bottom. What did remain was his devotion to MOVE, nine of whom Jamal idolized and not-so-coincidentally had just been convicted of amongst other things, murdering a Philadelphia Police Officers.

Jamal’s own animus towards the Police is hardly a secret and his youth wasn’t exactly the one of a perpetual, spiritual quest, and naive political acts. In his Black Panther days, 11 years before shooting Officer Faulkner, he was writing that he was feeling like “putting down the pen” and implored readers of a Black Panther Party publication to “write epitaphs for pigs”. In addition to idolizing MOVE members who killed cops, Mumia to this day, still adores Black Panther co-founder Huey P. Newton. The former black militant, turned crack addict, was gunned down in during a drug dispute in 1989, yet his luster has not been diminished in Mumia’s eyes. Like his MOVE heroes, Newton gunned down Police Officer John Frey, but after careful and very good legal maneuvering, Newton was able to walk out of jail after only three years. Incidentally, Newton’s account of the Police shooting was very similar to Jamal’s 2001 affidavit. Prior to his death, Newton would beat another murder rap, this one for the "alleged" killing of a 17 year old prostitute after two trials ended in deadlocked juries.

Even before Jamal’s days as a Panther and MOVE supporter, it appears he was enamored by violence and may have participated in gang violence. During his 1995 hearing, one of Jamal’s own witnesses, a man named Arnold Howard, blurted out that he and Mumia “used to gang war together”, so much for Mumia’s life of non-violence.

The above paragraphs are just a few of O’Connor’s assault on the truth with regards to Jamal’s case. There are many more, some more heinous than others.

When all is said and done, there are two primary myths that O’Connor perpetuates in his book that do call for a lengthy and thorough repudiation. Thankfully, there are people as aghast as I am about O’Connor’s disdain for the truth and who are helping me in the effort to prove my point, and so therefore, these issues will be put to rest sooner rather than later. In the coming days and weeks, not only will a few more aspects of the “Free Mumia” cause will be shown to be a vicious canard, but that J. Patrick O’Connor has not written a book of facts, but a work of propaganda, full of assumptions, a disconnect from the truth, and has done a disservice to justice.

Hit Counter
Online Schools