Thanks

Like Ron White says, “You can’t fix stupid”

!. Why has William Cook never said anything publicly in defense of his brother?

2. Why was Mumia shot by Danny Faulkner?

http://partisandefense.org/pubs/articles/factsheet1231.html

Whatever the thruth may be, a man can not be locked away or sentenced to death on such dubious facts, a new trial should be set up.

You know nothing about police work Hans. A “smell test” is movie garbage. No credible evidence can be gained from having one officer small a handgun. It is completely subjective and you can’t prove the officer right or wrong in the courtroom. Imagine for example that he had smelled that the gun was recently fired. You would just dismiss it anyway as another deceitful cop in this massive conspiracy theory to keep Mumia behind bars.

A Trace Metal Detection Test was done in 1982 and it showed traces of primer lead residue on Jamal’s clothes. This is an acceptable form of evidence and it is absolutely incontrovertible.

Also, the bullet that killed Faulkner was a .38 caliber +P bullet with a hollow base and the rifling characteristics on the slug matched Mumia’s handgun. Jamal’s gun was found a few feet from him loaded with +P bullets that have a hollow base.

Finally, there were witnesses to the murder that saw Mumia murder Faulkner. These witnesses did not know each other and had no reason to conspire together against Jamal. However, even if all the eyewitness testimony was faulty as you claim, the ballistics evidence alone is enough to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

I have the facts and all you have are conspiracy theories. Please visit http://www.danielfaulkner.com for FACTS supported by trial transcripts and scholarly sources. This website does not cite biased freshman term papers like Dummies4Mumia.com.

This mentality of yours and others is precisely why the FRY MUMIA lynch mob was so upset by The Today Show’s Matt Lauer presenting Mumia supporters as people with a legitimate opinion that deserved to be fairly presented along with the viewpoints of Faulkner and Smerconish.

By the way, even if one gives the police and prosecution the benefit of doubt regarding all of the many contradictions in ballistics evidence, the recovered bullet was never tied to Mumia’s gun–just to “multiples of millions” of .38 caliber guns, including many millions of guns not manufactured by Charter Arms. If Mumia’s gun was “smoking,” why didn’t police officially do a “smell test”?

I also find it amusing that, immediately following my post regarding Mumia’s testimony and account of Dec. 9, 1981, you actually re-state one of the FRY MUMIA crowd’s biggest lies ever: that Mumia has never stated his innocence!

Gosh, you really are doing me a big favor by revealing yourself as a complete liar. Thanks.

I encourage readers to visit both danielfaulkner.com and my site Abu-Jamal-News.com and see for themselves.

Further, Maureen Faulkner and others adamantly oppose this new trial, so it is very important for us to show the case’s serious flaws, so that we can challenge Faulkner’s argument that it is an “open and shut” case. If we can challenge this notion, and get a new trial, then this will be the best avenue for finding the truth.

As author Dave Lindorff has pointed out, most defendants do not testify unless absolutely necessary because it is generally seen as bad legal strategy–whereas a defendant is vulnerable to cross-examination. So, I don’t think that his lack of testimony should be held against him. Also, Mumia stated that he wasn’t testifying because he did not want to validate an unfair trial.

For the record, though, Mumia did sign an affidavit giving his account of the night, in 2001, but the courts would not allow it to be entered in as evidence. In his statement he says that he was shot as he approached the scene, lost consciousness, and woke up to a vicious police beating. So, technically he has given a statement, but this is rarely recognized.

All the same, I will summarize important points of the argument Hans Bennett and I am making in a short form. For the rest, I refer readers to our previous postings and our website http://www.abu-jamal-news.com.

The “open and shut” argument of Abu-Jamal’s foes rests on three pillars:

1. eyewitness testimony about the shooting, 2. earwitness testimony about a confession, 3. cop testimony about abu-Jamal’s gun at the scene.

We deny the veracity of the testimony listed under 1., 2., and 3. Let’s consider these three points:

1. Three witnesses testified that the person who shot Faulkner stood over the prone officer and fired several shots at him. Two of these witnesses claimed to have recognized Abu-Jamal as the shooter.

The account of these three witnesses, which was decisive for the outcome of the trial, cannot be true. Had the killing occured the way they describe it, there would have been divots in the sidewalk around Faulkner’s head visible to the naked eye. There are none.

Conclusion: Since the testimony of the three witnesses was identical in the relevant regard AND does not give a true account of what happened, it must be manufactured.

2. In all, five persons – two hospital security guards and three cops -claimed to have heard Abu-Jamal make incriminating statements. Two of them, a security guard and a cop, testified at the trial, with an effect devastating to Abu-Jamal.

These witnesses lied. The two security guards reported Abu-Jamal’s confession to the police no earlier than February 9, 1982. The first cop reported it on February 11, the one who testified at the trial on February 25, and the last cop to report a confession – different from what the others reported – did this on March 1, 1982.

None of these people, all security personnel, three of thzem cops entertained the idea that a confession is important evidence and that the police should hear about it?

How gullible can you get? This story about the belated recollection of a confession is not believable. As for the security guard who claimed to have reported it to her superiors the following day – why didn’t he superiors report it to the police? Where they crazy, or stupid, or in favor of cop killers?

Conclusion: The likelihhood that not one, but five cops/security guards forgot the confession for two months or more is as big as Hans Bennett becoming president of the United States in the next election. The confession, too, never happened – it was manufactured.

3. Two cops testified at the trial that they saw Abu-Jamal’s gun right beside him. After the eyewitnesses and the earwitnesses mentioned under 1. and 2., this was the proverbial icing on the cake.

These two cops are also not credible. As shown in newly available photos, one of these cops mishandles Abu-Jamal’s and Faulkner’s guns, even though he swore at the trial to have treated them properly. The other cop claimed at the trial that when he saw the gun within Abu-Jamal’s reach, he first kicked Abu-Jamal and then the gun – but no further than one foot, in order to preserve evidence.

The one cop is a proven liar – the photos show it. The claim of the other cop is absurd.

Conclusion: These witnesses, too, manufactured their testimony. Nothing they said at the trial can be taken at face value, including their claim to have found Abu-Jamal’s gun beside him.

General conclusion: A closer examination reduces the three pillars of the prosecution to rubbish.

An open and shut case? No way! The “waterproof” evidence of the prosecution does not stand up to scrutiny. It is rather a case of “No evidence – no case!”, which is why I’ve been calling for Abu-Jamal’s release since I’ve made myself familiar with the topic.

A new trial in which all the evidence is examined is certainly – here, Mr. Frazer, do you finally have your two adverbs – the minimum that Mumia Abu-Jamal deserves.

I tend to mistrust the abundance of adverbs myself. I also tend to suspect that the user of abundant adverbs mistrusts the very words he intends to advance. It appears the supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal have a penchant for adverbs. Strongly, clearly, completely, significantly mark their commentaries. There is an anger, understandably, lurking under each “l-y.” But I sense the anger is not only with the “liars” who support the killing of Abu-Jamal, but with their hero and the facts his actions have left them with. I know when I say that something “clearly” happened I am almost uncertain whether it did clearly happen. We tend to use adverbs in the absence of facts, a place Abu-Jamal has left his devoted supporters.

It is interesting that Pat DiMauro is not concerned by the fabricated hosptial confession, since it reveals several important things. (1) Maureen Faulkner purposefully misrepresented the facts in this interview (specifically regarding Priscilla Durham). (2) Police LIED both in the official police report taken 2 months later, and in court. This is perjury–a very serious offense, and the implications are serious.

If police were willing to fabricate this confession to convict Mumia, what else were they capable of? Particularly when there is so much other suspicious evidence that strongly suggests a police frame-up. This, of course, leads us to the issue of ballistics.

Pat says that “bullets from his own gun were in Faulkner.” This is another fabrication (lie). Only one bullet was recovered in Faulkner. The bullet shot into his back exited below his throat, and apparently took Faulkner’s clip-tie with it. Where was this tie found? Across the street in the same direction Mumia ran from. This suggests that Faulkner was shot from behind while he was looking in Mumia’s direction (across the street). If Mumia shot Faulkner in the back, the tie (and the bullet) should have been up on the curbside–not across the street. This lends even more evidence to the theory that Faulkner was shot by a third person, likely Kenneth Freeman, who was the passenger in Mumia’s brother’s car.

Then, of course there is the problem of the “missing divots” that Michael Schiffmann wrote about in his commentary, which shows that the prosecution scenario was incorrect and eyewitness testimony supporting it was almost certainly the result of police coercion.

Now, let’s return to Pat’s statement that the bullets were linked to Mumia’s gun. Check this out:

—Police never officially performed the standard “wipe test” checking for gunshot residue on Abu-Jamal’s hands and clothing, or the “smell test” on his gun, which Amnesty International has criticized as “deeply troubling.”

—44 or 38 Caliber? The original medical examiner’s report (never seen by the 1982 jury) stated that the deadly bullet was a .44 caliber. Abu-Jamal’s gun was a .38 caliber, Charter Arms revolver, which uses a significantly smaller bullet than a .44. Later, the official police ballistician, Anthony Paul, would conclude that the bullet was a .38. This initial contradiction is arguably suspicious, but even if the medical examiner made a legitimate mistake, the evidence presented by the DA about the alleged .38 bullet is also contradictory and inconclusive.

—Particular rifling traits identify a particular bullet as coming from one specific gun. Official police experts have always said that the fatal bullet was too damaged to link the particular traits to Abu-Jamal’s gun.

—General rifling traits can only link a bullet to a particular type of gun. In his report, Paul first identified the bullet’s general traits as “indeterminable.” Contradicting himself in the same report, Paul later noted a general trait: a “right-hand direction of twist.” Paul’s 1982 trial testimony then went further by identifying another general trait never mentioned in his written report “8 lands and 8 grooves.” Therefore, after deeming the general traits “indeterminable,” Paul then alleged two general traits that served to further implicate Abu-Jamal’s gun type.

—Multiples of Millions? Even if these general traits cited by Paul did exist on the bullet, it was not a reliable link to Abu-Jamal’s gun. The defense asked Paul in 1982, “approximately, how many millions of guns have eight lands and grooves and how many would provide this bullet?” He acknowledged that it could have come from “multiples of millions,” including many millions of guns not manufactured by Charter Arms.

Mumia needs a new trial. Anyone who says this case is “open and shut” is either misinformed or an outright liar. For more on Faulkner’s new book check out this review from Princeton University Professor Mark L. Taylor:

http://dailyscare.com/2646/emajs-mark-taylor-reviews-murdered-by-mumia

Also, Mumia has never said that he did not murder Faulkner, nor has his own brother. I do not think that any reasonable individual can look at the case and conclude that he did not murder Faulkner. I believe that some of his supporters are not reasonable people and that the rest know he murdered Faulkner but could care less about this poor policeman’s death.

– On Paul Comstock’s “Conversation with Maureen Faulkner” –

by Michael Schiffmann

As Hans Bennett, co-founder with myself of “Journalists for Mumia,” correctly says in his first comment on Paul Comstock’s “Conversation with Maureen Faulkner,” published by the California Literary Review, it’s hard to find out where to begin, since this whole interview consists of a series of multiple falsifications on the part of Maureen Faulkner.

It is painful to see how the ways in which an indubitable personal tragedy where a young woman lost her husband abruptly and violently has been transformed into a mindless cam-paign of hatred and disinformation.

In personal terms, I wouldn’t put the blame for this mainly on Maureen Faulkner, whose con-tinuing anger at the person who she assumes to be the murderer of her husband is perhaps understandable, but on people who should and most certainly could know better, such as Faulkner’s co-author Michael Smerconish, their fellow campaigner for Mumia Abu-Jamal’s death Ed Rendell, and many others who are not tied to that case in as close a manner as Mau-reen Faulkner but are even superseding her in their greed to see Abu-Jamal executed.

That said, let me comment on Maureen Faulkner’s answers to the questions posed to her one by one, answers for which she alone must be held responsible.

First question: “Based on all of the court testimony that has accumulated over the years, what exactly happened on December 9th, 1981, the night of your husband’s murder?”

Faulkner descriptions here are wrong right from the start. There is no evidence whatsoever that Abu-Jamal’s brother Billy Cook drove the wrong way on 13th Street and was stopped for this alleged traffic violation. In fact, prosecution witness Albert Magilton explicitly stated at the trial that Cook approached the scene driving in the right direction (East) on Locust. So much for reading the trial transcripts!

I won’t bother giving the exact locations of this and further information taken from the trial transcripts here since the advocates of the execution of Abu-Jamal to which Maureen Faulk-ner (in the following: MF) also belongs have elevated the trial protocols of the Abu-Jamal to some kind of Gospel truth which disqualifies anyone who hasn’t read all of its 5,000+ pages to even comment on the case – so I assume they can find the information I am referring to here with ease.

Should they feel that in their diligent study of this material hey have overlooked something, there is no quote for my following claims I couldn’t give immediately.

To resume the description of the events, Abu-Jamal’s brother Billy Cook had done nothing wrong in driving his VW in the proscribed Eastern direction on Locust, and not on 13th, as claimed by MF, when he was stopped by Officer Faulkner.

The description of what followed is also false. Officer Faulkner (in the following: DF for Daniel Faulkner) did not mainly hit Billy Cook’s shoulder, but rather, his head, as evidenced by police protocols of the time and even prosecution witnesses.

Furthermore, MF raises the claim that “Danny hit Cook over his shoulder with his flashlight and had him spread out over the hood of his patrol car when witnesses saw another man run from the parking lot across the street towards Cook and Danny.”

Yet the prosecution’s main witness Cynthia White, whose story of the events changed in the most remarkable pro-prosecution ways over time has always been adamant about one point, namely, that the whole confrontation of Officer Faulkner beating Cook and Abu-Jamal shoot-ing Faulkner in the back took place on the sidewalk of the South side of Locust Street.

But how could Abu-Jamal, who approached the scene undisputedly from the North, then get, and of all things unnoticed, into the back of the officer to shoot him? He would have had to have run past Faulkner, circle or at least half-circle him without the officer reacting or even noticing, and then have started to shoot at him!

And after that remarkable feat, he would have had to have been stupid enough to wait for the officer to whirl around to fire back at him!

With that alleged “return” shot, the egregious mistakes and falsifications continue. Abu-Jamal was not shot in the abdomen,” but in the chest, causing a wound that could have easily cost him his life and probably would have had the officers assigned to guard and transport him, Gary Wakshul and Steven Trombetta, carried on with their intention to drive this gravely wounded man to the police HQ instead to the very nearby Jefferson Hospital.

Astonishingly, what follows is also simply wrong. Officer Faulkner did not fall “between the two cars,” i.e., Faulkner’s and Cook’s, on the sidewalk, as claimed here, but finally came to lie between Billy Cook’s VW and a car parked in front of the VW.

Some of these details aren’t particularly interesting in themselves – what is shocking here, in my view, is that people who claim to have left no stone unturned, to have read all the many pages of the trial protocols and to finally tell the really true story can’t seem to get even the most elementary facts right.

But it gets worse, in fact, much worse. MF claims that after Faulkner lay defenselessly on the pavement, Abu-Jamal “fired three more shots at him; two pierced his jacket but did not hit him.”

Flat wrong again. One shot, by an assailant yet to be determined in a new trial unpolluted by the bias of MF as well as many others and the Pennsylvania courts so far, pierced Faulkner’s jacket at the shoulder, once in the front, and once, exiting, in the back. One would think that Officer Faulkner’s widow and her attorney would know at least that much about how Daniel Faulkner died, but it simply doesn’t seem to matter.

Even more important, however, are the implications of MF’s claim about how Officer Faulk-ner was killed. Let us concede, even though it is wrong, that two bullets pierced Officers Faulkner’s jacket without hitting him as he lay, defenselessly, on the ground. Where did these bullets end up? As is documented by the official police photograph of the area where Faulkner was killed, a following press photograph taken on the following morning, and by now also numerous photographs taken literally minutes after the shooting by freelance press photogra-pher Pedro P. Polakoff, there isn’t the slightest trace of any such bullet whatsoever at the im-mediate scene of Officer Faulkner’s death.

Had such bullets been fired at the sidewalk in the manner described by MF, the bullets them-selves, parts of these bullets or clearly observable divots containing lead residue from these bullets would have had to have been very visible in the sidewalk. None of the available photos shows any of this.

That means that MF’s account of what happened is false, even though there were three prose-cution witnesses at Abu-Jamal’s trial who testified to something that was at least similar – they all testified to a murderer who fired several shots at the prone Faulkner allegedly lying on the sidewalk when he was shot.

The many photos of that very same area now conclusively prove that this version of what happened is wrong, and that the witnesses who – by and large identically – testified to it must have had some other motive than simply wanting to recount the truth of what they saw. They couldn’t have seen what they claimed they saw, at the trial that ended in Abu-Jamal’s sen-tence to die.

But MF goes even further in her claims; she claims to know that the killer – in her version, Abu-Jamal – first missed his prone victim three times and then “placed his gun to within 6 inches of Danny’s face. He fired his final shot into Danny’s forehead and the bullet came to rest in his brain.”

All fantasy, including the 6 inch bit. In his opening statement, prosecutor Joseph McGill talked about twelve inches, and in his trial testimony for the prosecution, Dr. Hoyer talked about “within 23 inches.” But it’s, in MF’s sense, nice, and inflammatory, so why not just tell something for dramatic effect even though the facts are unknown?

The same is true of the sentence about the “final shot.” Read the trial protocols, which I agree are a great source despite the monstrous bias of the prosecution and the judge and the pain-fully weak performance of a defense lawyer deliberately put into an impossible position!

Who of the prosecution witnesses at the trial, or who else for that matter, ever claimed to have seen which of the alleged shots at the prone Faulkner killed him? But don’t let get even tainted testimony, such as the one by the prosecution’s eyewitnesses at the trial who as we now know wrongly claimed having seen the shooter firing away at a sidewalk that emerged completely undamaged from said shooting – don’t let even such testimony get in the way of a dramatic story where the fanatic cop-killing ex-Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal does not rest in firing his gun until he has succeeded in “offing” the cop!

MF’s story about this is totally unsupported by the trial protocols that she and the supporters of Abu-Jamal’s execution permanently try to beat everyone over the head with – but facts, even the fact about what your own side has said at various times, simply don’t count when your business is whipping up people into a mindless frenzy of bloodlust and hatred.

Well, as so often Hans Bennett was right after all – I just spent two and a half hours and pages to deal with just one paragraph in the interview in question. There is hardly a sentence in Mrs. Faulkner’s responses in this interview that is not twisted, flat wrong, or outright absurd.

This is doubly sad, since for one thing the tragedy suffered by Maureen Faulkner 26 years ago is undeniable – but so is the tragedy of Mumia Abu-Jamal who was separated from his wife, children and loved ones to be put on death row, on the basis of exactly the spurious “facts” that Mrs. Faulkner now sees as her task to disseminate to an audience as wide as possible.

Stay posted for the rest of my analysis of this interview.

Faulkner says that hospital security guard reported the confession that morning. Well, this report was never mentioned until her actual trial testimony (after 2+ months she reported the confession to police, but there was no mention of this “report”) and at this point, the DA sent someone to the hospital to retrieve the “report.” A report was brought back that was typed (Durham disavowed this report because she said it had been hand-written and NOT typed) and not signed by anyone. Judge Sabo allowed this as evidence even though Durham disavowed it and the defense protested its authenticity. Looks like Ms. Faulkner purposefully misrepresented this to your readers, huh?

This misrepresentation is simply the tip of the iceberg, so for an explanation of more misrepresentations/lies I encourage folks to read the flyer I wrote.

Also, please go and check out the Journalists for Mumia website (Abu-Jamal-News.com) which compiles the best of today’s journalism on the Abu-Jamal case, and also presents the new crime scene photos that were recently presented on NBC’s Today Show when Faulkner was a guest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz-NL0Ju6aE

About the photos, Faulkner was asked the following week on National Public Radio (http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=5165) about one of the photos, which shows PO Forbes’ mishandling PO Faulkner’s and Abu-Jamal’s guns. She said: “I don’t know if his hands are actually on the grip of the gun, it seems like he has his finger holding the gun through the actual trigger part, but not on the handle of the gun. At that time, I’m sure the evidence was somewhat contaminated.”

Check these photos out. They’re explosive!