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<font size=3><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>December 1,
2006<br><br>
</font><h1><font size=4 color="#990000"><b>A CounterPunch Special
Report<br><br>
<br>
</font><font size=5>The Mumia Abu-Jamal Case After 25 Years<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Still More Keystone Kops
Antics</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5>By LINN
WASHINGTON, Jr.<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">W</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>hether the fundamental errors riddling recent
actions by opponents of Pennsylvania death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal
constitute mere mistakes or malicious misrepresentations, these errors
resemble sequels to the Keystone Kops silent film-era comedy
series.<br><br>
These error filled antics occur as Abu-Jamal approaches the 25th
Anniversary of his December 9, 1981 arrest for fatally shooting a
Philadelphia policeman and as a pivotal legal action moves forward in
federal appeals court revolving around whether Abu-Jamal received a fair
trial in 1982.<br><br>
The latest faux pas by Abu-Jamal opponents regards errors in an October
letter sent to officials in Paris requesting that they rescind the
honorary citizenship granted three years ago to the death row inmate
viewed globally as a victim of injustice in America.<br><br>
This letter states that a delegation of Philadelphia City officials,
including the Police Commissioner, planned a late-November trip to Paris
to negotiate rescinding the honorary citizenship in exchange for these
officials getting Abu-Jamal's death sentence cancelled.<br><br>
However, the four Philadelphia officials listed as delegation members all
deny knowing anything about either the trip or the deal.<br><br>
Further, these officials have no power to cancel Abu-Jamal's death
sentence.<br><br>
Peter J. Wirs, the Philadelphia figure behind the delegation/deal, says
he is surprised by the errors in that letter prepared on his behalf by a
lawyer in Paris.<br><br>
"I haven't done anything yet to formalize the delegation or the
planned trip. We haven't raised any money," Wirs said recently,
adding that he "hasn't seen" the letter sent on his
behalf.<br><br>
Wirs also distanced himself from the deal proposed in that
letter.<br><br>
"An offer to pull the death penalty is so ridiculous. We have no
authority to take the death penalty off the table," said Wirs, a
minor figure in Philadelphia's Republican Party, a party that represents
only sixteen percent of the city's registered voters.<br><br>
Wirs dismissed errors in that letter as minor mistakes probably resulting
from "translations from English to Frenchtoo many chefs' hands in
this soup"<br><br>
That October letter also contains the erroneous claim that Abu-Jamal shot
Officer Daniel Faulkner five times in the face, a claim contradicted by
police, prosecutors and judicial findings throughout the quarter-century
tenure of this case.<br><br>
That October letter prompted a written response to Parisian officials
from Abu-Jamal attorney, Robert R. Bryan.<br><br>
Bryan wrote that the letter is "appalling since it contains material
misrepresentations and errors."<br><br>
Ironically, errors by police, prosecutors, jurists and other authorities
during the arrest, conviction and state court appeals of Abu-Jamal fuel
the worldwide belief that Abu-Jamal did not receive a fair trial and is
thus unjustly convicted.<br><br>
These errors include police failing to give Abu-Jamal the standard hand
test after his arrest to determine if he actually fired a gun,
prosecutors failing to provide Abu-Jamal's trial attorney with compelling
evidence indicating his innocence and the notoriously pro-prosecution
trial judge making racist remarks.<br><br>
"Only in America could a trial judge say"I'll help them fry the
Nigger," and be considered fair," Abu-Jamal stated in a letter
to Parisian officials.<br><br>
"The trial featured lies, just as the threatening letter to you
did," Abu-Jamal's letter stated. "If the trial was truly fair,
why would the Philadelphia letter propose a deal?"<br><br>
Prior to that error-filled October letter, Philadelphia area legislative
leaders mounted equally error-filled actions against the Paris suburb of
St. Denis for naming a street in honor of Abu-Jamal.<br><br>
The anti-St. Denis Resolution approved by Philadelphia's City Council at
the end of May, for example, contains the erroneous declaration that
"Mumia Abu-Jamal has exhausted all legal appeals"<br><br>
Since the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals, headquartered in
Philadelphia, approved Abu-Jamal's request for an appeal in late 2005, it
is factually incorrect to contend that Abu-Jamal "has
exhausted" all of his appeals.<br><br>
Not only did the 3rd Circuit agree to hear the appeal claim of that
prosecutors used racial discrimination while selecting the jury for
Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial, the Circuit Court also took an unusual step in
granting appeal on other items like allegations of judicial bias during a
1995 appeals hearing for Abu-Jamal.<br><br>
The intensity of the bias exhibited by Judge Albert Sabo during that 1995
hearing offended even Philly's normally anti-Mumia mainstream news media
to the point of their publishing editorials condemning Sabo for both
making a mockery of justice and providing Abu-Jamal supporters with
additional ammunition to back their claims of gross injustice.<br><br>
Interestingly, Peter Wirs does not dispute that Sabo made the racist
pre-trial remark and Wirs readily admits that police did not follow
proper forensic standards while investigating the murder.<br><br>
Yet, Wirs contends Abu-Jamal is guilty as charged, despite seeming
violations of his constitutional rights.<br><br>
"When you look at Sabo's statements and his rulings in the trial,
they are not perfect but they are fair," Wirs claims. "The
errors and problems with the criminal justice system in this case do not
mitigate against the fact that Abu-Jamal's gun was found at the scene.
That is the heart of this case."<br><br>
The fact that police could not conclusively match bullet fragments
removed from the slain officer to Abu-Jamal's gun is immaterial according
to Wirs.<br><br>
"This is a circumstantial evidence case," said Wirs,
acknowledging that he is working with Philadelphia's police union, the
Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the prime group pushing for Abu-Jamal's
execution.<br><br>
That Philadelphia City Council Resolution supported a congressional
Resolution introduced in mid-May by two Philly area Congresspersons,
Republican Michael Fitzpatrick and Democrat Allyson Schwartz.<br><br>
This congressional Resolution contains fundamental errors.<br><br>
The Fitzpatrick/Schwartz Resolution, in recounting facts of the case,
makes the erroneous claim that "Mumia Abu-Jamal struck Officer
Faulkner four times in the back with his gun"<br><br>
This claim contradicts the scenario presented at trial by the prosecutor
and this claim contradicts the version of events on the official Justice
for Daniel Faulkner Web site. This site, according to its founders,
exists to provide "an accurate source of information"<br><br>
Pa Republican U.S. Senator Rich Santorum also introduced an anti-St.
Denis resolution in the Senate mimicking the congressional
resolution.<br><br>
"No one ever claimed Mumia struck Faulkner's back four times. While
this may evoke the image of a heroic officer striking back against all
odds, it is sheer fantasy," noted Dr. Michael Schiffmann, the German
author of a new book on the Abu-Jamal case, "Race Against Death.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: a Black Revolutionary in White America."<br><br>
According to Schiffmann, "One might say such "details" are
unimportant, but if they are so unimportant, why bring them
up?"<br><br>
Answering his rhetorical question, Schiffmann says this erroneous
information makes "something these law and order representatives
know nothing about seem more real."<br><br>
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, states Keystone Kops is a term used
to criticize any group for its mistakes, particularly if the mistakes
happen after a great deal of energy and activity, or if there is a lack
of coordination among members of the group.<br><br>
Dr. Schiffmann's book presents new, startling information on this
controversial case.<br><br>
Schiffmann provides information blowing big holes in the ballistics
evidence presented by prosecutors and police.<br><br>
Further, Schiffmann's book presents previously unpublished pictures taken
by a press photographer who arrived at the 1981 crime scene before police
photographers that show police personnel tampering with evidence and
manipulating the crime scene.<br><br>
Peter Wirs recently filed a lawsuit in France, asserting that officials'
in Paris and its St. Denis suburb violated French criminal law by
respectively issuing the citizenship to a convicted murderer and placing
his name on a street.<br><br>
St. Denis officials did not complain in 2001 when local and state
officials renamed most of Philadelphia's Roosevelt Blvd. "Daniel
Faulkner Memorial Highway."<br><br>
The intense reaction in Philadelphia to the street naming in far off St.
Denis stuns former St. Denis Mayor, Patrick Braouezec, who sees the
reaction as surreal.<br><br>
"By doing this, we are just contributing to the possibility of Mumia
having a new and fair trial and put the issue of the death penalty on the
table," Braouezec said during an interview while visiting
Philadelphia in September where the city's mayor refused to meet with
Braouezec about the street naming.<br><br>
"There was no intention on our part to provoke or offend the memory
of the slain officer or his family," said Braouezec, currently a
member of the French National Assembly, the Congress of France.<br><br>
Patrick Braouezec finds it difficult "to conceive that with the
problems in the American criminal justice system and issues in the
Abu-Jamal case that the level of resistance to this man receiving a fair
trial is so intense."<br><br>
The intense resistance, Braouezec said, "is political. There have
been lesser cases with lesser doubts that received new
trials."<br><br>
Few either opposed to or supportive of Abu-Jamal remember the case of
Neil Ferber; a Philadelphia man arrested six months before Abu-Jamal's
December 1981 arrest.<br><br>
Philadelphia police and prosecutors framed Ferber for a mob related
murder, sending him to death row for 1,375-days before his
release.<br><br>
A court ruling in lawsuit Ferber filed over his false imprisonment
declared that "this case presents a Kafkaesque nightmare of the sort
which we normally would characterize as being representative of the
so-called justice system of a totalitarian stateunfortunatelyit happened
here in Philadelphia."<br><br>
This ruling noted that a "variety of Philadelphia police"
engaged in a litany of misconduct "for the singular purpose of
obtaining Ferber's arrest and subsequent conviction on first degree
murder charges.<br><br>
Evidence also showed that the jail-house snitch whose testimony sealed
Ferber's conviction had flunked a lie-detector test ordered by
prosecutors but prosecutors withheld this information from Ferber's trial
attorney.<br><br>
Philadelphia officials bitterly opposed Ferber's lawsuit for
compensation.<br><br>
Ferber eventually received a million dollar-plus settlement for his false
incarceration, however, authorities penalized no police officer or
prosecutor involved in the framing of Ferber.<br><br>
Didier Paillard, St. Denis' current mayor, declared during the street
naming ceremony this spring that the Abu-Jamal case is not just a
"symbol" in the struggle for justice.<br><br>
Paillard said Abu-Jamal's struggle symbolizes "resistance against a
system which has the arrogance to reign over the world in the name of
those same human rights that it tramples with complete impunity on its
own soil."<br><br>
<b>Linn Washington Jr.</b> is a Philadelphia journalist who has reported
on the Abu-Jamal case since December 1981. Washington is a columnist for
<i>The Philadelphia Tribune</i> newspaper.<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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