It’s 40 years and counting, and it won’t go away — because supporters of cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal won’t let it.
Not because their cause is right, but because it is left. Decades before defunding the police, we had dishonoring the police.
One of the more famous celebrity supporters was Lou Grant Ed Asner, an admitted soft-core Marxist, who, when cornered, said he really didn’t know squat about the case.
He was against the death penalty, period, he said. Guilt was irrelevant.
Conversely, Hollywood celebrity Mike Farrell, once a star of TV’s “MASH,” was knowledgeable about the case, and spoke with more than just feelings.
As we just passed the Dec. 9th 40th anniversary of the assassination of Police Officer Danny Faulkner, the media geared up, such as with this report from WHYY.
This is a generally fair summary, but with some notable blotches and lapses that I will be happy to point out.
Start with the inclusion of Temple prof/journalist Linn Washington — he was a colleague for a time at the Philadelphia Daily News — a long-time critic of the trial and its outcome, he has concluded that Mumia was innocent. Washington is Black, as is the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, of which Mumia was a member. PABJ has never claimed Mumia was innocent. PABJ has been strangely quiet about the entire mess over the years.
The WHYY story talks about Mumia having advocates all over the world (with a street named for him in a Paris suburb by the gullible French).
It does not say Mumia has practically no support in his home town. I have covered many local rallies, with more kids bussed in from Columbia than from Temple. Philadelphians know, despite some irregularities in the trial, Mumia did it.
A Black filmmaker, Tigre Hill, produced a documentary, “The Barrel of a Gun,” which concluded Mumia was guilty as sin.
Seems to me if WHYY wanted to use Washington — which is fair — it could have used Hill for balance. That would have been fair, too, but Hill’s documentary is filled with harsh facts pointing to Mumia’s guilt, and falls outside the WHYY narrative.
WHYY describes Mumia as a journalist who once reported for WHYY.
It does not say he got fired by WHYY for repeatedly slipping radical commentary into what should have been news reports. At the time of his arrest, he was a cab driver, not a journalist.
The WHYY story says Mumia maintains his innocence — except he did not maintain his innocence at trial. He did not testify in his own behalf. He was not required to testify, but there were only three people known to be at the murder scene — himself, his brother William Cook, and Faulkner.
Two people were shot on Locust just below 13th: Faulker, with Mumia’s gun — and Mumia, with Faulkner’s gun.
Why would Faulkner shoot Mumia?
I have dealt with what I call the Mumidiots over the years, bewildered by how their version of events changes when facts explode their fantasies.
How did Mumia get shot? I ask them.
“He was coming to Faulkner’s aid and was shot by him by mistake,” I was told.
So the establishment-hating Black Panther was rushing to help a cop?
Yeah, right.
I was also told Mumia’s gun was unloaded, because he had shot at the range the day before.
So the cab driver who had a pistol for self defense carried it unloaded?
The Mumidiots believe in fairy tales.
WHYY says several people who didn’t testify at the original trial have come forward with claims that Mumia is innocent.
Why didn’t they testify at the trial? Why didn’t William Cook, Mumia’s brother?
Who shot Faulkner with Mumia’s gun, registered to him, the only .38 at the scene?
And who shot Mumia?
The story puts its thumb in the scale by saying Mumia came of age in “Rizzo’s Philadelphia,” even though Bill Green was mayor at the time of the murder. The invocation of Rizzo is meant to color the narrative, as is the inclusion of reporting on D.A. Larry Krasner’s conviction integrity unit, which has overturned a bunch of convictions. Why is that included other to slyly suggest Mumia was wrongly convicted?
Through endless appeals, Mumia’s original conviction has stood.
A few years back, with widow Maureen Faulkner’s acquiescence, then-D.A. Seth Williams agreed not to pursue reinstating the death penalty that had been overturned in court.
The deal was Mumia would get life, and die in prison.
His supporters now are trying to get him released on grounds he is in poor health.
His health is better than Faulkner’s, I can assure you.
HAPPY WEDNESDAY !!!
Stu,
Why do you let the facts skewer your story ? Join in with the mumidiots and throw away the truth. Get behind let ’em loose Larry and set another GUILTY person free.
Wesley Cook killed – MURDERED Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.
Some more facts. When I was building prisons in the’90s, the average guest room was TWENTY FIVE thousand ! Accommodations for the hard core was a bit more. Conservative number. 25 X 40 = $ ONE MILLION plus incidentals. Court costs big bucks. Medical isn’t cheap. etc., etc., etc.
IMHO, on State Road, there is the training facility for our police. They- ME should have put a target on cook’s back and let the recruits take aim.
Bitter, no. Justice, YES !
Tony
Thank you for keeping this story alive, Stu. By your shining a light of truth on this story, it keeps the killer of policeman Faulkner in prison — bad health or no. If the story were to fade, you can be assured the Left would find a way to spring the cop killer, whose name I refuse to use.
I am in for the duration, Vince. As long as he and I both live.
Great job Stu.
One of my best friends since 1st grade was very close to Dan and Maureen. He told me what a great guy Dan was,
Another good friend was an ADA under Rendell. He was at every session of the trial. He said this was a slam dunk murder conviction.
One of your finest columns.
Thank you
My brother and Dan were classmates at MBS from 2nd through 8th grades. Danny was a great kid.
Dear Stu, dear readers
The article above is nothing but an exercise in whataboutery. Evading the arguments in the WHYY article that speak for Abu-Jamal, Stu resorts to unnamed “Mumia supporters” who told him loads of nonsense. Their comments, whether genuine or not, are of course an easy target.
Here are some facts to which I don’t think Stu has an answer and that you can now also read in part in a letter to the editor of the magazine MyChesCo that they published because they seem to be committed to decent debate:
https://www.mychesco.com/a/opinion/readers-react/response-to-barletta-honors-police-officer-daniel-faulkner-on-40th-anniversary-of-his-murder/
* The two core prosecution witnesses, the prostitute Cynthia White and the cab driver Robert Chobert, didn’t even see the shooting. No other witness saw them where they claimed to have been, and two crucial witnesses specifically denied they were there. For the absence of Chobert’s cab, there is even photographic evidence.
* The shooting scenario described by the three alleged eyewitnesses according to which Abu-Jamal fired a number of bullets at Officer Faulkner as the officer lay prone on the sidewalk has long been disproved. No signs of those bullets were found in or on the sidewalk.
* These three witnesses described the way in which Faulkner was allegedly killed but in which he was definitely NOT killed in an identical way. The only explanation for this is that their testimony was coached by the police.
* The confession Abu-Jamal allegedly made at Jefferson Hospital never happened. Apart from two hospital guards and two police officers who claimed to have heard it, all of the dozens of people who were in the immediate proximity of Abu-Jamal, including three of the four police officers who carried him, denied having heard anything.
* The prosecutor, Joseph McGill, arranged for the production of a faked early written report of the confession and had it presented to the court and the jury. This was prosecutorial misconduct of monumental proportions.
Because of all these facts, which I prove on my new website
dropthecaseagainstmumiaabujamal.com
the District Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, which is now engaged in litigation to keep Abu-Jamal in prison, should call kit quits, drop the case and allow Abu-Jamal to go home to his family. At the very least, it should consent to give him a new trial.
I do not claim to know how Officer Faulkner was killed and who did it. Contrary to Stu’s article, there is strong evidence for a fourth person at the scene who might have been the doer, and even if he wasn’t and “Mumia did it,” we don’t know the circumstances because everything that was produced at the trial turns out to be fake evidence.
No person should be allowed to rot in jail on such evidence and as a result of a frame-up that is as obvious as this one.
If Stu or any of the readers has any comment on the above, I’m definitely ready to respond and engage in debate. My email is mikschiff@t-online.de
All best from Germany – Michael Schiffmann
Did you avail yourself of Tigre Hill’s documentary? EVERY trial has conflicting witnesses and I have unnamed Mumidiots because they don’t give their names. In one case — she did. Pam Africa claims Mumia was carrying an unloaded gun.
Answer the question I asked Linn: Why did Faulkner shoot Mumia if Mumia was not shooting at Faulkner?