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Whether 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.
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.
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.
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.
However, the four Philadelphia
officials listed as delegation members all deny knowing anything
about either the trip or the deal.
Further, these officials have
no power to cancel Abu-Jamal's death sentence.
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.
"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.
Wirs also distanced himself
from the deal proposed in that letter.
"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.
Wirs dismissed errors in that
letter as minor mistakes probably resulting from "translations
from English to Frenchtoo many chefs' hands in this soup"
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.
That October letter prompted
a written response to Parisian officials from Abu-Jamal attorney,
Robert R. Bryan.
Bryan wrote that the letter
is "appalling since it contains material misrepresentations
and errors."
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.
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.
"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.
"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?"
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yet, Wirs contends Abu-Jamal
is guilty as charged, despite seeming violations of his constitutional
rights.
"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."
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.
"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.
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.
This congressional Resolution
contains fundamental errors.
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"
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"
Pa Republican U.S. Senator
Rich Santorum also introduced an anti-St. Denis resolution in
the Senate mimicking the congressional resolution.
"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."
According to Schiffmann, "One
might say such "details" are unimportant, but if they
are so unimportant, why bring them up?"
Answering his rhetorical question,
Schiffmann says this erroneous information makes "something
these law and order representatives know nothing about seem more
real."
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.
Dr. Schiffmann's book presents
new, startling information on this controversial case.
Schiffmann provides information
blowing big holes in the ballistics evidence presented by prosecutors
and police.
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.
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.
St. Denis officials did not
complain in 2001 when local and state officials renamed most
of Philadelphia's Roosevelt Blvd. "Daniel Faulkner Memorial
Highway."
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.
"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.
"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.
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."
The intense resistance, Braouezec
said, "is political. There have been lesser cases with lesser
doubts that received new trials."
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.
Philadelphia police and prosecutors
framed Ferber for a mob related murder, sending him to death
row for 1,375-days before his release.
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."
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.
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.
Philadelphia officials bitterly
opposed Ferber's lawsuit for compensation.
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.
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.
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."
Linn Washington Jr. is a Philadelphia journalist who has
reported on the Abu-Jamal case since December 1981. Washington
is a columnist for The Philadelphia Tribune newspaper.
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