The Jamal Journal: The International Movement Supporting US Political Prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal: "Philly DA" filmmaker Ted Passon talks about Mumia Abu-Jamal at Berlinale Film Festival, with Professors Johanna Fernández and Michael Schiffmann

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

"Philly DA" filmmaker Ted Passon talks about Mumia Abu-Jamal at Berlinale Film Festival, with Professors Johanna Fernández and Michael Schiffmann

--Description from video posted on Michael Schiffmann's Youtube page:

One June 10, 2021, the first two episodes of Ted Passon's, Yoni Brook's and Nicole Salazar's path-breaking documentary series "Philly D.A." on the first term of the reform-oriented Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner were shown to a sell-out audience at the Berlinale film festival in Berlin.

Three days later, a panel with Ted Passon, Mumia Abu-Jamal defense team member Johanna Fernández, and the German expert and author of a book on Abu-Jamal's case, Michael Schiffmann discussed the series, the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the question of why even the new prosecutorial authority in Philadelphia continues to defend Abu-Jamal's glaringly unjust conviction - and of course the question that follows: What can be done?

Also watch Johanna Fernández's 2009 documentary film about Mumia Abu-Jamal, entitled "Justice on Trial."

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ICFFMAJ’s Network of Supporters

Philadelphia:

Mobilization 4 Mumia

(215) 724-1618

mobilization4mumia@gmail.com www.mobilization4mumia.com

New York:

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC)

(212) 330-8029

info@freemumia.com

www.freemumia.com

Campaign to Bring Mumia Home

info@bringmumiahome.com

www.bringmumiahome.com

California:

Prison Radio

(415) 648-4505

info@prisonradio.org

www.prisonradio.org

SF Bay Area Mobilization to Free Mumia

(510) 268-9429

www.free-mumia.org

Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia

www.laboractionmumia.org

France:

Collectif Unitaire National De Soutien A Mumia Abu-Jamal

Telephone: 01 53 38 99 99

Fax: 01 40 40 90 98 contact@mumiabujamal.com

www.mumiabujamal.com

International Solidarity Committee for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Political Prisoners (COSIMAPP), co-founder Julia Wright

julianahrv1966@gmail.com

Mumia’s Legal Team:

Contact the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (click here)

Mumia FAQ by Mobilization 4 Mumia

On December 9, 1981 Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist and former Black Panther, was arrested for the murder of white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial that was rife with perjured testimony and manufactured evidence that Amnesty International found, "did not meet the minimum international standards for a fair trial."

Mumia was working as a cab driver to make extra money when he happened upon Officer Faulkner, who had stopped his brother Billy Cook, and was beating him in the head with a metal flashlight.

The prosecutor, Joseph McGill, presented a story that has Mumia running behind the officer and shooting him in the back. He then claimed that the officer turned around and pulled his weapon shooting Mumia in the chest. McGill ends the story by saying the officer fell to the ground where Mumia stood over him and unloaded on him, missing with several shots but hitting him once between the eyes. McGill also claimed that Mumia confessed to the shooting later on in police custody.

None of the physical evidence supports the prosecution's case! Mumia did legally own a gun, not uncommon for anyone driving a cab in Philadelphia during that time. However, the police never tested his gun to see if it had been fired nor tested his hands to see if they had recently fired a gun. They bullet taken from Faulkner could not be matched to Mumia's gun.

There were no divots in the sidewalk around the officer's head as there would have been if the shooter had stood above him. The only bullets that were found were approximately eight feet west to where Faulkner was laying and were from an angle that would not have been possible from the trajectory where Mumia entered the scene.

The bullet wound that hit Mumia also debunks the prosecution's scenario. The bullet was traveling at a hard downward trajectory suggesting that his body was learning forward while still running to the scene when he was shot, and that the officer was elevated, likely standing on the sidewalk.

The prosecution witnesses told different stories in their original statements than they did at trial. One, a prostitute named Cynthia White, changed her story five times by the time she reached trial. Another, a cab driver named Robert Chobert, who was driving with a suspended license while on probation for arson, first told arriving officers, "the shooter ran away." He then said the shooter ran thirty feet and fell despite the fact that Mumia was laying less than three feet from Faulkner.

Crime scene photographs that were never disclosed to the defense until 2007 show that Chobert was not parked where he said he was. They also show confirm that there were no bullet divots around Faulkner's head, that police collected evidence incorrectly - damaging its integrity, and that the officer's hat had been moved from its original place on the roof of a car suggesting that Faulkner was talking to a passenger.

Four different witnesses claimed that they saw someone running from the scene. In 1995 at a post-conviction relief act hearing it was discovered that Faulkner had a temporary drivers license for another person in his pocket when he was killed. The owner of that license, Arnold Howard, revealed at the 1995 PCRA hearing that though he was able to prove he was not there that night that he had loaned his license to a friend named Kenneth Freeman who was close with Billy Cook.

There were three different police officers who claimed that Mumia confessed. The only officer who testified at trial, Gary Bell, claimed that after Mumia was brought into Jefferson hospital for his gunshot wound, he yelled, "I shot the motherfucker and I hope the motherfucker dies."

However, the officer never made a report of the incident and claimed to have forgotten this crucial information for over sixty days. He had no recollection until after Mumia's defense attorney file police brutality charges due to the fact that the officers beat him when they arrived on the scene. After that filing all three officers came forward in the subsequent weeks with stories of a confession. The two other officers, Gary Wakshul and Thomas Bray came forward and neither of them had made a report on the night of the shooting. Wakshul even went as far in his original report to say, "The male negro made no statements." He made a second report a week later where he offered recollections of tiny details even so far as to remember the make and model of a camera found in Faulkner's car but made no mention of a confession. He later claimed that he just forgot.

Wakshul claimed that Mumia said, "I shot the motherfucker and I hope the motherfucker dies" while lying on the ground in the ER, unlike Bell, who claimed he said it while entering the hospital. Bray claimed that later while on a gurney Mumia confessed to him but in his story Mumia said, "I shot him and if you let me go I will kill all of you cops." The doctor who operated on both Mumia and Faulkner heard no confession and neither did any of the hospital staff. None of the officers corroborated each others stories.

After the police officers came forward with a confession story a hospital guard named Priscilla Durham came forward and claimed she heard a confession as well, but never alerted the police. She was interviewed by the prosecution and brought to trial. During the trial she claimed, for the first time, that she made a handwritten report about the confession the day after the shooting but only gave it to her superior officer. She somehow never mentioned this to the prosecution or the police despite being interviewed by both. During the trial the judge sent a police officer to the hospital who returned with a piece of paper that was not on hospital letterhead, was typed, and was not signed. This document was allowed to be submitted as evidence over the objections of the defense.

At the trial the defense tried to call Gary Wakshul after Mumia discovered his report claiming that "the male negro made no statements." The prosecution claimed that Wakshul was unavailable due to being on vacation. The judge refused to delay the trial and told Mumia and his attorney that they, "goofed." The defense would later learn that though Wakshul was technically on vacation he was instructed by the DA's office to stay at home incase he was called for trial, a fact that was hidden by the prosecutor.

Mumia had a court appointed lawyer who did not have the funds to investigate witnesses or do any ballistics investigations whatsoever. The judge who presided over the case was Albert Sabo, a former Sherrif and member of the Fratneral Order of Police who presided over more trials ending in death sentences than any other judge in the US. A third of all lawyers surveyed by the American Bar Association in Philadelphia said that he was unfit to be on the bench.

While the original trial was underway a court stenographer, Terri Maurer-Carter, for Judge Richard Klein entered Sabo's chambers and overhead Sabo complaining about the performance of the prosecution and said, "I'm gonna help them fry that nigger".

During Mumia's Post Conviction Relief Act Hearings Judge Sabo was brought out of retirement to preside. He sustained every single prosecution objection and quashed most of the subpoenas brought forth by the defense. He did not find that Mumia deserved a new trial and said so in a finding of fact that was a carbon copy of the prosecution's closing brief.

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

"Philly DA" filmmaker Ted Passon talks about Mumia Abu-Jamal at Berlinale Film Festival, with Professors Johanna Fernández and Michael Schiffmann

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