MUMIA ON THEIR MIND

Like rival clans thrust together at gunpoint, the two halves of a Philadelphia courtroom audience watched each other warily last week, begrudging good behavior. Then a convict with cascading dreadlocks entered, and the people to the right of the aisle erupted. "Free Mumia!" they screamed. "Mumia, we love you!" Women blew kisses. Men punched the air with salutes. To the left of the aisle, the other half watched, silently enraged that the defendant might get another chance.

The catalyst of these emotions is Mumia Abu-Jamal, 41, a prizewinning journalist. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 10 p.m. on Aug. 17 for a crime he insists he did not commit: the 1981 slaying of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Sympathizers around the globe from Dublin to Soweto hail him as a political prisoner punished for taking journalistic aim at politicians, police and the prison system (most recently in a book entitled Live from Death Row). If he is put to death, they argue, he will be the first American since Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to be executed for his political beliefs. Detractors, on the other hand, have sought to silence him temporarily--and permanently. After his book came out, Faulkner's widow hired a plane to fly a banner proclaiming that publisher "Addison-Wesley supports convicted cop killer." The Fraternal Order of Police, meanwhile, has lobbied actively for Abu-Jamal's death.

The hearing last week in Philadelphia was convened to determine whether Abu-Jamal will get a second trial. A high-powered defense team is not only raising constitutional questions about the first trial but also challenging the investigation and evidence that led to Abu-Jamal's conviction. But Joseph McGill, the former assistant district attorney who prosecuted Abu-Jamal in June 1982, declares that it was "by far one of the strongest cases against a defendant that I've ever had." At the time, the jury seemed to agree: the panel deliberated only four hours.

The prosecution's case, both then and now, begins with a traffic violation. Just before 4 a.m. on Dec. 9, 1981, Faulkner stopped a Volkswagen going the wrong way on a one-way street. The driver was William Cook, Abu-Jamal's brother. The prosecution contends that when Faulkner tried to handcuff Cook, Abu-Jamal, who was moonlighting in the vicinity as a taxi driver, jumped from his cab and ran to his brother's defense. By this account, Abu-Jamal shot Faulkner in the back. When the policeman returned fire, hitting Abu-Jamal in the chest, the journalist straddled the officer's body and fired four more shots. At the 1982 trial, prosecutors produced three eyewitnesses, ballistics evidence and two witnesses, including police officer Gary Bell, Faulkner's best friend, who testified that at the hospital after the shooting, they heard Abu-Jamal say, "I shot the motherf____, and I hope he dies."