Campaign 2000: Wrong Guy, Good Cause

• Share

(2 of 2)

They would tell me Abu-Jamal wanted to defend himself or be represented by a local revolutionary because his court-appointed attorney was an incompetent hack who had never handled a homicide. I went to see the attorney, who told me that he had handled about 20 homicides but that Abu-Jamal demanded a political rather than legal defense. They would insist that a .44-cal. bullet was removed from Faulkner's brain and that Abu-Jamal's gun was a .38. But the defense team's own ballistics expert conceded the bullet was consistent with a .38.

By 1994, the myth of Abu-Jamal had grown, fueled by unsubstantiated defense claims that the true killer, name unknown, was seen fleeing the scene of the murder. National Public Radio signed Abu-Jamal to do reports on prison life from behind bars but backed off when police groups protested. Leonard Weinglass, a famed lefty attorney who had defended Patty Hearst's kidnappers and the Chicago Seven, attracted a parade of celebrities to Abu-Jamal's cause. They included Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Ed Asner and Ossie Davis.

Like many Philadelphians, I watched in amazement as the Mumia wave swept the globe, even as the appeals courts rejected one flimsy defense claim after another. In Abu-Jamal's name, masked Danes stormed Parliament in Copenhagen. From Japan to South Africa, protesters took to the streets. Last year Rage Against the Machine and the Beastie Boys threw a benefit concert. This year traffic was stopped in Paris, and 22 members of the British Parliament have called for a federal court in Philadelphia to grant a new trial.

Reasonable people can disagree about various aspects of Abu-Jamal's case, including ballistics reports that were or were not done, evidence and testimony that was or was not admitted, and whether, even conceding his guilt, Abu-Jamal should be put to death. But Joseph McGill, who has prosecuted roughly 125 homicide cases, calls it "the strongest I ever had." And no one can dispute this crowning absurdity: the only two people who know exactly what happened on Dec. 9, 1981, have refused to utter a single word of explanation. One is Abu-Jamal. The other is his brother Billy Cook, whose only known comment on the subject in nearly 19 years was made at the scene of the murder: "I ain't got nothing to do with this."

What a shame for death-penalty foes. Philadelphia could have been their moment, and the recent videotaped beating of a carjack suspect by city police and the shooting of an unarmed homeless man by Amtrak cops at the local train station didn't hurt their cause. The size of the American prison population is an embarrassment, the number of government executions is scandalous, and the ethnic disparity on death row is shameful. But in Mumia Abu-Jamal, they picked the wrong guy to carry the flag, and Bush will get off all the easier for it.

For Maureen Faulkner, it doesn't stop with Philadelphia. She got a pilot's license many years ago, and when she hears of a rally to spring Abu-Jamal from prison, or a college commencement speech he will deliver from death row, she grabs a picture of Danny and flies off to tell the other side of the story. Sometimes they listen. Sometimes they curse her or even her dead husband. "I have to keep doing it," she says. "I can't imagine ever stopping."

--With reporting by Desa Philadelphia