Abu Jamal

PHILADELPHIA -- Nervously acknowledging his inability to defend his client in a racially charged cop-killing case 13 years ago, the former attorney for condemned black radio journalist Mamia Abu-Jamal testified yesterday that he never saw TC medical examiner's report that indicated that a gun of a different caliber from Abu-Jamal's was the murder weapon.Attorney Anthony E. Jackson also testified that no witnesses except Abu-Jamal were called and no evidence was presented on Abu-Jamal's behalf in the 1982 hearing that determined that the journalist was to be executed for the murder of a city police officer.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out a ruling that had set aside the death sentence of Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in a racially tinged case that has made the former Black Panther an international cause celebre. The justices ordered the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to revisit its 2008 ruling that Abu-Jamal deserved a new sentencing hearing because of flawed jury instructions at his 1982 trial. The Supreme Court pointed to its ruling in an Ohio case last week, when it said a neo-Nazi killer did not deserve a new sentencing hearing on those grounds.

JUST BEFORE 4 a.m. on Dec. 9, 1981, in a rough downtown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Police Officer Daniel Faulkner stopped a Volkswagen Beetle and arrested its driver, William Cook, for driving the wrong way down a one-way street.Expecting or experiencing trouble, Daniel Faulkner radioed for assistance.When fellow police officers arrived, they found him lying in the street, shot in the back and the face.A few feet away, slumped in his own pool of blood, was William Cook's brother, a free-lance journalist and black activist named Mumia Abu-Jamal -- born Wesley Cook.

PHILADELPHIA -- Do a Google search for "Mumia Abu-Jamal" and you'll get more than 1 million hits for sites containing his name. For "Police Officer Daniel Faulkner," it's only 25,000. Twenty-five years ago, an exchange of gunfire that left Faulkner dead and Abu-Jamal wounded linked the names of the two men inextricably in Philadelphia's history. The survivor was transformed into a revolutionary folk hero, an international cause celebre; the dead man became a memory whose cause has been taken up by supporters determined to ensure that his is more than a bit part in a death penalty drama still without a final act. Both sides - those who are determined that Abu-Jamal is innocent and those who are equally determined that he is not - will gather again in Philadelphia this week.

PHILADELPHIA -- Do a Google search for "Mumia Abu-Jamal" and you'll get more than 1 million hits for sites containing his name. For "Police Officer Daniel Faulkner," it's only 25,000. Twenty-five years ago, an exchange of gunfire that left Faulkner dead and Abu-Jamal wounded linked the names of the two men inextricably in Philadelphia's history. The survivor was transformed into a revolutionary folk hero, an international cause celebre; the dead man became a memory whose cause has been taken up by supporters determined to ensure that his is more than a bit part in a death penalty drama still without a final act. Both sides - those who are determined that Abu-Jamal is innocent and those who are equally determined that he is not - will gather again in Philadelphia this week.

PHILADELPHIA -- The truth has taken it on the chin from a well-financed propaganda machine bent on perverting justice as it subverts the facts of the trial of a convicted cop killer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, just given a stay of execution.The effort has been aided by lawyers who will say anything, no matter how false, to attract publicity, and by attention-seeking celebrities and spin doctors.We know from the trial: In the early hours of Dec. 9, 1981, Danny Faulkner, a 26-year-old police officer in uniform, stopped a car driven by Abu-Jamal's brother, William Cook, in downtown Philadelphia.

What is one to make of the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther and radio journalist who has been on Pennsylvania's death row for the last 13 years awaiting execution for the 1981 murder of a white Philadelphia police officer?Quite aside from the issue of his guilt or innocence, the case raises troubling questions for Abu-Jamal's fellow black journalists, who held their annual meeting last month in Philadelphia. The case drew a well-attended panel discussion in which both the prosecutor in Abu-Jamal's original trial and the lawyer handling his appeal participated.

Mumia Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death in connection with the Dec. 9, 1981, slaying of a Philadelphia police officer. The date was incorrectly reported in an article and photo caption in Sunday's Perspective section.The Sun regrets the error.

Here is some career advice for anyone who plans on becoming a murderer: Develop your writing skills.This could prove to be far more significant than your choice of weapons or lawyers, especially if you land on Death Row.That's because big names in literary, intellectual and show business circles tend to be far more sympathetic to an articulate killer than some lowbrow fiend who drools and grunts.We're seeing a classic example of this in the case of a convict named Mumia Abu-Jamal, 41, who awaits execution in Pennsylvania for the murder of a Philadelphia cop.Abu-Jamal has won the loyalty and affection of prominent authors, actors, academics and other deep thinkers not only in this country but across Europe.

WASHINGTON -- Ten days before he was scheduled to die, journalist and death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal received yesterday an indefinite delay of his execution for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer.Judge Albert F. Sabo, who presided over the 1982 trial that sent Abu-Jamal to Pennsylvania's death row, said there isn't enough time to complete a hearing into whether the journalist deserves a new trial before the Saturday execution date.Moreover, Judge Sabo said defense attorneys would need time to exhaust all possible appeals before Abu-Jamal can be put to death by lethal injection.

FREDERICK Anthony Romano, who prefers to be known simply as "Fred," isn't getting his hopes up. Romano reacted yesterday to the news that Steven Howard Oken is scheduled for yet another appointment with Maryland's lethal injection table. Oken's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was turned down Monday, and Baltimore County Circuit Judge John G. Turnbull II signed the death warrant for the week of June 14. In 1991, Oken was sentenced to death for torturing and killing Romano's sister, Dawn Marie Garvin, a 20-year-old newlywed.

THE FBI IS supposedly the nation's top law enforcement agency. The truth is, it's overrated, ineffective and incompetent. How else could we explain why that dangerous, dreaded and elusive criminal, Someone Else, is not at the top of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List? We have no firm description of Else. We know he's male. But his address, whereabouts and even his origins are unknown. What we do know is that on the night of Dec. 9, 1981, Else was in Philadelphia, where he gunned down and killed Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Rage Against the Machine is a radical band.In an age where other bands barely seem interested in fighting for anything more than the right to party, Rage Against the Machine takes serious stands on controversial issues.When "People of the Sun," from the 1996 album "Evil Empire," made it to MTV, the band accompanied the song with grim images of the struggle for democracy in Mexico. An earlier video, for the song "Freedom," detailed U.S. government persecution of American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier.

Baltimore police officers refuse to work overtime to provide security for a band playing at the downtown arena Thursday because the progressive rock group has donated proceeds to a convicted police killer in Philadelphia.More than 3,000 city officers heeded a plea by Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 3 not to sign up for 10 positions at a Rage Against the Machine performance at the Baltimore Arena, giving up about $150 each in overtime pay.The city-owned arena will have to use its security or hire outside help.

THE REV. Jesse Jackson blew into town Sunday, ranting and snorting and harrumphing that President Clinton is getting a raw deal, that mean ol' white boys are out to get him and that we should all rally to show our support for Cigar Boy.If Clinton is impeached, Jackson implied, all sorts of evil will follow. The mean ol' white boys will then target their wrath at the poor and elderly.Witness what we have here, fellow Americans. That rare and defining American event: the hapless trying to help the hopeless.

THE ROOM on the second floor of Shriver Hall at the Johns Hopkins University filled quickly as the clock approached 8. Students, activists, media types and just plain folks interested in the subject filled the two sections of chairs that ran five across and about 20 deep.Soon people were huddled along the walls, some standing, others squatting or sitting on the floor. A man who identified himself as Terry Fitzgerald told all assembled the purpose of the night's meeting: There was that nasty business of the death penalty to address, specifically as it related to two men, Tyrone ,, Gilliam and Kenny Collins.

PHILADELPHIA -- The protests and passions of the 1960s made a comeback here yesterday as more than 3,500 people rallied against the death penalty and demanded a new trial for a condemned radio journalist and former Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal.In the 13 years since he was sent to death row for the 1981 murder of a police officer here, Abu-Jamal has become an international symbol for the movement against the death penalty, and several other demonstrations on his behalf were scheduled yesterday in cities across the country and in Europe.

New York -- Writers from around the world gathered here and in Paris this past Tuesday to denounce the pending execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal as an evil, racist act and to call for a new trial for a man they consider a fellow author.Meanwhile, in Italy, deputies in that country's lower house called on the government to press the United States to lift the death sentence on the former radio journalist, who has become the subject of an international campaign backed by politicians, movie celebrities and writers.

Let's take first things first. I believe that one December night in 1981 Mumia Abu-Jamal shot and killed Philadelphia police Officer Daniel Faulkner. The official story says that Abu-Jamal came across Faulkner beating his brother and shot the officer.Abu-Jamal was tried for the crime. Friends either from or living in Philadelphia tell me that, during the trial, Abu-Jamal insulted and questioned the integrity of his black attorney and insulted jurors. In other words, Abu-Jamal acted as biliously and truculently as any member of MOVE - a militant, "back-to-nature organization."

IT'S TOO BAD that Mumia Abu-Jamal has become an international poster boy for the ills of America's system of criminal justice. Because for all the injustices that may have marred his case, he could be guilty of murder.So, many won't care that his case is a reminder of the need for a legal mechanism to insure that the government follows the law. That mechanism, habeas corpus, is falling victim to the tangled politics of the death penalty in America.New-trial bid deniedThe Constitution protects not only the innocent but the guilty from being jailed illegally.