An Old Perjury against Mumia is Freshened on the Eve of a Critical Appeal

One might wonder why two people who had nothing to lose and much to gain by testifying for the prosecution at Mumia's trial in 1982 have waited a quarter-century to make statements in support of hospital security guard Priscilla Durham's perjury alleging a confession.  Perhaps their belated advent has something to do with the shredded condition of state's case against Mumia on the eve of oral arguments appealing its gross violations of fairness and due process at his trial.

On the other hand, it's easy to understand why it took a several years for the crucial prosecution witnesses, all of whose testimony was coerced by corrupt Philly prosecutors, to bravely face down their Mafia government and recant at the PCRA hearings in the mid-90's.  The acronym stands for Post Conviction Relief Act, passed in November 1995.  It was part of Pennsylvania's legislative response to the stink of corruption rising from the Philadelphia courts.  Scores of other likewise bogus convictions have been reversed.

But Mumia's case was special. Judge Albert Sabo was called back out of retirement and allowed to preside over Mumia's PCRA hearings despite the fact that Sabo's own misconduct of the original trial was at issue. This misconduct includes exclusion of the defendant from the second half of his own trial, exclusion of exculpatory testimony of several eyewitnesses, unjust dismissal of an african-american from the nearly all-white jury and appointment in her place of a man who had admitted that he could not be fair.  Sabo's failure to recuse himself was emulated by the state Supreme Court judge Ronald D. Castille (who as Philly's DA had conducted the case against Mumia's initial appeal) when Mumia appealed Sabo's predictable affirmation of his earlier actions and the continued exclusion of exculpatory evidence.  In addition to the misconduct above, it has since come to light that Sabo declared his intention to help the prosecution "fry the n****r" during the original trial.

Recanting witnesses' fears were well-founded.  Kenneth Freeman, present at the shooting and a likely suspect in it, was murdered, probably by the police, in 1985.  Several witnesses were intimidated by the police. One crucial prosecution witness, Cynthia White, vanished before the PCRA hearings and hasn't been heard from since.  Another witness, Veronica Jones, was arrested right off the witness stand while she was recanting in Judge Sabo's courtroom in 1996, under circumstances showing that the arrest was in retaliation for her testimony.

A third, Pamela Jenkins, was arrested in 1997 immediately before a hearing at which she was scheduled to recant.  She was quickly bailed out by Mumia's supporters and (like Veronica Jones) testified anyway despite this attempt to intimidate her.

A fourth witness, Robert Chobert, recanted his testimony for the prosecution under questioning by an employee of Mumia's defense team in 1995.

But to return to Priscilla Durham: How do we know she was lying?  Well, to start with, she admitted it to her half-brother.

But even before Durham's own confession became public in 2003, her testimony had been completely discredited.  She had waited two months after the event before coming forward with the claim that she'd heard Mumia shout a confession, contradicting the statements of both the attending physician and a police officer also present that Mumia had said nothing.  The state's attempt [I.C.1] to explain the officer's testimony by claiming that the he didn't know what he was doing when he wrote his report is pathetic -- but what else can it do, allege that its own records are forged?

Officer William Colarulo's opportune recollection, 25 years late, underscores the fact that

...not a single officer reported hearing Jamal's supposed confession when they were interviewed in the wake of the shooting. [III Claim 3]

...This despite the fact that the first confessional shout allegedly occurred when Mumia was surrounded by "fifteen or twenty" officers, by Durham's own account. [Statement of the Facts/G]

It's not likely a coincidence that Durham had been a friend of Faulkner's, nor that her tale surfaced about the same time that Mumia filed charges of police brutality in connection with his savage beatings after being shot and arrested, nor that the police officer changed his story (which he had repeated in a subsequent statement) after a meeting [Aug 1] called by the prosecutor with the police officers charged by Mumia. A second officer present at the meeting likewise thereafter claimed to have heard the alleged confession, although neither the security guard nor the first officer reported his presence. The state's claim that the security guard had promptly written down a report of the confession founders on their inability to produce any such document. [Statement of the Facts/G]

Moreover, the sorry condition of the state's testimony is matched by the bankruptcy of its physical case. The jury in Mumia's original trial was prevented from learning that the medical examiner who retrieved the fatal bullet from the head of the police officer allegedly slain by Mumia noted that it was .44 caliber. Mumia's gun was .38 caliber [III Claim 4].  It was misconduct to hide this datum, which conflicts with the prosecutor's theory, from the jury: The responsibility to weigh the evidence belongs to the jury, not to the judge or prosecutor.  In passing, it's worth noting that the Daniel Faulkner website's assertion that “The note was written on a piece of scrap paper, and was not a part of (and was never intended to be a part of) his professional findings” is shown by the Medical Examiner's report to be false.

Even though it omits the medical examiner's .44 caliber measurement, the state's ballistics report conflicts with its own contention that the fatal bullet was shot from Mumia's gun:

In addition, the relative widths of the lands and grooves on the bullet reportedly taken from Faulkner's head wound is opposite of all, but a few percent of the Charter Arms revolvers produced. Thus, the prosecution's ballistics evidence (or lack thereof) itself raises a strong likelihood that the bullet in evidence from Faulkner's head wound was not fired by Mumia's gun. The police ballistics tests were admittedly "inconclusive" because properly and competently performed ballistics would exclude Mumia's gun as the murder weapon. [Allen/Frailty of the Ballistics] (also [Declaration of Rachel Wolkenstein] item 30).

Finally, the polygraph-supported confession of Arnold Beverly to the murder for which Mumia has been erroneously convicted explains several items of evidence that had hitherto been mysteries:

33. In a second interview I conducted a few days later in March 1999 Arnold Beverly confessed that he himself shot P.O. Faulkner. He told me that someone else fired the first shot that hit P.O. Faulkner, and then Beverly ran across the Street and shot the officer in the face...
...
39. We found corroboration for Beverly's claim that Faulkner  fell to his knee in the autopsy report which stated that the skin on Faulkner's knee was denuded; moreover, his pants were torn at the knee.  Beverly said he was carrying a .22 caliber handgun and William Singletary had testified that a small caliber gun, a .22 or .25 was used in the shooting of Faulkner. Contradictions in the statements and testimony of P.O. Carolyn Chinn demonstrated that it was her impression that a black suspect had been taken from the scene before she arrived and participated in handcuffing Jamal. This was consistent with Beverly's claim that he left the scene with help from police officers. [Declaration of Rachel Wolkenstein]

The state will need more than two newly-minted lies to budge the mountain of evidence showing that Mumia is innocent, was framed, and should be released immediately.

2 Jan 2006 Tbagg

(Revised 9 Sept 2009)