Philadelphia: City of Brotherly Thugs, By Mumia Abu-Jamal

Just because I love my brother, doesn't mean I want to make love with my brother.

So it was Colonel Mustard after all. Just as I predicted.

Brent claims: “Several eyewitnesses all point to mumia as the killer. At the trial, Officer Faulkner's blood stained shirt was shown, mumia turned and smiled at Faulkner's widow.”

This is not true. The prosecution depends on two key witnesses, Robert Chobert and Cynthia White, the only witnesses who claimed they saw Mumia shoot Faulkner.

In 1995, Chobert admitted that he never saw the shooting. (G.M. Newman 9/25/01 Affidavit) Chobert was not parked behind Faulkner’s police car, a fact confirmed by freelance photographer Pedro Polakoff’s recently unearthed crime scene photos, which the prosecution had suppressed for nearly 25 years. Taken only minutes after the shooting, the photos show no car parked behind Faulkner’s vehicle.

Cynthia White was not even there during the shooting. Prosecution witnesses Chobert, Scanlan and Magilton, as well as defense witness Veronica Jones, who knew White, all testified at trial that White was not on the corner where she claimed to see the shooting. (Chobert: N.T.6/19/82:227-28; Scanlan: N.T.6/25/82:58; Magilton: N.T.6/25/82:86; Jones: N.T.6/29/82:129-30) William Singletary testified that White came up to him after the shooting to ask him what happened. (8/31/90 Deposition 25). In addition, Cynthia White admitted to Yvette Williams that she was lying out of fear from the police and her pimp. (1/28/02 Declaration: Yvette Williams)

Brent claims: “yeah, Moomia's gun was out of its holster; the bullets matched the gun that Moomia was holding.....the gun was also registered to Mumia”

Mumia had a gun registered to him that he used to defend himself as a night cab driver.

There is no credible evidence that Mumia's gun was found next to him, and there was no evidence that Mumia's gun had been fired. No tests were done to see if Mumia’s gun had been fired. Those tests were never done because the police knew it had not been fired.

Despite claims by the police that they found the gun immediately, radio recordings proved they were still looking for it 14 minutes after they arrived. Some of the cops thought that the gun had left with the shooter on foot. Fourteen minutes was plenty of time to get the gun from Mumia’s cab, especially with Inspector Giordono on the scene, a corrupt cop that was in charge of repressive operations against MOVE and the Black Panther Party.

The officer who found the gun also lied about how he handled the gun. Different cops had completely contradictory stories about how and when the gun was found. The Plakinoff photos, illegally suppressed by the prosecution for 25 years, show the gun being held in such a way that would have destroyed any fingerprints, this despite police lies to the contrary. Instead of putting the gun into evidence with the mobile crime unit, as is standard procedure, the police drove around with it for two hours before they delivered it to the station.

Brent claims: “the so-called confession of Arnold Beverly was so patently ridiculous, Mumia's own lawyers wouldn't touch it.”

Brent knows this is not true. Judge Dembe threw Arnold Beverly’s confession out, making the ridiculous assertion that it was not filed in a timely way. Mumia’s attorney’s did, however, try to file Arnold Beverly’s confession to a capital murder.

While Beverly’s confession does fit some evidence and the eyewitness accounts of one or two men fitting his discription running from the scene, the evidence that Kenneth Freeman shot Faulkner is overwhelming. This includes both physical evidence an ID found on the dead cop sillegally suppressed by the prosecution for 13 years, and numerous eyewitness accounts.

Brent claims, "and the bullets matched those calibre [sic] in Faulkner's body...."

Even if this was true, which has not been proven, it would not mean that the bullets came from Mumia's gun. The prosecution has never been able to provide an adequate explanation of why the coronor first said the bullet was from a .44 and then the prosecution changed their explanation to say it was a .38. In the original trial Mumia's defense were not given enough money by Judge "I'll help you fry the nigger" Sabo, so the defense ballistics expert quit the job and the defense were never able to check the ballistics evidence with an expert for themselves. In an unprecedented move, Judge Sabo turned the ballistics evidence over to the police after the trial. After the bullet was turned over to the police, a fragment of it went missing, and it is entirely possible that the fragment was lost when the police switched the evidence.

Even if the police were playing fair with this evidence, which they didn’t do with anything else in this case, they still provided no proof that Mumia’s gun had been fired, nor any proof that the bullets in Faulkner came from Mumia’s gun.

According to eyewitness accounts, Kenneth Freeman was carrying a .38 that night and that is what Freeman used to shoot Faulkner with.

Brent also claims, "His gun that was out of its holster with the chamber emptied."

Mumia had a gun registered to him that he used to defend himself as a night cab driver.

There is no credible evidence that Mumia's gun was found next to him, and there was no evidence that Mumia's gun had been fired. No tests were done to see if Mumia’s gun had been fired. Those tests were never done because the police knew it had not been fired.

Despite claims by the police that they found the gun immediately, radio recordings proved they were still looking for it 14 minutes after they arrived. Some of the cops thought that the gun had left with the shooter on foot. Fourteen minutes was plenty of time to get the gun from Mumia’s cab, especially with Inspector Giordono in charge and on the scene, he was a corrupt cop who was in charge of repressive operations against MOVE and the Black Panther Party. Giordono also claimed that he heard Mumia confess on the ride to the hospital, but this fake confession was dropped when another cop present denied it happened.

The officer who found the gun also lied about how he handled the gun. Different cops had completely contradictory stories about how and when the gun was found. The Plakinoff photos, illegally suppressed by the prosecution for 25 years, show the gun being held in such a way that would have destroyed any fingerprints, this despite police lies to the contrary. Instead of putting the gun into evidence with the mobile crime unit, as is standard procedure, the police drove around with it for two hours before they delivered it to the station.