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New Evidence of Mumia Abu-Jamal Frame-Up

Explosive crime scene photos unveiled for the first time in the US

by Hans Bennett / May 31st, 2007

“The newly discovered photographs reveal the fact that the police were
actively manipulating evidence at the homicide scene. For example, their
moving the police officer’s hat from the roof of Billy Cook’s vehicle to
the sidewalk to make the scene more emotionally dramatic was fraudulent
and criminal. It was as if they were setting up a scene, putting in
props for a movie to be shot. That is incredible,” said Robert R. Bryan,
lead attorney for death-row journalist and former Black Panther, Mumia
Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer
Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death in a 1982 trial that Amnesty
International has declared a “violation of minimum international
standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death
penalty.”

The new crime scene photos described by Bryan were recently unveiled in
Philadelphia by German author Michael Schiffmann, during a crucial week
for Abu-Jamal.

On May 17, a three-judge panel from the federal Third Circuit Court of
Appeals held oral arguments in Philadelphia and considered four
different issues regarding the fairness of Abu-Jamal’s original 1982
trial. Joined by Christina Swarns of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Bryan
argued that Abu-Jamal’s trial was tainted with racist jury selection,
confusing jury instructions, prosecutorial misconduct in summation to
the jury (at both guilt and penalty phases), and the bias of a trial
judge that a court stenographer overheard boasting in 1982, that he was
going to help the prosecution “fry the nigger.”

Supporters of Abu-Jamal packed the federal courthouse and held a large
demonstration outside on the street. While many of the hundreds of
supporters outside held large posters displaying the new crime scene
photos to the Philadelphia public, the explosive new evidence could not
be presented in the courtroom because of the narrow “four-issue” scope
of the oral arguments.

Only a new trial will allow this new photographic evidence to be
presented before a court.

German Author Michael Schiffmann Presents New Photos

Among the many international observers in Philadelphia for the hearing,
was German author Michael Schiffmann, who utilized the important week to
present the crime scene photos and other new evidence from his new book
(not yet published in the US) “Race Against Death; Mumia Abu-Jamal: a
Black Revolutionary in White America,” an expansion of Schiffmann’s PhD
dissertation at the University of Heidelberg, just released in Germany.

Following the May 17 oral arguments, Schiffmann presented Race Against
Death to a standing-room only crowd at a community center in West
Philadelphia. Along with presenting original ballistics analysis,
Schiffmann unveiled the new crime scene photos from the morning of
December 9, 1981, that have only been published in his German book.

Schiffmann recounted how in May, 2006, he discovered two photographs on
the Internet that were taken by the only press photographer immediately
present at the 1981 crime scene – Pedro P. Polakoff, III. Upon
contacting him, Polakoff told Schiffmann that he arrived within 12
minutes of hearing about the shooting on the police radio and about ten
minutes before the Mobile Crime Unit (responsible for forensics and
photographs) arrived. According to Polakoff, this unit had still not
taken any photos when Polakoff left after 30-45 minutes at the scene.

Schiffmann published five of Polakoff’s photos in Race Against Death,
and chose four of those to present to the US public on thousands of
large posters spread around Philadelphia, and also on the “Journalists
for Mumia” website, Abu-Jamal-News.com.

One photo is of Police Officer James Forbes, who testified in court that
he had secured the weapons of both Faulkner and Abu-Jamal without
touching them on their metal parts in order to not destroy potential
fingerprints. Attorney Robert R. Bryan considers this photograph of
Forbes to be the “most stunning example” of the “incompetent manner in
which the police at the scene dealt with the evidence,” because Forbes
is “holding both pistols found at the scene in one hand, bare-handed!
This is unthinkable. A nitwit could do better. Why were there no
fingerprint tests? Why no ballistic examinations? It reminds me of a
scene from ‘The Keystone Cops,’ the way the evidence was being handled
and manipulated, except this was not funny.”

Another, two-photo sequence shows that the police moved P.O. Faulkner’s
hat from the roof of Abu-Jamal’s brother’s car, and placed it instead on
the sidewalk in front of 1234 Locust where it was later photographed by
the police photographer who arrived 10 minutes after Polakoff.

The last photo is of the large, empty space directly behind P.O.
Faulkner’s car, where the second-most important prosecution witness, cab
driver Robert Chobert, testified to have been parked when he claimed to
have observed Abu-Jamal shoot Faulkner.

Schiffmann extensively interviewed Polakoff about what he saw and heard
at the crime scene, and reports in Race that “according to Polakoff, at
that time all the officers present expressed the firm conviction that
Abu-Jamal had been the passenger in Billy Cook’s VW and had shot and
killed Faulkner by a single shot fired from the passenger seat of the car.”

While this observation contradicts the official prosecution scenario
that Abu-Jamal ran from across the street before shooting Faulkner, it
strongly supports Schiffmann’s original ballistics analysis and
conclusion that a third person (not Abu-Jamal or his brother Billy Cook)
most likely shot and killed Faulkner. This third person was Kenneth
Freeman (Billy Cook’s friend and business partner), who – according to
the available evidence – was the passenger in Cook’s car, and was
therefore the black male that six eyewitnesses reported to see fleeing
the scene moments before other police arrived.

Polakoff also told Schiffmann that the police opinion that the passenger
was the shooter “was apparently based on the testimony of three
witnesses who were still present at the crime scene, namely, by the
parking lot attendant in charge of the parking lot on the Northern side
of Locust Street, by a drug addicted woman apparently acquainted with
the parking lot attendant, and another woman. As Polakoff later heard
from colleagues in the media, the parking lot attendant had disappeared
the day after, while the drug-addicted witness died a couple of days
later from an overdose.”

Schiffmann concludes that “whatever it was that these witnesses saw or
did not see, we will probably never know – the interesting fact in any
case is that neither of them ever appeared in any report presented by
the police or the prosecution.”

Polakoff told Schiffmann that he was simply ignored when he repeatedly
contacted the DA’s office in 1982 and 1995 to give them his account–and
his photos–of the crime scene.

Mainstream Media Ignores Photos

While a few alternative media websites like The Independent Media Center
(indymedia.org) and Infoshop News (infoshop.org) have enthusiastically
reported on the unveiling of Polakoff’s photos, a “Google” news search
reveals a total blackout in the mainstream media. Not even one
mainstream media outlet has reported on them.

Veteran Philadelphia journalist Linn Washington, Jr., has been covering
the Abu-Jamal case for over 25 years. He feels that the media’s absolute
failure to even acknowledge these explosive photos continues a long
history of media bias against Abu-Jamal’s fight for a new and fair
trial. This shows “once again how this supposed information seeking
institution shirks its ethical duties in the Abu-Jamal case to ‘seek
truth and report it.’”

“This series of photographs damage the prosecution’s case significantly
because they graphically show police tampering with and manipulating the
crime scene.”

“Given the old ‘picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words’ dynamic, it is not
surprising that the prosecutor repeatedly rejected this photographer’s
offers of assistance because his photos expose the structural flaws in
the case presented in court against Abu-Jamal. These photos provide
additional evidence that the jury did not consider all of the available
evidence due to misconduct by police and prosecutors. This misconduct
fuels demands for a fair trial in this case.”

Listen to the audio from Michael Schiffmann’s presentation:

http://insubordination.blogspot.com/2007/05/audio-press-release-new-mumia-crime.html

View the crime scene photos:

http://Abu-Jamal-News.com

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