Workers Vanguard No. 848	13 May 2005

Mumia Abu-Jamal Is an Innocent Man!

We print here the speech delivered by Rachel Wolkenstein of the Partisan Defense Committee at the April 23 Harlem indoor rally to free Mumia Abu-Jamal called by the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the NYC Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition and the International Action Center, among others.

I really want to thank especially Pam Africa for the invitation to speak here and expose the truth about Mumia's legal case, to speak of the dangers that face us.

In three weeks it will be 20 years since the racist murder of MOVE members and five MOVE children when a bomb was dropped on their Osage Avenue home in Philadelphia. The bomb was dropped by the FBI, the ATF and the Philadelphia police. The May 13, 1985 Mother's Day message to MOVE by the capitalist state was: "Attention, MOVE. This is America." The criminals in the government got away with their murder, with not even a slap on the wrist. Ramona Africa went to jail for years for the crime of surviving the racist holocaust. This is not unrelated to Mumia's case, because when the state locked up Mumia on death row in 1982, they took off the street a powerful defender of the MOVE organization.

It was imprisoned MOVE members who in 1987 asked the Partisan Defense Committee to take up Mumia's defense. Nine MOVE members had been found guilty for the killing of a Stakeout police officer during the August 1978 police attack on the MOVE Powelton Village commune, but the cop was killed by police crossfire. The MOVE members were sentenced to 30 to 100 years, and their legal challenges have been thrown out of court. These cases, as well as Mumia's, speak to the basic truth that there is no justice in the capitalist courts [applause]. Capitalist justice means "just us."

I was part of Mumia's legal defense team from 1995 through June 1999, in charge of the defense investigation. It was this investigation that led to finding Arnold Beverly and obtaining his confession that he shot and killed police officer Daniel Faulkner on December 9, 1981. I resigned from the legal team along with Jon Piper when his lead attorney, Mumia's lead attorney at the time, Leonard Weinglass, and co-counsel Dan Williams precluded Mumia from presenting this evidence of Mumia's innocence in the courts. The facts of this investigation, as Pam said, are in my affidavit. I will highlight those things in a moment.

My work fighting for Mumia's freedom did not begin with the legal team, but started years before, in 1987, as part of the PDC fight to free class-war prisoners including Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt). It's important to understand that our principles, our work, is based on principles of non-sectarian, class-struggle united-front defense in accordance with the political views of the Spartacist League. We place all faith in the power of the masses and no faith whatsoever in the so-called "justice" of the courts [applause].

We initiated a worldwide campaign to save Mumia Abu-Jamal and abolish the racist death penalty. On principle, we do not accord the state the right to determine who shall live or who shall die. The death penalty is the ultimate form of institutionalized state terror and murder, and it's used to intimidate or eliminate any who would challenge racist American capitalism. In the U.S. the death penalty is Jim Crow lynch law made legal [audience: "right," applause]. Mumia's case demonstrates what the death penalty is all about.

It is Mumia's 51st birthday tomorrow; he has spent the last 23 years on death row. The cops, the prosecutors, the entire "criminal justice system" have colluded to kill this man. His crime? His crime was being eloquent, and an effective critic of the racist oppression that exists in this country. Mumia says he's "fighting to create revolution in America. Revolution means total change." To the American capitalist state that means that Mumia is a dead man on leave.

Mumia is in danger. He faces the vengeance of the capitalist state. It is necessary now and urgent, more than ever now, as Mumia's case moves into the last stages of legal proceedings, to mobilize on the basis that Mumia is an innocent man. He never should have been arrested, never tried, never convicted [applause]. Our fight is to free Mumia!

The danger faced by Mumia today began back in 1969 when he was a 15-year-old Black Panther Party member, when he was targeted by the FBI's murderous COINTELPRO campaign which left 38 Panthers dead in their beds and on the street and hundreds in jail on frame-up charges. The message to the Black Panther Party by then-FBI director [J. Edgar] Hoover was: "The Negro youth and moderate[s] must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will be dead revolutionaries." This was the policy of Democratic Party president Lyndon Johnson and his attorney general, Ramsey Clark.

The FBI's COINTELPRO operation did not succeed then in framing Mumia up or murdering him. But he remained a target of the capitalist state—followed over the next ten years as he became one of the pre-eminent journalists in Philly—the "voice of the voiceless." He told the truth about the government's persecution of MOVE and gave, as he said, the Africas' side of the story. It was the long arm of COINTELPRO carried forward until the Philly police seized the opportunity to shoot and beat him on the street on December 9, 1981. The state and its courts have tried to finish the job for over two decades of racist frame-up legal proceedings.

Mumia's case is a textbook of police frame-up. It's an object lesson in the class nature of the state, which is not neutral. The state is the instrumentality of violence, organized violence by one class, the capitalist class, defending the profit system, against working people, against minorities. In the U.S. the forcible subjugation of the majority of the black population at the bottom of society is key. This state violence is expressed in terror and frame-ups carried out by the racist, brutal, corrupt cops. You know those examples: Panthers like Geronimo Pratt, Dhoruba bin Wahad; immigrants like Amadou Diallo, to even protesters at the Republican Party Convention. Every protest against the Iraq war and occupation, every one of these—it is very clear that there is a crazed and demented president in the White House [applause]. But the post-September 11 so-called anti-terrorism campaign is supported whole hog as well by the Democratic Party. And Mumia is in all of their gun sights [applause].

I'm talking about this because we need to understand this and act on this understanding. It's the only way forward to victory—for Mumia's freedom. While all legal proceedings and legal remedies must be pursued on Mumia's behalf, we cannot have any illusions in or reliance on the capitalist courts, nor in bourgeois politicians, whether they're black or white, be they Democratic, Republican or Green. The fight to free Mumia must be mobilized independent of the racist capitalist state. While support for Mumia's cause from bourgeois politicians like Mayor Dinkins is welcome, the campaign mobilization cannot be tailored for their acceptability—with arguments that the capitalist injustice system can be made fair or reformable. It will take the social power of organized labor and its allies to create the type of pressure we need to obtain Mumia's freedom—a mass movement centrally based on the power of the working class, the power to withhold labor—to strike. Like the members of the AFSCME union that Brenda Stokely represents. Like the transit workers who are now here in the room. Imagine what it would mean if New York transit went on strike on behalf of Mumia [applause].

Demands for a new trial will never lead to Mumia's freedom. Not only should it be clear that Mumia should have never spent a day in court, but to talk about a "fair trial" only breeds illusions in the capitalist courts. These illusions demobilized a movement which once had millions around the world. The mass movement has to be built anew on the basis that Mumia's conviction and death sentence were political, and it is in the interests of all working people, black and white, citizen and immigrant, to join together and fight for his freedom [applause]. The fight for Mumia's freedom is part of the fight for black equality in America, which itself is part of the broader fight against the capitalist system.

The Frame-Up of Mumia

That truth has been shown over two decades of court proceedings appeals. Mumia's case has been through the Pennsylvania courts to the U.S. Supreme Court three times, including three post-conviction evidentiary hearings. His case is now in the federal appeals court. Each and every court has rejected evidence of Mumia's innocence, evidence of police and prosecutorial lies, threatening witnesses into falsifying testimony, fabricating Mumia's confession, botched ballistics. Judge Dembe in Philadelphia has denied Mumia a hearing on the new evidence that's there. And over the past three years, the courts—federal and state—refused to consider the confession of Arnold Beverly. Federal court judge Yohn overturned Mumia's death sentence over three years ago. But while the government appeals, Mumia is still on death row, 23 hours a day in solitary in a cell which he has described as like living in a toilet.

What is the Beverly evidence? I'm going to ask your indulgence for a little more time [audience: "yes," applause]. This evidence of Mumia's innocence is more than Beverly's confession or the lie detector test he passed. Beverly states that he and another man were hired by the police in cooperation with the mob to murder police officer Faulkner. Faulkner was a problem for the corrupt police and the mob because he interfered with graft and payoffs. Weinglass rejected this evidence as too hot and unbelievable, and Williams said that to put this forward would lead to arguing that the police knowingly framed up an innocent man! Imagine that [laughter]. This is not only believable, but the reality of the cops and the courts. In Philly during the 1995 Mumia hearings, exposés of cop frame-ups of blacks on false drug charges shared the daily front page news—some 300 cases overturned. There's the L.A. Ramparts case, the Boston cop with mob ties, and now in the news, two New York homicide detectives [prosecuted] for murdering while in uniform [on the force] and on Mafia payroll.

Other evidence supports Beverly; the affidavit of Mumia's brother, William Cook, states there was another man on the scene at the time of Faulkner's killing, Ken Freeman, who also said that there was a hit planned on Faulkner. The affidavit of Donald Hersing, an FBI informant, confirms that at the time of Faulkner's shooting, the commanding officer of the police division, the chief of the homicide division and one Inspector Alfonzo Giordano were all under investigation on federal corruption charges. Not coincidently, these cops were the chain of command in Faulkner's case. And Giordano knew who Mumia was. More on this in a bit. Those cops were worried about possible police informants. Three federal investigations into police corruption, including the mob, were underway at the time Faulkner was murdered. Police working as FBI informants were victims of hits in the early '80s. A federal prosecutor acknowledged to us that they had a police informant, one whose brother was also a cop, like Faulkner. These federal investigations also mean that the FBI has plenty of knowledge of what happened in Philadelphia Center City on December 9—information they have refused to release.

Beverly states there were undercover cops and others in uniform at the location to make sure the hit happened and to help Beverly make his getaway. This confirms the testimony of William Singletary that cops were immediately on the scene. Marcus Cannon, another witness, said two undercover cops were on the scene during the shooting. Again, confirmation of Beverly.

Inspector Giordano: ranking officer on the scene, central witness against Mumia at the preliminary hearing after the arrest. He not only was one of the cops under investigation for corruption, but he was Frank Rizzo's man, right-hand man, involved in the daily surveillance of the Black Panther Party members in the '60s and early '70s, and he led the police Stakeout team in the 1970s attack on the Philly Black Panther Party. Giordano was police supervisor of the year-long siege of the MOVE Powelton Village house. He knew just who Mumia was. He was the cop who first reported that Mumia's gun was found on the street, some 12 minutes after cops were already there. He arranged the supposed identification of Mumia by the cab driver, Robert Chobert, who was promised favors and protected by the police. Giordano is the cop who beat Mumia in the police van and said that Mumia had confessed there to shooting Faulkner. Giordano never testified at Mumia's trial. In fact, he resigned from the police force the day after Mumia's trial was over. In 1986 he copped a plea on federal charges based on his receiving tens of thousands of dollars in illegal payoffs during the 1979-80 period and didn't spend any time in jail.

Beverly states that Faulkner was first shot in the back, and then he shot Faulkner in the head before Mumia ever got on the scene. Mumia was shot by an arriving police officer, Beverly says. Homicide cops on the scene told the medical examiner's office that Mumia was shot by an arriving police officer. Beverly states he had a .22 calibre. The available ballistics and blood evidence at the scene is contrary to the prosecution's frame-up version. The trajectories are wrong. It supports more than one shooter of Faulkner, that a gun other than Faulkner's or Mumia's was used, that the bullets and bullet jackets found do not fit the prosecution's story. Mumia's wounds do not fit with him being shot by Faulkner. The Stakeout officer who purportedly found Mumia's gun testified at trial that the bullets in Mumia's gun were a different make than listed on the ballistics report.

Beverly said that he was wearing a green army jacket that night. William Singletary had said that the shooter used what sounded like a .22 and that the shooter was wearing a green army jacket. Billy Cook said Freeman was wearing a green army jacket and he ran away from the scene. Additionally, two police officers at the time said that the shooter was wearing a green army jacket, as did another civilian witness. But Mumia wore a red quilted ski jacket with wide vertical blue stripes, and Billy Cook wore a blue Nehru-style jacket with brass buttons. This evidence—Singletary's, Beverly's—could also confirm that the shooter ran away, and it was a shooter in a green army jacket.

Beverly and Hersing's statements also support the testimony of Pamela Jenkins and now Yvette Williams that key prosecution witness Cynthia White was both threatened and accorded favors to lie on the witness stand and say she saw Mumia shoot Faulkner.

There is more, much more. What is the significance of the Beverly evidence and why has it been suppressed? There is a simple answer—that it exposes the fraud that the American legal system can provide justice. It demonstrates that there's a unity of purpose of the cops, prosecution and courts to uphold the capitalist rulers' interests. It makes it clear that the injustice to Mumia was not the action of one rogue cop, or prosecutor, or judge, but the entire functioning of the capitalist system of injustice [applause]. Williams' book, Executing Justice, denouncing this evidence, has been used by the D.A. and the bourgeois courts to reject evidence of Beverly's confession and the supporting evidence. That book, and that book alone, has been used to deny this evidence.

This should make clear to all of us here what we need to do to free Mumia. That the courts will not move, whether on the grounds of a racially biased jury selection, which was true, or that he wasn't allowed to represent himself in violation of his constitutional rights, which was true, or in the face of the prosecutorial misconduct, which is enormous. And what I've said to you, and what you know already, is only the tip of the iceberg. None of this will happen, the courts will not move without the force of an international mobilization of the masses, and centrally based on the labor movement.

That Mumia is innocent is the truth. That the capitalist state has spent decades framing him up is the truth. Putting its lying, corrupt class- and race-biased forces to see Mumia dead is what they're all about. But we need to use the truth about Mumia's case, only some of which I and other people have been able to talk to you about, to bring out more power, social power, to fight for victory and free Mumia. Free Mumia! [Applause.]