Chronicle of a cop killer

December 9, 1981, 3:51 a.m.: On this frigid morning, 25-year-old Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner pulled his patrol car behind a powder-blue Volkswagen Beetle and called for backup. However, before his fellow officers arrived, Officer Faulkner was mortally wounded by two bullets fired from point-blank range.

The first bullet ripped through his upper back, near his neck. In certain agony, he fell facing upward onto the dark street. The shooter then approached him, stood directly over him, and fired into his face, penetrating his brain and killing him instantly. Officer Faulkner’s fellow officers arrived seconds later, finding their colleague on the ground, and the shooter — a local radio host and one-time Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal — lying wounded by a bullet from Faulkner’s gun. Abu-Jamal’s gun, with five spent cartridges, was found at his feet. At the scene, Faulkner had apparently been in a combative situation with Abu-Jamal’s brother, who was resisting arrest after being stopped for a traffic violation. Nobody seems to know why Abu-Jamal was there. At the hospital emergency room, where police had taken him, officers have testified that Abu-Jamal stated, “I shot the mother—— and I hope he dies!”

At the trial, four witnesses testified to seeing Abu-Jamal at the scene. One testified to actually seeing Abu-Jamal with a gun in his hand. Another testified that he had heard the shots and then saw Abu-Jamal standing over Officer Faulkner, with his arm jerking as if firing a gun. The conclusive testimony of the four witnesses formed a compatible representation of what happened that fateful night. In addition, ballistics tests proved that Abu-Jamal’s gun, recovered at the scene, fired the bullets that killed Officer Faulkner. The bullet removed from Abu-Jamal was proven to have come from Officer Faulkner’s service weapon.

On July 2, 1982, Abu-Jamal was found guilty by a Philadelphia jury of the first-degree murder of Officer Faulkner. The jury, comprised of 10 white and two black members, deliberated less than six hours before reaching their verdict. The next day, the same jury took less than two hours to decide that Abu-Jamal should be sentenced to death. In 1995, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge signed a death warrant for Abu-Jamal, but the warrant was later stayed by a state-court judge, putting off the execution.

Over the years, a host of lawyers and investigators have worked on this case, attempting to cast doubt on the murder conviction. Many appeals have been filed and rejected. Abu-Jamal and his legal team have charged that he was convicted under the reign of a kangaroo court that unfairly targeted him without merit and by a police conspiracy to frame him. In a 1995 appeal hearing, Abu-Jamal’s lead attorney, Chicago Seven member Leonard Weinglass, produced so-called “eyewitnesses” who actually offered conflicting stories of a mystery gunman who drove by the scene and shot the officer, with one even suggesting that a police helicopter had been present. Many believe this mystery-gunman scheme is nothing more than a plot to win retrial.

“In a new trial,” wrote Paul Mulshine, a Star-Ledger (N.J.) columnist, “Abu-Jamal would be free to start all over again and admit that he shot Faulkner, but argue that he did so in self-defense. This would be a lie as well, but one that would be much easier to get past a sympathetic jury.”

Abu-Jamal has already received many chances to prove his innocence. Beginning in 1995, the seven-member Supreme Court of Pennsylvania afforded Abu-Jamal and his team three opportunities to prove their allegations of innocence, prosecutorial and judicial misconduct, police coercion and manipulation of witnesses. Of course, Abu-Jamal and his team failed and the Pennsylvania High Court unanimously upheld his conviction and the fairness of the 1982 trial, actually reprimanding his lawyers for “misrepresenting the record” to support their allegations.

Abu-Jamal, constantly trying to show that he is a victim of legal incompetence, recently asked a federal judge to let him fire his long-time legal team, contending that one of his attorneys — New York death-penalty specialist Daniel R. Williams — is writing an “insider’s account” of his cast. If the motion is approved, Abu-Jamal would represent himself until he can hire a new legal team. This would offer further delay of his final appeal attempt to escape execution. This seems to be a case that will not die.

We love our cop killer

On death row, Abu-Jamal has become a celebrity, writing a book (“Live from Death Row”), recording poetry and earning the support of Hollywood leftists (Ed Asner, Mike Farrell, Paul Newman, Spike Lee, Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, etc.), rappers and rockers, ’60s radicals and liberal politicians. A recent concert — featuring the Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine and a few other intellectual giants — raised about $400,000 for the Abu-Jamal defense team as a sell-out crowd gathered at the Continental Airlines Arena in New Jersey. Last April, rallies were simultaneously held in San Francisco and Philadelphia attracting a combined 25,000 supporters.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, author Maya Angelou, film critic Roger Ebert, Rep. John Conyers (D-Calif.), Amnesty International and a host of others have mindlessly turned their backs on the facts of this case to offer their support to Abu-Jamal — whom they consider the real victim. (This is virtually the same bunch that ignored the facts regarding President Clinton’s alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick and other “Jane Does.” It is the same group that obliviously supported the president even though he willfully perjured himself in court regarding his sexual exploits. The truth never seems to matter to the left these days.)

Abu-Jamal has received an honorary law degree from the New College of California School of Law in San Francisco and honorary citizenships by a district in Denmark and the city of Palermo in Italy. South African archbishop Desmond Tutu and other religious leaders have called for his clemency. Even National Public Radio recruited Abu-Jamal as a commentator for its “All Things Considered” broadcast, before reconsidering the decision.

Students at the University of California can frequently be seen wearing “Free Mumia” t-shirts. Through videotape, Abu-Jamal addressed the graduating class of U.C. Santa Cruz. Antioch College invited Abu-Jamal to address its commencement, as well. And Evergreen State (Washington) College played a tape-recorded speech by Abu-Jamal at its commencement. (To the credit of the students there, more than 800 graduates walked out of the ceremony and another two dozen turned their backs during Abu-Jamal’s three-minute “diatribe of hate,” as described by the Fraternal Order of Police).

Buzz Bissinger, reporting in Vanity Fair, wrote, “He has been transformed into a mythic figure, canonized at almost every opportunity — an outspoken revolutionary and hero to millions, in the words of one of the band members of Rage Against the Machine; a man similar in spirit to Mandela, in the words of novelist Alice Walker.”

The Mumia cult apparently has no concern for Officer Faulkner or his widow Maureen who continues to fight for the overdue execution of Abu-Jamal. Thank God, the Fraternal Order of Police — the nation’s largest organization of law enforcement professionals, with over 283,000 members — is helping her continue her quest for justice.

In fact, the FOP has announced the formal boycotting of companies and individuals that have cast support for Abu-Jamal, including Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Products (donators to a defense fund for the killer) and actor Paul Newman, and his products (an outspoken supporter of the killer.) The FOP is encouraging Americans to alert their grocers to the fact that Ben & Jerry’s and Paul Newman, founder of “Newman’s Own” foods, are supporting a cop killer.

In addition, the Backstreet Boys, who are performing “free” benefit concerts for the killer’s defense fund, have been chastised for supporting a cop killer. The recent “benefit concert” scheduled for Baltimore had to be canceled when Baltimore police officers refused to work the overtime shifts for concert-site security.

“Danny Faulkner was a good and decent man and an honorable police officer,” the FOP stated. “He was brutally murdered and his killer is Mumia Abu-Jamal. This is a time when justice demands that no honest man sit silent.”

Indeed, this is a time for honest men to call for justice. Mumia Abu-Jamal received his day in court, has been found guilty and should be put to death for his crime. It’s that simple. Shame on the Hollywood leftists, liberal politicians and campus “intellectuals” who are corruptly championing the life of a cold-blooded cop killer who has never once expressed remorse for his barbarous act.