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Dominating the news in Mumia abu-Jamal's
legal battle against the death penalty this year
is the fantas-tic story of Veronica Jones, a
wit-ness who had testified for the prose-cution
at Mumia's original trial. Mumia, a Black
journalist and revo-lutionary, has been on death
row since being convicted in the Decem-ber 9,
1981 shooting death of a Phil-adelphia police
officer.
Jones, who worked as a prosti-tute in
Philadelphia's Center City area, was near the
intersection where Officer Daniel Faulkner was
gunned down. On that night, she told police
investigators that she had seen two men run from
the scene of the shooting, an observa-tion that
was confirmed by several other persons who made
statements to the police that night. Mumia was
not able to run anywhere--he had been found
lying critically wounded at the scene, less than
ten feet away from the police officer whom he
was later accused of shooting to death. At
Mumia's trial, however, Jones denied seeing
anyone run from where Faulkner was shot. (See
SHADOWs #37 and #38 for more--Ed.)
Fourteen years after Mumia's conviction,
defense investigators working to get Mumia a new
trial located Veronica Jones, now living in New
Jersey. Jones told them that she had lied at
Mumia's trial, that her first statement to the
cops on the night of the murder had been
accurate. Between the shooting and the trial,
Jones explained, she was arrested for armed
robbery--charged with having two loaded pistols
in her waistband. Sitting in jail and facing a
potential ten years and loss of her three infant
daughters, she was ap-proached by two
plainclothes detec-tives who offered her a deal
in ex-change for not helping Mumia's case. After
she gave the testimony the cops wanted, Jones
was given probation on the felony charges.
Judge Albert Sabo, who had tolera-ted numerous
irregularities during Mumia's trial and who
sentenced Mumia to death, refused to hold a
hearing on Jones' new testimony--until the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court forced him to do so
on Octo-ber 10, 1996. On the stand, Jones said:
"They told me I'd have to do 10 years away from
my children if I said what I saw...I couldn't
leave my ba-bies."
After Jones' retraction, the police were
quick to retract the favor that they had done
for her in 1982. Citing an almost two-year old
bench war-rant against Jones stemming from a
$250 bad check case, cops took the thirty-five
year old woman off the stand in handcuffs. Hours
later, Phil-adelphia police announced that they
were arresting Jones on a prostitu-tion charge
dating back to 1982. As she was being led out of
the court-room by the cops, Jones told a
by-stander--"You think that's going to make me
change my story? It's not!"
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