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PHILADELPHIA--As Mumia Abu-Jamal's
lawyers try to win him a new trial in the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a new witness
has claimed that police tried to get her
to give false tes-timony against him in
1981.
The witness, Pamela Jenkins, was a key
federal informant in the city's 1995
police-corruption scandal. Thomas Ryan was
one of the six city cops convicted on
federal charges in the scandal, in which
officers from the 39th District station
were revealed to have framed defendants
on phony drug charges. In December
1981--when Abu-Jamal was ar-rested for the
fatal shooting of city police office
Daniel Faulkner--Jenkins was 16, a
prostitute working the Center City area
and dating Ryan.
In an affidavit given to the defense
in January and filed with the court March
10, Jenkins states that Ryan and several
other officers tried to get her to say she
had seen Abu-Jamal kill Faulkner, even
though she hadn't even been there. She
also says that oft-arrested prostitute
Cynthia "Lucky" White--the prosecution's
key witness at Abu-Jamal's 1982
trial--told her that "she had been
threatened with her life by a police
offi-cer because of the Jamal case."
Jenkins did not testify in the 1982
trial, but said she took $150 from police
to help them find Cynthia White.
Philadelphia Assistant District
Attorney Hugh Burns says that prosecutors
are still investigating Jenkins' claims
and haven't formulated an official
response. However, Burns says that the
39th Dis-trict officers had "nothing to do
with the case" and calls the claim that
police had to track White down "bizarre."
"Cynthia White gave her version 20
minutes after the murder," he declares.
That initial statement to police, he adds,
was consistent with her trial testimony.
But defense lawyers argue that
Jenkins' story is the latest illustration
of a pattern of police intimidation of
witnesses and withholding of evidence by
the prosecution. "The prosecution
witnesses were coerced and coaxed," says
attorney Dan Williams. White, in jail in
Massachusetts on prostitution charges
and facing more in Philadelphia, was es-
pecially vulnerable to pressure. Another
witness, cabdriver Robert Chobert, was
driving without a license while on
probation for arson. Both changed their
stories several times before the trial.
(White jumped bail in 1987 after police
intervened to get her released without
bail in an armed-robbery case.)
The March 10 court papers also cite
gas station owner William Singletary, who
told a 1995 hearing on Abu-Jamal's bid for
a new trial that he had seen a man with
dreadlocks--not Abu-Jamal--shoot Faulkner
and then flee. But when he gave police
written statements about it, he said, a
detective rolled them into a ball and
threw them out. He did not testify at
Mumia's 1982 trial, and claimed that
police threats had forced him to move to
North Carolina. Prose-cutor Burns
dismisses Singletary as to-tally
unbelievable.
If the state Supreme Court denies
Abu-Jamal a new trial, Governor Tom Ridge
is expected to sign a death warrant
immediately, which means that he could be
executed within three months. An appeal to
the federal courts would be sharply
circumscribed by the 1996 antiterrorism
bill's provisions to expe-dite executions.
Federal law now presumes that state
courts are correct on the facts in
death-penalty cases, and defendants
claiming that state courts misinterpreted
the law must prove that they were
unreasonably wrong to get a conviction
overturned.
Another scandal hit the Philadelphia
justice system this spring, when city
District Attorney Lynne Abraham released
a video of her Republican opponent
instructing assistant district attorneys
on how to sidestep a recent Supreme Court
ruling banning racial discrimination in
jury selection. The Republican candidate,
then a city prosecutor, told the ADA's to
keep poor blacks and intelligent people
off juries, because blacks would
sympathize with defendants and the
intelligent took the concept of
"reasonable doubt" seriously.
(For more on Mumia's case, see SHADOWs #37, #38 + #40--Ed.)
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