Executing Justice: An Inside Account of the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal
By Daniel Williams
The controversy over the Mumia Abu-Jamal case has always puzzled me. Sometime around 4 a.m. on Dec. 9, 1981, somebody puts a bullet through the head of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, who dies instantaneously. Abu-Jamal is found nearby holding a .38 caliber gun. When the bullet is removed from the cop’s body and analyzed, not only is it a .38, but its rifling characteristics are a close match to Abu-Jamal’s gun. Add to that Abu-Jamal’s well known anger at police over Philadelphia’s disastrous treatment of the MOVE movement and the fact that Faulkner was in the process of arresting Abu-Jamal’s brother, Billy Cook, and it seems like a relatively straightforward case.
In Executing Justice Dan Williams maintains that it is anything but a simple case, but for the most part his defense of Abu-Jamal rings hollow and is complicated by parts of the book which bring Williams’ judgment into doubt.
Of course, Executing Justice became part of the latest twist and turns in the Abu-Jamal case. Although he gave Williams permission to write the book, when he read an advanced copy of it Abu-Jamal was incensed and fired not only Williams but Leonard Weinglass and the rest of his legal team. Weinglass himself was very critical of the book. After reading the book it is easy to understand the reaction of both individuals.
For, Abu-Jamal his case has always been as much about radical politics winning a new trial. Williams, on the other hand, describes himself as uninterested in activist politics (though he is definitely left leaning) and throughout the book tries to distance himself from legal decisions made by others on the team, at Abu-Jamal’s behest, that may have played well politically but turned out disastrously from a legal standpoint.
The book is probably far more damaging to Weinglass, however. A reader who cares to take the time to compare Weinglass’s public comments and interviews on aspects of the case and compare them to Williams’ account in Executing Justice can conclude only one thing — at best Weinglass is often extremely deceptive when pitching Abu-Jamal’s case to the Left wing support groups. At worst, he’s an outright liar.
Williams does not focus on this aspect of the case, but on the other he hand he doesn’t hesitate to debunk common myths about the case such as the absurd claim that Faulkner was shot with a .44 caliber bullet (though he does rightly argue that Abu-Jamal’s original trial attorney was incompetent for not even investigating the autopsy notation that led to the creation of this myth).
But it is in the description of the internal disagreement over which witnesses to call where Weinglass really comes across as a liar.
Consider, for example, an interview that Weinglass gave to CounterSpin . CounterSpin asked Weinglass about an ABC News piece that argued Jamal was guilty. Weinglass told CounterSpin,
No, there was absolutely nothing new in the material that he presented. As a matter of fact it was only in portions and small excerpts of what was very old, and what was very old in the trial was completely discredited in 1995 when we put on witnesses. We put on witness Veronica Jones, who said she testified falsely against Mumia at his trial. And she did it because the police had pressured her. We put on witness William Singletary, who said he didn’t testify at all in Mumia’s trial because the police had threatened him, tore up his statements in which he said Mumia was not the shooter and ultimately drove him out of town.
We put on witness Pamela Jenkins, who said that she knew that the chief witness against Mumia, Cynthia White, was actually a police informant.
The statement about Jones testimony is correct, though both Williams and Weinglass exaggerate her impact. But as far as Williams is concerned, Singletary’s and Jenkins’ testimonies were outright disasters for Abu-Jamal because their respective testimonies were obviously untruthful.
Singletary testified that he heard a passenger in Cook’s cab cursing police and making comments about an arson at a local newsstand that many in Philadelphia believed had been burned down by police. The only problem is that the newsstand arson occurred four days after the shooting of Officer Faulkner. In addition, Singletary testified that after Faulkner was shot, the officer turned to him and said, “‘Get Maureen’ or ‘get the children’ or something like that.” This too was impossible. Faulkner was killed almost instantaneously, and the gunshot did such severe damage there is no way Faulkner would have been able to speak.
Jenkins’ testimony was even worse for the defense, and Williams writes that he lobbied hard to keep Jenkins from testifying. She testified that she had been dating a police officer in 1981 who told her that police had framed Mumia, and that she had seen witness Cynthia White at the beginning of 1997 hanging out with this same police officer. The best way to describe this testimony is that it was absolute fantasy.
The officer she claimed to be having an affair with in 1981 was not even on the force at the time. If Jenkins talked to White in 1997 that must have been an extraordinary meeting since White died in September 1992 (after allowing the defense to call and examine Jenkins, the prosecution produced White’s death certificate — an enormous embarrassment that undercut the defense’s credibility).
And yet without missing a beat, Weinglass tells CounterSpin that ABC News was faulty for not presenting the claims made by these two witnesses who he thinks exonerate Abu-Jamal!
Of course Williams still ultimately believes that Abu-Jamal deserves a new trial and seems to have a very high level of respect for his client. On the other hand you have to wonder whether Williams is a good judge of character.
A group of Trotskyist lawyers who had Abu-Jamal’s ear pushed to have Singletary and Jenkins testify despite Williams’ objections. The conflict between these ideologically motivated lawyers and the rest of the legal team came to a head when the Trotskyists wanted to call a witness who claimed Faulkner was murdered by a hit man hired by police to cover up widespread corruption in the Philadelphia police department. Williams strenuously objected to these witnesses, as did others on the legal team, and eventually the Trotskyist lawyers were forced aside. Williams writes about this incident,
In retrospect, I feel somewhat ashamed for even thinking that Mumia would opt to pin his hopes for a new trial on such an absurd account. An innocent man on death row might grab at anything to get justice; but I should have had faith that Mumia would never get that desperate.
Remarkably, as I reflect on this particular episode, it actually deepened my commitment to this case and heightened my already enormous respect for my client. It became apparent to me that Mumia is far too honorable to propagate a lie upon which to build a case for his freedom.
Of course after firing Williams and Weinglass, Abu-Jamal immediately brought back the Trotskyist lawyers and has decided on an all-or-nothing strategy that alleges Faulkner was killed by a hitman hired by Philadelphia cops — the strategy referred to by Williams outright as a “lie.” For the first time in the 20 year history of this case, Abu-Jamal has even gone so far as to provide a deposition partially describing his actions on Dec. 9, 1981 that is clearly tailored to suit the hit man conspiracy theory.
It would be interesting to hear what Williams thinks of Mumia’s honor now, given events that happened after publication of Executing Justice. Still, Williams’ book does transcend the debate over Abu-Jamal’s guilt and is a is a fascinating look inside the legal team behind one of the most high profile capital punishment cases of the last decade.