Mumia Watch:
Judge Sabo Turns Down Appeal
By Will B. Outlaw
Judge Albert F. Sabo, known as Philadelphia’s “hanging judge”, continues to prevent lawyers for Mumia-Abu-Jamal from introducing witnesses who could refute the state’s case against the Black revolutionary journalist.
Abu-Jamal has been on death row for almost 16 years since his 1981 conviction in the shooting of Philadelphia police officer, Daniel Faulkner. Before that, he had aroused the hostility of the Philadelphia Police Department and entire ruling class establishment for exposing police brutality and misconduct against the Black community-especially the armed police assaults that led to the deaths of 11 people in the radical group MOVE.
Beginning on June 26, Judge Sabo presided over a special hearing ordered by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to hear testimony from Pamela Jenkins on police misconduct in Abu-Jamal’s 1981 trial. Jenkins is a former police informer who has provided dramatic testimony on police corruption, not only in this case but in a recent investigation of the Philadelphia police that led to many convictions.
Hundred of Abu-Jamal’s supporters, demanding his release or least a fair trial, crowded into the third floor of the court building, attempting to gain admittance to the hearing. Many others gathered across the street. They came from all parts of the East Coast and other countries, but they couldn’t get into the tiny courtroom chosen for the hearing. Twenty family members and supporters were finally permitted access to the courtroom. All other seats in the visitors’ section were occupied by police officers in and out of uniform.
As in the past, Sabo was openly hostile in his treatment of Abu-Jamal’s defense team, headed by civil-liberties lawyer Leonard Weinglass.
Paula Jenkins testified that at age 15 she had become sexually involved with a truant officer, Thomas Ryan, who had arrested her. Later that year Ryan joined the Philadelphia police force. She subsequently worked as a prostitute and as a paid police informer for Ryan. Jenkins told the court that Ryan and others had tried to get her to falsely testify to the guilt of Abu-Jamal in the shooting of Faulkner. Jenkins also testifies that the main witness in Abu-Jamal’s trial, a fellow young prostitute and police informer named Cynthia White, had told her the police threatened her into giving false testimony in the trial.
Cynthia White had provided the eyewitness account against Abu-Jamal. She has been unavailable for deposing and cross-examination by the defense ever since his trial. The prosecution claimed to have actively searched for White for years. Jenkins testified that this year she located White who, on seeing her, “looked as if she had seen a ghost” and ran into a police car. White has not been seen since.
Sabo then announced he would not allow other defense testimony. He told them to go to the State Supreme Court for relief, but Sabo gave the prosecution latitude to present a number of witnesses who attempted to minimize and taint Jenkins’ testimony.
One officer produced what the state claims to be a “just discovered” death certificate for White. It was signed by a coroner in Camden, N.J. in 1992 and give the cause of death as “unknown.”
The Camden coroner worked for the Philadelphia Police Department at the time of Abu-Jamal’s original trial. The name on the death certificate is not “Cynthia White” but two other names that police claim she used as aliases. When the defense tried to present witnesses to rebut the police story on Cynthia White, Sabo refused to hear them. These witnesses, said the defense, could present more information on White’s whereabouts.
The defense says its suppressed witnesses would also have bolstered
Jenkins’ contention that other police officers were at the scene
of the shooting and could be called to testify, but their presence was
denied by the state. After Sabo makes his decision on this hearing, the
next step will be up to the State Supreme Court.
