Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 20 July 1996 — Page 3

SATURDAY, JULY 20,1996

THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER

PAGE A3

Opinions Will new testimony documentary spur n new trinl for denth row journalist?

By LEONARD E. COLVIN Special to the NNPA from The New (Norfolk, Va.) Journal and Guide The case of Mumia Abu*Jamal, the Philadelphia death row journalist and commentator who served as a symbol for an antideath penalty movement that generated worldwide protests last year, has resurfaced on the national agenda after a key witness in his original trial has changed her story and the recent nationwide broadcast of a cable documentary about the controversy. Abu-Jamal, now 42, has been on death row in Pennsylvania since being convicted of the 1981 fatal shooting of white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner when the journalist, moonlighting as a cabdriver, intervened in an early morning scuffle between Faulkner and Abu- Jamal’s brother, William Cook, on a downtown Philadelphia street. Both Abu-Jamal and Faulkner were shot. Faulkner died at the scene. Abu-Jamal’s supporters claim that his trial was unfair, with prosecutors emphasizing his Black Panther past and his association with MOVE, a radical back-to-nature organization. An international movement for a new trial was wneeri when Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas Ridge signed Abu-Jamal’s death warrant last year. He was given an indefinite stay of execution less than two weeks before his scheduled August 1995 execution by lethal injection. Abu-Jamal attorneys Leonard Weinglass and Rachel Wolkenstein—who are appealing the case to the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court—have recently announced that Veronica Jones, a witness in the journalist’s 1982 trial for Faulkner’s murder, has provided what they call powerful new evidence that will prove Abu-Jamal is innocent. Jones has signed a statement in which she charges Philadelphia police detectives coerced her into changing her testimony. Wolkenstein and Weinglass said the new statement forms the base of the defense’s Pennsylvania Supreme Court appeal application for a “remand to take additional testimony.” Jones reveals that days before she took the stand as an eyewitness at the 1982 trial, the two detectives visited her in jail where she was awaiting felony charges of armed robbery. Jones, then a 21-year-old prostitute and mother of three small children, said she bowed to their threats, repudiating the statement she first had given to police — that she saw two men flee the scene immediately after the shootings. Her repudiation of the two-men-leaving-scene account “seriously” undermined AbuJamal’s case, his lawyers said. After changing her testimony, Jones was released on bail and finally was sentenced to probation. The new testimony is a powerful corroboration of the defense’s assertion that the 1982 trial was a political frame up engineered by Philadelphia police and the city’s District Attorney’s office, with police and prosecutor misconduct, the withholding and fabrication of evidence and coercion and intimidation of witnesses, said Wolkenstein. Said Weinglass: “It was the prosecution theory in the case that only Mumia and his brother were present when Officer Faulkner was shot. This ‘theory’ of the prosecution was a tissue of lies.” The new testimony adds even more weight to the accounts of several other witnesses who originally told police that they had seen a man or two men run from the scene. The case was recently the focus of HBO’s “America Undercover,” an occasional series of documentaries aired on the network. The program, called “Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Case of Reasonable Doubt’?,” was also broadcast on Court TV. The documentary details the circumstances and controversies of Abu-Jamal’s case and trial, and features an interview with Abu-Jamal. It will continue to air on HBO this month. Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case has generated international interest because of his powerful writings and radio commentaries, all done from prison. In 1994, National Public Radio withdrew Abu-Jamal’s radio commentaries from its evening news show “All Things Considered” after predominately white police groups threatened a national boycott. Abu-Jamal’s lawyers recently announced it was suing NPR, claiming First Amendment violations and that the radio network didn’t return all of the commentaries and that the radio network didn’t return all of the commentaries. After the NPR rejection, many of the commentaries were subsequently aired on leftist and community radio stations in several cities, and were compiled, with Abu-Jamal’s newspaper commentaries, into a book, “Live From Death Row.”

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LETTERS

By the year 2000, where will we be?

1 am worried. In the last four weeks I’ve had the opportunity to hear Dick Gregory, Avery Brooks, Tavis Smiley, and Paula Parker-Sawyer speak. They are concerned. I had a lengthy discussion with Sandra Smith, president of the Madame Walker Urban Life Center. Recently, over a lunch break, I listened to Donna Stokes-Lucas, owner and proprietor of Xpression bookstore. They are concerned. They are all commu-nity-based leaders, and most of them are emotionally tied to the arts. By the year 2000, where will we be? Who will we be? Dick Gregory still delivers his dark comic in straight black and white. He sees things as the more things change, the more they remain the same. He sees the antics of white people today as ridiculous as the day before. Fact is truly stranger than fiction. Avery Brooks warned us to be careful of words like multiculturalism and cultural diversity. They are as dangerous as the motives used to extract grant monies from our community for the sake of our community. In the name of inulliculturnlism and cultural diversity. “It’s an old hymn!” he said. Tavis Smiley is prolific author of “Hard Left”. He is an emergent from our AfricanAmerican nation who did not grow up in the presence of the lives of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers. Did not know first-hand, the philosophies of the likes of Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Ron Maulana Karenga. Or lived and danced to the phenomenal music of the day. Or experienced our own painful evolution from Colored to Negro to Black to AfricanAmerican. They are however, cognizant of today. With frank and brutal realization, they are communicating their concerns. The year 2,000 is only four years away. It made me stop and think. Who else sees this? I know other people see this. We as people. We complicate things. When there was no where else to go, the Avenue thrived. But we survived, and we strived to do better for ourselves. Opportunities opened up and we fought for the rights to a better education, better homes for our children, a better life. The Avenue, Lockfield Gardens and Ransom Place became deserted eyesores. It seemed to be a natural procession. I thought it was okay. I thought it was wonderful progress. In this city, we now live north, south, east, in Carmel, Geist, Eagle Creek and yes, Greenwood. We now have that freedom. But I think our hearts still yearn for what was good and positive in our old neighborhoods. Some of us reached back and there was nothing there. Others did have some structure left to salvage. They were able to rebuild some of the pride and beauty that were once a way of life. These places struggle today. Their centers offer services other places would not think or care to consider for us. Those neighborhood associations and centers deserve our support. Community. Baghdad closed. A & H Fine Arts closed? Abba Bookstore is closed. Oh, I’m not immune. It took me a few years to realize it. You buy a book at B. Dalton because it is cheaper. J.C. Penny sells ethnic now. It’s cheaper. Is it? When AfricanAmerican businesses are abandoned by their own community in order to save a couple of dollars, who got over? When

there are no Black businesses will there still be Black books, ethnic clothes in those very large stores? Maybe, but maybe not. And then we will be at the mercy of another’s culture. Again community. I can’t care so much about the world, or the country. I can’t. It is realistically too big. I am here. Indianapolis is my community, my home. I care about us. I want to focus my caring here. Even if we are to coexist interracially, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If has been much too quiet. We have driven much too close. I know that once we are all paying attention, we’ll be all

right. It is just that the present is starting to scare the hell out of me. If I don’t say another word about this, so be it. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. My message is to whom it may concern. We cannot afford to slumber through November this year. I am not one to discuss biased religion or politics, but I implore to you all. If you do nothing else this summer, make sure you are registered to vote. And if you are not, get registered to vote. If you know someone else who has not registered, take them with you. By all means, no matter who you are what you think, please exercise your right to vote this

year. Neither party may be totally speaking our language, choose the lessor of the evils. Vote on every level. Let no one deter you from getting to your precinct. Let on one intimidate or rush you once you are there. Elderly, young, disabled, you and me. Our community is at stake like it has never been before. There is so much beauty here. We have so many talented and intelligent children here. They need our help. They are depending on us to vote for them. D. W. Bates

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