"Murdered By Mumia?" press conference featured by Reuters
Wednesday, December 05 2007 @ 03:40 AM CST
Contributed by: Anonymous
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A press-conference organized by Journalists for Mumia Abu-Jamal featured a presentation of newly discovered crime scene photos, as well as presentations by Pam Africa of The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and three local journalists: David A. Love, Linn Washington Jr., and Dave Lindorff. "Murdered By Mumia?" press conference featured by Reuters! --More big media coverage to come?
Read the Reuters article on the crime scene photos.
The press conference featured David A. Love, Dave Lindorff, Linn Washington Jr., and Pam Africa of ICFFMAJ. View/download "Murdered By Mumia?" flier!
AUDIO of Press Conference: Was P.O. Daniel Faulkner really "Murdered By Mumia"?
--Journalists and activists present evidence of innocence and an unfair trial in the death-penalty case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Question 2--May 17 and The US Third Circuit Court of Appeals
Questions 4--More About The Photos
PRESS CONFERENCE: Was Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner really "Murdered By Mumia"? --Journalists and activists present evidence of innocence and an unfair trial in the death-penalty case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
NOON, Tuesday, December 4, 2007, at The A-Space, 4722 Baltimore Avenue, West Philadelphia
A press-conference organized by Journalists for Mumia Abu-Jamal featured a presentation of newly discovered crime scene photos, as well as presentations by Pam Africa of The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and three local journalists: David A. Love, Linn Washington Jr., and Dave Lindorff.
INVITATION: This week will mark the 26th anniversary of the December 9, 1981 shooting death of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner and the arrest of radical journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. December 6 will mark the release of a new book titled "Murdered By Mumia," written by Maureen Faulkner and Michael Smerconish. The Philadelphia Inquirer has already begun a three-part series that features excerpts from "Murdered By Mumia." The media-attention will continue this week with "Murdered By Mumia" scheduled to be featued on such news programs as The Today Show, The O'Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and many more.
In light of this significant week, we have organized our press conference to present "the other side of the story," to the media so that it can be fairly balanced alongside the story presented by Faulkner, Smerconish, and others who argue that Mumia does not deserve a new trial and should be executed. These activists and award-winning journalists who have thoroughly researched the case and concluded that Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial was blatantly unfair, and that there is considerable evidence suggesting that Abu-Jamal is in fact innocent, as he has maintained from the very beginning.
CONTACT: For more information, please contact us via email: hbjournalist@gmail.com
This exciting press conference featured:
PRESENTATION OF NEWLY DISCOVERED CRIME SCENE PHOTOS
Philadelphia journalist Hans Bennett presented the crime scene photos recently discovered by German linguist, Michael Schiffmann (University of Heidelberg). Dr. Schiffmann has disclosed his discovery of 26 photographs (never seen by the 1982 jury), taken by press photographer Pedro P. Polakoff, which suggest more evidence that basic investigative protocol was violated by police from the earliest moments of the killing. Schiffmann and Bennett's website, Abu-Jamal-News.com, displays four of the photos to make these key points about the new evidence:
1. Mishandling the Guns - Officer James Forbes holds both Abu-Jamal's and Faulkner's guns, his bare hand touching the metal parts, suggesting perjury when he testified to properly preserving the guns’ ballistics evidence.
2. The Moving Hat - Faulkner's hat is moved from the roof of Billy Cook's VW and placed on the sidewalk, where it remained for the official police photo.
3. The Missing Taxi - Robert Chobert testified to parking directly behind Faulkner's car, but the space is empty.
4. The Missing Divots – On the sidewalk, where Faulkner was found, there are no large bullet divots, or destroyed chunks of cement, which should be visible in the pavement if the prosecution scenario was accurate, according to which Abu-Jamal shot down at Faulkner – and allegedly missed several times – while Faulkner was on his back. Dr. Michael Schiffmann writes: “It is thus no question any more whether the scenario presented by the prosecution at Abu-Jamal’s trial is true. It is clearly not, because it is physically and ballistically impossible.”
DAVID A. LOVE
In October, 2007, Philadelphia-based lawyer and journalist, David A. Love, wrote about the new crime scene photos for The Black Commentator news website. Love's article titled "Photos Bolster Claims of Mumia’s Innocence and Unfair Trial" was featured in the national Black newspaper, The SF Bay View, where one of the photos was published for the very first time in the US. Love spoke at the press conference about why the new crime scence photos are an important and worthy story for the media to cover.
--David A. Love is a member of the editorial board of BlackCommentator.com, where his Color of Law column appears weekly. He is a contributor to the Progressive Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, In These Times and Philadelphia Independent Media Center, and board president of Media Tank, a non-profit media reform and education organization. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention and Prisons (St. Martin's Press, 2000), and is a former producer of the radio news magazine Democracy Now! Love is also a former spokesperson for the Amnesty International UK National Speakers Tour, and organized the first national police brutality conference as a staff member with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. He served as a law clerk to two Black federal judges. Love is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He also attended Harvard Business School, and completed the Joint Programme in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford.
DAVE LINDORFF
Dave Lindorff is the author of "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal" (Common Courage Press, 2003), an independent examination of this important capital case. In his December 2, 2007 article titled "Maureen Faulkner and Mumia: Vengeance Isn't Sweet," Lindorff responds to the first in a three-part series in The Philadelphia Inquirer, that features excperts from Maureen Faulkner's new book, written with Michael Smerconish, titled "Murdered By Mumia." He writes that Faulkner "is entitled to her anger and her grief," but "we are all diminished when justice is so willingly cast aside in the wrongheaded name of vengeance, as has clearly happened in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. No amount of sympathy for Faulkner’s widow should be permitted to sway society or the courts from a commitment to justice, and there has been no justice in this case."
At the press-conference, Lindorff addressed the summary of evidence against Abu-Jamal, presented at the "Murdered By Mumia" website, that "Mumia Abu-Jamal was unanimously convicted of the crime by a racially mixed jury based on: the testimony of several eyewitnesses, his ownership of the murder weapon, matching ballistics, and Abu-Jamal's own confession."
--Award-winning investigative reporter Dave Lindorff has been working as a journalist for 34 years. A regular columnist for CounterPunch, he also writes frequently for Extra! and Salon magazine, as well as for Businessweek, The Nation and Treasury & Risk Magazine. In the late 1970s, he ran the Los Angeles Daily News bureau covering Los Angeles County government, and in the mid-'90s, spent several years as a correspondent in Hong Kong and China for Businessweek. Over the years he has written for such publications as Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Village Voice, Forbes, The London Observer and the Australian National Times.
LINN WASHINGTON JR.
Linn Washington Jr. has been covering the Daniel Faulkner / Mumia Abu-Jamal case for over 25 years. In this presentation, he presents why he thinks Abu-Jamal deserves a new trial, and more.
Linn Washington, Jr. is currently a columnist for the Philadelphia Tribune newspaper and a freelance journalist for publications nationwide. He writes extensively on matters involving the criminal justice system and racism. An Associate Professor in the Journalism Department at Temple University in Philadelphia, he holds a Master Degree from the Yale Law School and a B.S. in Communications from Temple University.
PAM AFRICA
Pam Africa is the head of The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ). Africa gave an update on the current media-activist campaign to "ensure fairness" for Abu-Jamal on the upcoming December 6 NBC Today Show, which is spotlighting the release of the book "Murdered By Mumia." Africa and ICFFMAJ are asking that the The Today Show fairly show both sides of the Abu-Jamal / Faulkner story, and give equal time to an expert sympathetic to Abu-Jamal's case for a new trial. On Friday, November 30, Africa had a scheduled telephone conference with NBC's Today Show, and did not make an official decision regarding ICFFMAJ's request, but said they would look at the information and contact Pam Africa this week.
--Journalists for Mumia Abu-Jamal (Abu-Jamal-News.com) was co-founded in May, 2007 by Philadelphia journalist Hans Bennett and German linguist Dr. Michael Schiffmann (University of Heidelberg), who is the author of the new German book about Abu-Jamal's case, "Race Against Death."
Special thanks to The A-Space for hosting the event!
