Before her death, Mumia’s sister, Lydia Barashango said that she and her family suspected Kenneth Freeman was the actual shooter of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner --An interview with Johanna Fernández

--Please sign our Color of Change petition to Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: Stop Defending Mumia Abu-Jamal's Unjust Conviction

(This is one segment of the original artwork created by Seth Tobocman to support our petition campaign. It is the centerpiece of our newspaper and can be viewed on the website here.)

The Jamal Journal interviews Johanna Fernández, co-director of the 2009 film Justice onTrial and the founder of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home

Jamal Journal:  How did you become interested in Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case and ultimately decide to co-direct your 2009 film Justice on Trial?

Johanna Fernández:  Although I was not a filmmaker, a moment in the classroom inspired the project. In 2005, I’d started visiting Mumia on death row at SCI Greene in Western, PA’s the Supermax prison, an hour away from Pittsburgh. I was teaching at Carnegie Mellon University, and I started visiting him on the suggestion of Professor Emeritus David Demarest.

In 2009, my work on the film Justice on Trial, accelerated. It was at Carnegie Mellon in 2009 that Mumia first spoke live from Death Row to my civil rights movement seminar. Waiting for the call was a nail-biting experience. And this was Mumia’s second attempt to call into a college classroom, ever. A few weeks earlier, the first scheduled conversation coincided with an unannounced shutdown of the prison’s telephone system. But this time the call came through.

The students’ exchange with Mumia was chilling. And his answer to the final question one of them posed hit us all in the gut. The students asked Mumia to reflect on the significance of his political impact from death row, in light of the travesty of his case. Mumia responded by saying  “I don’t believe in Martyrdom.” This statement still lingers with me today and it strongly influenced the movie we went on to make. 

From The Archives: The Pedro Polakoff Crime Scene Photos: 20 FAQs --written in 2007 by Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Journalists for Mumia

--Please sign our Color of Change petition to Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: Stop Defending Mumia Abu-Jamal's Unjust Conviction

The first 3 photos displayed below are taken from the Dec. 8, 2007 slide show by Journalists for Mumia, shown in the embedded video above.

The original photos being displayed by the slide show are taken by Pedro Polakoff, who retains the copyright for the original photos. However, permission is granted to reprint these 3 photos taken at the 2007 slide show, as long as they are not cropped and www.Abu-Jamal-News.com is credited as the source--so, please help spread the word.

(PHOTO:  Officer James Forbes holds both Abu-Jamal's and Faulkner's guns in his bare hand and touches the metal parts. This contradicts his later court testimony that he had preserved the ballistics evidence.)

(PHOTO: The parking spot immediately past Officer Faulkner's car is empty, all the way to the end of the curb. This empty space is where prosecution witness Robert Chobert testified that he was parked.)

(PHOTO:  As also shown in the first photo, of Officer Forbes holding two guns, Billy Cook's hat is on the roof of his car, not on the sidewalk, where it would later appear for the official police photo, as shown directly below)

(PHOTO:  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." This observation is supported by the new photos, the official police photo shown above and by a recent ballistics test by investigative journalists Linn Washington Jr. and Dave Lindorff in the embedded video directly below.)

The Newly Discovered Polakoff Crime Scene Photos: 20 FAQs

--Co-written by Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Journalists for Mumia Abu-Jamal (2007)

Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on Pennsylvania's death row for over a quarter of a century. His 1982 conviction for the shooting death of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, has been contested by jurists, human rights organizations, and peoples of conscience the world over. 

Even though he is arguably the most famous political prisoner in the United States, his case and struggle for justice distill many of the issues that racially stigmatized groups and others have faced in the United States for decades: police brutality and violence, racist applications of the death penalty, prosecutorial misconduct, suborning of witnesses, and the use of wealth and political privilege in criminal justice systems to service the ideological interests of groups and classes in power.

Within the last year, some 26 photos have been discovered by researcher Dr. Michael Schiffmann of the University of Heidelberg , showing the crime scene where Officer Faulkner was killed. 

These photos were offered to police and prosecutors from the beginning, but were never considered at Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial, or in any judicial phase of his struggle for justice thereafter. Indeed, they were unknown even to Abu-Jamal's defense team, until very recently. 

To widen public knowledge about these photos and to answer many of the basic questions about them, Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Journalists for Mumia Abu-Jamal have collaborated to produce this document of "21 FAQs about the Polakoff Photos." 

From The Archives: In 2009, Author J. Patrick O'Connor Wrote That Not Even The US Supreme Court Was Immune To "The Mumia Exception"

--Please sign our Color of Change petition to Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: Stop Defending Mumia Abu-Jamal's Unjust Conviction

(Note from Jamal Journal: On April 6, 2009 the US Supreme Court denied Mumia’s request for a Writ of Certiorari, thereby affirming an unjust 2008 ruling by the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals. This lengthy May 1, 2009 article was written in response to the US Supreme Court decision by J. Patrick O'Connor, author of "The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal." In this article, O'Connor contextualized the Supreme Court denial with an explanation of why O'Connor believes Mumia is innocent and that the actual shooter was Kenneth Freeman. 

(This article was first published at Crime Magazine as "The Mumia Exception.")

Since his conviction in 1982 for the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, through his numerous books, essays and radio commentaries, has become the face of the anti-death penalty movement in the United States and an international cause célèbre. Paris, for example, made him an honorary citizen in 2003, bestowing the honor for the first time since Pablo Picasso received it in 1971. The “Free Mumia” slogan is seen and heard around the world. Over the last 27 years he has become the most visible of the invisible 3,600 Death Row inmates in the United States.

The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal cries out for justice not because he is famous but because he is innocent. Kenneth Freeman, the street-vendor partner of Abu-Jamal’s younger brother, Billy Cook, killed Officer Faulkner moments after Faulkner shot Abu-Jamal in the chest as he approached the scene where Faulkner had pulled over the car Cook was driving. When Faulkner began beating Cook with an 18-inch long flashlight, Abu-Jamal ran from his nearby taxi to come to his brother’s aid. After Abu-Jamal was shot and collapsed to the street, Freeman emerged from Cook’s car, wrestled Faulkner to the sidewalk and then shot him to death. Freeman fled the scene on foot. Numerous witnesses told police they saw one or more black men fleeing right after the officer was shot. A driver’s license application found in Faulkner’s shirt pocket led the police directly to Freeman’s home within hours of the shooting.

But the police did not want Freeman for this killing, releasing him without him even having to call his attorney. The police, led by the corrupt Inspector Alfonzo Giordano who took charge of the crime scene within minutes of the shooting, wanted to pin Faulkner’s death on the blacked-out, police-bashing radio reporter at the scene. Freeman they would deal with later, meting out their own brand of street justice in the dead of night.