Mumia

"Journalists for Mumia" Newspaper just released, Abu-Jamal-News.com, 24 avril 2007 via-1 ZMag



Michael: In my book, I picked five of the 26 photos to show the following three points:

• The cops manipulated evidence and supplied the trial court with stuff that was simply stage-managed. On Polakoff’s photos, P.O. Faulkner’s police hat at first is clearly on the roof of Billy Cook’s VW, and only later on the sidewalk in front of 1234 Locust where it was photographed by the police photographer who arrived 10 minutes after Polakoff! So much for “reading items into evidence,” as it is called at criminal trials.
• There is Police Officer James Forbes who at the trial claimed he had “secured” the weapons of both Faulkner and Mumia without touching them on their metal parts in order to not destroy potential fingerprints. Even on the single photo reprinted in the book you can see that Forbes is touching the weapons on their metal parts, and quite a few of Polakoff’s other photos make it clear that Forbes touched and smudged these weapons all over, destroying any potential fingerprint evidence that may have been on them.
• The second-most important prosecution witness, cab driver Robert Chobert, simply was not parked in the spot (allegedly right behind Officer Faulkner’s police squad car) where he claimed to have been and from where he claimed to have observed Mumia fire the shot that killed the officer. I show that within the maybe ten minutes that it took Polakoff to get to the crime scene after he heard of the event via police radio, it was all but impossible for Chobert to park his cab elsewhere.

Freiheit für Mumia Abu-Jamal!, Michael Schiffmann interviewé par Hans Bennett, 1er décembre 2006