The engines of the "Free Mumia Abu-Jamel" movement continue to drone on.  The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamel by J. Patrick O'Connor is the latest installment of the movement's efforts to free the convicted murderer of Philadelphia police officer, Daniel Faulkner.  While proclaiming the innocence of Abu-Jamal, O'Connor damns him with feint pleas.

• O'Connor's theory of the crime is based primarily upon a passenger that nobody credibly saw in Clark's car, and who supposedly did the shooting. If there were a fourth person at the scene who shot Faulkner, as O'Connor contends, William Cook and Abu-Jamal could have taken a stand and so testified. They both refused to offer any account of what happened that early December morning. Cook refused to testify for his brother at the trial and at three post-conviction hearings. Instead he waited until 2001(roughly 20 years after the crime) to sign an affidavit where he lamely and conveniently blames the crime on a man who died in 1985. O'Connor actually finds this account convincing.
• The heart of O'Connor's case is the supposed vendetta of the police against Abu-Jamal because of his radical views and associations. O'Connor tells us that because of Jamal's chest wound that morning he was "blacking out from trauma and loss of blood." Later he tells us that Abu-Jamal's condition was "critical" and that the doctor said that "if he hadn't gotten treatment right away, he would have died." But if police were so intent on "getting" Abu-Jamal, to the point of orchestrating this massive, carefully coordinated conspiracy, then why take Abu-Jamal to the hospital at all? A little more delay in the police van and he would have died. Officer Faulkner would have been the agent of his own justice, and we would have avoided what has become a costly 27 year circus.
• O'Connor condemns the police for not immediately conducting a test of Abu-Jamal's hands to see if he had recently fired a gun. An honest account would have included the extensive testimony at trial as to why such a test could not be performed and be credible in this case. (It's in the transcripts.) Had the test been performed and had it shown that Abu-Jamal fired a gun, O'Connor no doubt would be complaining about the racist prosecutor's use of a test that could not have credible results.
• O'Connor dismisses the testimony of the hospital security officer who heard Abu-Jamal admit the shooting by quibbling over whether or not the document was the original. He does not credibly explain why she would lie and has never wavered in her testimony. Nor does he explain how the hospital administrator, to whom she reported Abu-Jamal's statement the next morning, could have been induced on such short notice to participate in this portion of the police "frame-up." O'Connor often tries to undermine the credibility of the police by referring to those police who subsequently were disciplined for unrelated wrongdoing. Here, O'Connor depends on an affidavit secured from an imprisoned, convicted felon more than 20 years later, who supposedly heard the security officer recant her testimony. For O'Connor, testimony of those with bad character can be convincing only when they support Abu-Jamal. As we attorneys say, "Res Ipsa Loquitur." ["the thing speaks for itself"]
• O'Connor dismisses ballistics evidence against Abu-Jamal. He does not disclose to his readers that the rounds taken from Faulkner's body had a base unique to the relatively rare, high-powered ammunition in Abu-Jamal's gun. He does not disclose that these bullets came from a gun barrel with the same lands, grooves, and right-hand twist of Abu-Jamal's gun. There were no other guns found at the scene.
• O'Connor refers to Abu-Jamal as "an articulate, compassionate righter of wrongs." But he does not mention the death threat to Judge Sabo made on the record by the "compassionate" Abu-Jamal at his sentencing hearing. I have no doubt that Abu-Jamal felt that he was "righting a wrong" when he shot Officer Faulkner.