[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 94 (Friday, June 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8080-S8082]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MISPLACED SYMPATHIES
Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, last year, I spoke out against National
Public Radio's stunningly misguided proposal to hire convicted cop-
killer Mumia Abu-Jamal to provide a series of ``Death-Row
Commentaries.'' Fortunately, NPR had the good sense to cancel its
contract with Mr. Abu-Jamal, who was convicted 13 years ago of
murdering Daniel Faulkner, a 25-year-old member of the Philadelphia
police force. Mr. Abu-Jamal remains on death row to this very day.
Despite a 4-week trial and despite a case that Assistant District
Attorney Arnold Gordon describes as ``one of the strongest I have seen
in 24 years as a prosecutor,'' there are still those who believe that
Mr. Abu-Jamal is the victim of a political witchhunt. Some even go so
far as to consider him a political prisoner. A bevy of left-leaning
Hollywood celebrities have apparently rallied to Mr. Abu-Jamal's
defense, raising money for a legal defense fund and helping to promote
Mr. Abu-Jamal's new book, ``Live From Death Row.'' According to news
accounts, the Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. has paid an advance of
nearly $30,000 for Mr. Abu-Jamal's latest creative venture.
Of course, most Americans are right to wonder why a person convicted
and sentenced to death for viciously murdering a police officer more
than 13 years ago is still sitting on death row. This only serves to
underscore the wide gap between crime and punishment in America.
Americans are also fed up with the tiresome criminal-as-a-victim-of-
society philosophy, apparently embraced by Mr. Abu-Jamal's most ardent
supporters. As Richard Costello, the president of the Philadelphia
Fraternal Order of Police, recently explained:
This pseudo-political garb Jamal has tried to wrap himself
in is just a sleazy attempt to save his own hide. . . . This
is not a political case; this is the case of the cold-blooded
killing of a police officer doing his job. . . . It is well
past time for the jury's sentence to be fulfilled.
Keep in mind it has been 13 years. The victim has been long
forgotten, and the victim's family, but this man is still around.
Just last Friday, Pennsylvania's Governor Tom Ridge took a big step
to [[Page S8081]] ensure that the Jury's sentence is fulfilled by
signing Mr. Abu-Jamal's death warrant. Governor Ridge could have taken
the easy way out by avoiding this politically contentious issue, but
instead he has stood his ground and confronted it head-on. He deserved
our praise.
I also want to commend Governor Ridge for his efforts over the years
to enact meaningful habeas corpus reform. On Wednesday, the Senate
passed a series of reform proposals that, if enacted into law, will go
a long way to end the endless appeals and delays that have done so much
to weaken public confidence in our system of criminal justice. Although
Governor Ridge is no longer in the House of Representatives, having
gone on to bigger and better things as Governor of the Keystone State,
his hard work in Congress on behalf of habeas reform may finally be
paying off.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an article that recently
appeared in The Washington Post be reprinted in the Record immediately
after my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. DOLE. The article is all about his book, ``Live From Death Row.''
I also say that people wonder why some of us are frustrated with
National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, when
they use taxpayer's funds. If it had not been for Members of Congress--
in this case, probably taxpayers out there, citizens calling it to our
attention--you would have been hearing this cop killer on National
Public Radio with commentaries, and they were going to pay him, I
think, $120 per commentary.
So when we talk about a waste of taxpayers' money and about National
Public Radio--which could be an arm of the Democratic party as far as I
am concerned--and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I hope the
American people understand the kind of things they are willing to put
on the air. This happened to be one of them that was stopped because of
a firestorm that developed. But it seems to me that it is another
indication that we can probably use that taxpayer money in some more
useful way.
Exhibit 1
[From the Washington Post, May 18, 1995]
Condemned To Silence?
(By Megan Resenfeld)
There is an image from Mumia Abu-Jamal's trial that stays
with Maureen Faulkner, even now, 13 years later, Abu-Jamal
was charged with killing Faulkner's husband, Daniel, a 25-
year-old Philadelphia policemen, by shooting him first in the
back and then pumping four bullets into his prone body. When
the ballistics expert held up her husband's bloody blue shirt
to display the bullet holes, Abu-Jamal, seated at the defense
table, turned around and looked at Maureen Faulkner.
``He smiled at me,'' she says.
Abu-Jamal, then a freelance radio journalist and part-time
cab driver, was convicted of Daniel Faulkner's murder and
sentenced to death. But today he has become a cause celebre
among a segment of literary names, his case taken up by well-
known civil liberties lawyer Leonard Weinglass, the NAACP
Legal Defense Fund, Rep. Ron Dellums (D-Calif.) and actors
Whoopi Goldberg, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and Ed Asner, among
others. They claim Abu-Jamal was wrongly convicted and
sentenced, despite what the prosecution, and a jury, believed
was convincing testimony from eyewitnesses and unrefuted
ballistics evidence. Two other groups, Amnesty International
and PEN, a writers' free-speech advocacy association, take no
position on Abu-Jamal's guilt or innocence, but question the
fairness of his trial and sentencing.
But what really has Faulkner upset is that Abu-Jamal has
just published a book, ``Live From Death Row,'' for which an
advance of about $30,000 was paid--although it is unclear to
whom. Nether Weinglass not the publisher, Addision-Wesley
would confirm the amount or say who got the money. A first
printing of 32,500 copies has been shipped to bookstores
around the country.
``A rare and courageous voice speaking from a place we fear
to know: Mumia Abu-Jamal must be heard,'' writes prize-
winning author Alice Walker in a book jacket blurb.
And: ``Everyone interested in justice should read the words
of this innocent man,'' declares lawyer William Kunstler.
``Does an innocent person turn and smile at the widow when
the bloody shirt is held up?'' Faulkner asks.
As far as Maureen Faulkner is concerned, the celebrities
and human rights activists are remnants of the radical chic
who have lined up like leftist lemmings and signed on to a
bad deal. The claims that Abu-Jamal has a freedom-of-speech
right to be heard, as expressed by his publisher and his
supporters, strike her as lame. ``He is a convicted
murderer,'' she says. ``Just as felons lose their right to
vote, I think that by taking another man's life, he forfeits
the right to freedom of speech.''
A Delicate Balance
It's an argument as old as crime. How, in a nation ruled by
law, are the rights of the accused and the convicted
protected without abusing the survivors and victims? Like a
tipsy boat trying to right itself, we shift from one side to
the other, focusing first on the perpetrators and then on the
perpetrated upon. And when the death penalty is involved, the
emotion of the argument is even more intense, and the cries
of injustice from both sides increase in pitch. The battles
are as often fought in the arena of public opinion as in the
courtroom, and this is where Faulkner has taken up her battle
station.
Abu-Jamal, now 41, will file his next appeal in June, said
Weinglass. He has already been rebuffed twice by both the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. His
death warrant has not been signed, but the new governor of
Pennsylvania, Thomas J. Ridge, campaigned as a pro-death-
penalty Republican.
Abu-Jamal's profile has never been higher. He has become a
virtual folk hero. Even as the book reviews start coming in,
benefits for his defense fund--at least three committees are
raising money for him in different cities--are planned for
this weekend in New York City. John Edgar Wideman, who wrote
an introduction to the book; Melvin Van Peebles; two members
of the MOVE group in Philadelphia with which Abu-Jamal was
associated; Weinglass and others are giving a public reading
from the book Saturday afternoon for $15 a ticket. Another
reading, by actor Giancarlo Esposito, will be held that night
for $250 a ticket. Spokesmen at two of Abu-Jamal's legal
defense committees yesterday declined to say how much money
has been raised. There have been rallies of support here and
overseas. A typical pamphlet, published by the liberal-
leaning Quixote Center in Hyattsville, is headlined: ``A Saga
of Shame.''
So Faulkner has decided to raise her profile too. This week
she was in Washington for the annual National Police Week,
lobbying cops and their families to boycott the book. She is
starting a nonprofit organization, with some help from
Philadelphia's Fraternal Order of Police, to counter the
attention give to Abu-Jamal's case. She is spending her
weekends and Wednesdays writing to schools and school boards,
urging them to boycott Addison-Wesley's large text-book
operation.
And she's gone even further. Last week she hired a plane to
fly over Addison-Wesley headquarters in Reading, Mass.,
trailing a 30-foot banner. It said: ``Addison-Wesley Supports
Convicted Cop Killer.''
``I and all of us at Addison-Wesley feel great sympathy for
Mrs. Faulkner and the terrible ordeal she suffered,'' said
David Goehring, head of the firm's trade publishing division.
``But this is a book with an important message. I think this
is a highly disturbing book, challenging our assumptions of
the death penalty. Is that a reason to deny someone his
freedom of speech?''
`life goes on'
Maureen Faulkner is a small, blond, determined woman who
has done as well as she could to cope with her young
husband's murder. She was only 25 when he died, before they'd
had a chance to finish their college degrees, buy a house,
have children.
Both were the youngest of large families, born and raised
in Philadelphia. She was aware of the dangers of her
husband's career. They had a pact always to kiss good night,
and kiss goodbuy, regardless of marital ups and downs,
because life was so uncertain. And they had discussed the
possibility of his death.
``He said, `If anything happens to me, I died doing the
work I love most. Life goes on. I want you to be happy,'''
she says. And Faulkner has had a full life--no professional
widowhood for her.
After the four-week trial, she left her job as an
accountant for a Philadelphia corporation and worked for
Trans World Airlines in New York, selling tickets. She
backpacked around the world, trekked in Nepal, climbed the
foothills of Everest. After she moved to Southern California
about 10 years ago, she owned and operated a deli with one of
her brothers. She earned a private pilot's license and
started to raise show dogs--Hungarian Viszlas. For the past
seven years she has worked as a medical assistant for an
office of obstetricians. Although she has not remarried, she
lives with a boyfriend.
She still is afraid to give out information about where she
lives or works, because all during the trial she got nasty
phone calls, which she attributes to supporters of Abu-Jamal.
She changed her unlisted number more than a dozen times, but
somehow they always got it.
Her anger, long dormant, was rekindled last year when she
heard that Abu-Jamal had been hired by National Public Radio
to do a series of commentaries from prison for $150 each. She
protested, and then got a list of NPR's contributors and
wrote to hundreds of them. In the ensuing storm of argument,
NPR canceled the contract. The canceled commentaries form the
bulk of ``Live From Death Row.''
Then, in March, her uncle sent her a clipping about the
book. ``I couldn't sleep all night,'' she says. ``I screamed,
I cried, I [[Page S8082]] didn't know what to do.'' At 5 a.m.
California time, she called Addison-Wesley in Massachusetts,
and thus began her ongoing battle with the publisher--and
with David Goehring personally.
``I think it is immoral to reward a convicted cop killer
financially,'' she says. Even after 13 years away, her
Philadelphia accent is strong. ``And I think David Goehring
is going to look at himself in the mirror one day and realize
he made a mistake.''
But the two are arguing from such differing perspectives
that they will probably never agree. Faulkner operates from
an unshakable belief in Abu-Jamal's guilt, while Goehring
says the question of guilt or innocence is not relevant to
what he sees as the power of Abu-Jamal's description of what
it's like to be on death row. He does not see the book as
part of Abu-Jamal's quest for vindication, or as part of a
campaign against the death penalty. ``We are making his voice
available,'' he said. ``Our role is not to take sides.''
Indeed, he said, the company has published a book arguing for
victims' rights, ``With Justice for Some,'' by law professor
George Fletcher. Goehring declined to say how many copies
were printed.
But for Faulkner, guilt is everything. Freedom of speech?
Does every prisoner have the right to a book contract? ``What
does eloquence have to do with a convicted murderer?'' she
asks.
eager for justice
Daniel Faulkner was killed early one cold December morning,
two weeks before Christmas, in 1981. His widow believes the
evidence of Abu-Jamal's guilt can be pinned to two things:
Five bullets were emptied into her husband, and five bullets
of the same type were missing from Abu-Jamal's gun. They were
high-velocity, +P-type bullets that fragmented so completely
police could not match them to Abu-Jamal's gun, which was
found on the sidewalk, next to Abu-Jamal. He too was wounded,
shot in the stomach by Faulkner. Abu-Jamal had a license for
the gun, and a store owner testified to selling him the
bullets. Two people testified that he shouted in the
emergency room, ``I shot the [expletive].''
``From an evidentiary standpoint, the case against Mumia
Abu-Jamal was . . . one of the strongest I have seen in 24
years as a prosecutor,'' wrote Assistant District Attorney
Arnold H. Gordon to NPR chief Delano E. Lewis a year ago.
``Abu-Jamal was identified . . . by three eyewitnesses who
had never lost sight of him during the entire incident,'' he
wrote.
But Weinglass, in his afterword to ``Live From Death Row,''
claims there were witnesses who saw another man fleeing the
scene, and that Abu-Jamal was denied the right to represent
himself and given an unprepared court-assigned lawyer. His
sentencing was tainted by prosecutorial misuse of information
about Abu-Jamal's teenage involvement with the Black Panthers
as well, Weinglass asserts.
Faulkner hopes her campaign will tap into public
frustration with the criminal justice system. Daniel
Faulkner, she says, would have fought just as hard in her
memory. She supports the death penalty, and is eager for Abu-
Jamal's death sentence to be imposed.
``I'd like to be there,'' she says.
____________________