[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.
       

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