Written by Richard Kane   

It shocked civil rights supporters and progressives in general when Debo Adegbile was rejected by the Senate after wild stories about him supposedly at Mumia supporting events, such as the naming of a street for him in Paris flooded the internet. For progressive sites the disaster supposedly ended with Debo Adegibile being rejected by the Senate. However right-wing millionaires and the FOP has their political guns pointed at the Democratic senators who voted for him. Only Cory Booker of NJ is considered too entrenched to not try to defeat. In dire danger of being successfully smeared as a supporter of cop killers are Mark Begich (AK), Jeanne Sheehan (NH), Mary Landrieu (LA) and Key Hagan (NC.

There is something about Mumia abu-Jamal that is more upsetting to his opponents then racism. The fact that unlike other prisoners he doesn't have any public complaints about prison conditions and sometimes brutal guards and policies such as being put in the hole. He had however according to his lawyers been at times in the hole, not mentioned in his many phone delivered comments. Mumia haters not only claim but totally believe that Mumia doesn't complain because all his strong outside support makes the guards act cautiously toward him. Somehow no one in the past pointed out that AIM American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier has as much outside support and even a billionaire very determined in supporting Peltier. David Geffen stopped his heavy funding of Hilary after Bill Clinton didn't pardon Leonard Peltier in Clinton's last days in office. Peltier has lots of complaints even the first part of his book on how much he hates prison. Blames inmates trying to curry favor from the guards for beating him up, and complains when his life requiring medicine including stress pills are not delivered to him.

It is possible that Mumia is correct as in his 2001 affidavit (declaration),
http://www.partisandefense.org/pubs/innocent/maj.html
that he knew nothing beside that he saw his brother in trouble and running toward him saw an officer look back and aim a gun at him then felt a shot, learning everything else later. Not reported since before December 1981 his mother being pressured to stop her son from reporting on the police.

It is also possible that no one involved is interested in the whole truth. But advocates on either side will never come to such a conclusion. Non-directly interested parties staying out of the matter makes the exact details hard to find if one side doesn't have them all. This, as the anger at Mumia grows as years go by.

History books almost always (with the passing of enough time) decide that the accused didn't do it in any high profile, hotly debated cases such as the supposedly kidnapping and killing of Charles Lindbergh's baby. History and his other son now believes that since Charles Lindbergh was a Nazi (and didn't like having what he considered an inferior defective child) he smashed his handicapped baby in the head and reported a kidnapping to cover his tracks. A rare exception to the dissenters always being on to something is the Single Bullet Theory of the Kennedy Assassination which, with modern more sophisticated retests, makes more and more sense, though information on other leads in the direction of conspiracy have increased. Perhaps Mumia's arrest will turn out to be a rare exception where the dissenters will end up to be totally wrong. But such as a massively held conclusion would not excite but cool a little the desire for revenge against Mumia supporters.

Arnold Beverly claimed to have been responsible for the second up close shot to the face of Officer Daniel Faulkner, assassinating a cop, who was a whistle-blower to the Feds, hired by the mob. This excited Mumia immensely who fired his attorneys and shopped around for one to submit Beverly's testimony to the court which refused to hear it. At the time international support for Mumia from the USSR and Cuba was so heavy that international tension was rising. If Beverly was sent by the government to disenchant and discourage Soviet support, by referring to Mumia's memories it worked.

However since the Philadelphia police and politicians were facing an FBI investigation in 1979 and 1980 as Mumia carefully, skillfully documented police abuse of the then stubborn MOVE group was creating more evidence for the FBI to consider of police abuse. Move members back then refused to walk calmly to the police van, face the camera for mug shots etc., and every time an officer hit them they faced new charges of Assaulting an Officer as the system got more and more frustrated. In one case the Philadelphia Tribune had several articles reporting Move members being beaten up in court for no reason then everyone roughly thrown out of court. Mumia then reported a Move member insulting a guard who began swinging at the Move member. Other Move members began hollering and other details continued from there. His article concluded with bits of skin, dreadlocks and blood on a cold empty courtroom floor. Corrupt officers surrounded Mumia's arrest and Daniel Faulkner. Many ended up indicted and convicted or retired early. It would be far better for other articles to zero in on each corrupt officers who had a lot to lose from Mumia helping bring corruption and brutality into the national focus, than to dwell on the claim Mumia was innocent.

The fatal up-close bullet to Officer Faulker's face was reported to be too damaged to tell which gun it came from, more modern retests would discover differently. If like the JFK assassination it turned out to be Mumia's gun after all then the anti-Mumia crowed would feel relief instead of fuether crying out for vengeance. If there is no way for a detective to get permission to retest them, finding Daniel Faulkner's testimony to the FBI would help.

An article from 1979 that needs to be retrieved and not on the anti-or pro-Mumia blogsphere was in the Philadelphia Tribune or Philadelphia Bulletin of the police storming Mumia's mothers high-rise public housing apartment and in front of her neighbors crowding at the doorway, demanding she stop her son's reporting on the police. It would be hard for an officer like Daniel Faulkner who was trying to be honest not to make corrupt officer's suspicious of him. He might have thought that messing with Mumia and his brother would gain their respect. Since it looked like he might have shot Mumia with mortal wounds, cops defending possibly killing Mumia to Mumia's many admirers, then turn around and condemn Officer as a liar when the corruption trials began may have made the officers that often retired early with only few indicted, lend up getting more indicted instead. Fear of this would have made his life endangered.

Dreaming that ignoring a witch-hunt and possible cover-up will make it go away, won't work.