Cabbie Robert Chobert, a key prosecution witness, pulled over at the southeast corner of the intersection to discharge a female passenger, who then walked west. He was sitting in his cab writing up the fare when he heard a gunshot.
Chobert said he didn't see Abu-Jamal shot. He also said he didn't see barrel flashes or gunshots. And--at least initially--he described the man who shot Faulkner as six feet tall and 225 pounds, much taller and heavier than Abu-Jamal.
"I looked up and I saw the cop, who was on the pavement next to his car. His car was parked a little in front of my car," he said in a statement to police that night. "I saw the cop fall to the ground and I saw this black male stand over the cop and shoot him a couple more times. I saw the black male start running [east] toward 12th Street. He didn't get far, maybe 30 or 35 steps and then he fell."
In court, however, Chobert said the shooter ran perhaps 10 feet before falling to the ground.
He did stick to the part of his story about identifying Abu-Jamal as the shooter while the defendant sat wounded in a police van the night of the shooting.
Chobert did not recall seeing another key witness, Cynthia White, on the corner, even though she would later claim to have been standing just a few feet away.
At the time of the shooting, Chobert was on probation on an arson-for-hire conviction for throwing a molotov cocktail at a school and had a history of drunk-driving arrests. Attorneys for Abu-Jamal charge that he (like Cynthia White and possibly Veronica Jones) was susceptible to pressure from the authorities in exchange for favorable testimony.
Mentions in the Defense Motion:
- To buttress Ms. White's false story...
- Even more significantly, Mr. Chobert told an arriving police captain...
- Mr. Chobert also acknowledged he only heard the shots...
- Mr. Chobert changed his account...
Scene of the CrimeChronologyDefense Motion