13. Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was shot at approximately 3:52 a.m. on December 9, 1981, in downtown Philadelphia on Locust Street near the intersection with 13th Street. He died approximately one hour later at Jefferson University Hospital as a result of the gunshot wound. (6/25/82, Tr. 43) Mr. Jamal was also found at the scene. He had been critically wounded by a gunshot and was sitting in a pool of blood on the curb approximately four feet from where Officer Faulkner had fallen. (6/2/82, Tr. 3.5; 6/19/82, Tr. 117) Mr. Jamal was arrested and also taken to Jefferson University Hospital for extensive surgery. (6/28/82, Tr. 74) The prosecution claimed Mr. Jamal shot Officer Faulkner in the back and then stood over him and shot him in the face.

14. At the time, Mr. Jamal was a well-known award-winning journalist and activist in the Philadelphia area. Thirteen years earlier, at 15 years of age, Mr. Jamal had been one of the founding members of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Black Panther Party; and by late 1969 he had become its communications secretary. In the mid-1970's, Mr. Jamal turned to the profession of journalism, and became known throughout Pennsylvania for his journalistic activities, including news broadcasts on National Public Radio, the Mutual Black Network, the National Black Network, and his own talk show on WUHY-FM. In late 1980, at age 26, Mr. Jamal was elected chair of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Association of Black Journalists. The January 1981 issue of Philadelphia Magazine named Mr. Jamal "one of the people to watch in 1981." (Exh. 27) Mr. Jamal remains an accomplished and controversial author. His writings have appeared in a number of prestigious publications, including the Yale Law Journal. In May 1995 his book, Live From Death Row, was published by the Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

15. Because of his legal and constitutionally protected affiliation with the Black Panther Party and his activities as a journalist and activist critical of Mayor Rizzo and the police on issues of race, police brutality and other social issues, Mr. Jamal became a well-known object of police bias and animus. Since his youth, Philadelphia police maintained continuing surveillance of Mr. Jamal as a vocal black activist. (Cooperstein Aff., Exh. 12) Despite their constant scrutiny, police found no basis for linking Mr. Jamal to any criminal activities during those years.

16. At trial, the Commonwealth case had three elements: (i) three eyewitnesses who claimed to identify Mr. Jamal as Officer Faulkner's shooter, (ii) a purported "confession," and (iii) the presence of Mr. Jamal's gun at the scene, allegedly the murder weapon.

17. Examination of the trial record, newly discovered evidence, and new expert analysis of the physical evidence shows that in each of its elements the Commonwealth case was false, having been twisted to falsely implicate Mr. Jamal.

18. Due to Commonwealth misconduct and the court's rulings, the true facts of the case -- that Mr. Jamal was shot by Officer Faulkner as Mr. Jamal approached the scene, and that a third black male then shot Officer Faulkner and fled the scene -- were suppressed and not established at trial

19. The Identification: The initial event from which the shooting unfolded was not in dispute. Officer Faulkner pulled a Volkswagen over for a traffic stop (6/25/82, Tr. 8.83). Although the number of people in the Volkswagen was unclear, one occupant was Billy Cook, Mr. Jamal's brother. One of the Volkswagen's occupants got out of the car, and a struggle with the officer began. Mr. Jamal approached the scene from a parking lot north of Locust Street.

20. The prosecution's witnesses viewed the events at about 4:00 am through the flashing red lights of Officer Faulkner's police car. There were no lights on that side of the street. The prosecution's only black witness was Cynthia White, whom the other witnesses said was not even there. The white witnesses saw two or three black males and were required to make cross-racial identifications under difficult viewing circumstances. Despite all this, the court refused Mr. Jamal's requests for a line-up identification. (D-3; 1/5/82)

21. The only witness who claimed Mr. Jamal had a gun in his hand was the prostitute Cynthia White (6/22/82, Tr. 5.102, 5.515). Ms. White's testimony was false. She had not even witnessed the events at issue and gave her testimony in return for undisclosed police favors.

22. Ms. White claimed she was on the southeast corner of 13th and Locust. No other witnesses saw her there. Dessie Hightower, a defense witness, observed Ms. White a half block west of 13th Street at that time (Exh. 21).

23. At the time of trial Ms. White was serving a sentence of 18 months for prostitution in Massachusetts. (6/21/82 Tr. 4.79; 4.85) She had 38 previous arrests for prostitution in Philadelphia, and, as readily acknowledged by the prosecution, had three open cases awaiting trial in Philadelphia when she took the stand. (6/21/82; Tr. 4.80-81)

24. Although the prosecution maintained that Ms. White had not been offered a deal for her testimony, the evidence showed otherwise. The Commonwealth did not disclose that Ms. White had been assigned police "protection" and continued to work the streets as a prostitute with plainclothes police guarding her. (Greer Aff. p 4.B, Exh.2) Ms. White was arrested at least twice in the weeks after the shooting. (6/21/82, Tr. 4.176) Each time she revised her story. Without explanation, bench warrants against her were not prosecuted. Police told another prostitute, Veronica Jones, that Ms. Jones would be allowed to work the street with impunity like Ms. White if Ms. Jones would testify against Mr. Jamal (6/29/82, Tr. 135-36). The court excluded this testimony.

25. To buttress Ms. White's false story the Commonwealth called Robert Chobert, a cabdriver in his early twenties. Confirming that Mr. Jamal was shot first, Mr. Chobert admitted he did not see Officer Faulkner shoot Mr. Jamal at any time and simply couldn't account for Mr. Jamal being shot (6/19/82, Tr. 267-69). On the night of the shooting, he had told police the shooter was a totally different individual than Mr. Jamal: a large, heavy man, about 6 feet and weighing 200 to 225 pounds, standing over Officer Faulkner and appearing to be shooting down at him. (6/19/82, Tr. 234-35) On the stand Mr. Chobert admitted Mr. Jamal, who at the time weighed only 170 pounds, did not look like someone who weighed 225 pounds and was not "heavy." (6/19/82, Tr. 235)

26. Even more significantly, Mr. Chobert told an arriving police captain that the shooter "ran away." (6/1/82, Tr. 23, 78) Less than an hour later Mr. Chobert repeated that assertion at police headquarters when he told investigators that the person who shot Officer Faulkner ran 30 steps away in the same direction that Hightower reported and on the same side of the street. (6/19/82, Tr. 236: Exh. 15) On the stand, however, Mr. Chobert retracted his initial statement and amended his estimate to just 10 feet, saying he must have been "mistaken" on the night of the occurrence. (6/19/82, Tr. 237)

27. Mr. Chobert also acknowledged he only heard the shots but never saw a gun or any flashes from a gun barrel. (6/19/82, Tr. 261, 229, 230) Yet Mr. Chobert now insisted Mr. Jamal was the shooter.

28. Mr. Chobert changed his account and his identification to implicate Mr. Jamal. He was clearly susceptible to police pressure because he was on probation for a felony arson conviction because he had agreed to throw a Molotov cocktail at a school for pay. (6/19/82, Tr. 221-22) The trial court determined this evidence of Mr. Chobert's motive to lie could not be presented to the jury. (6/19/82, Tr. 223) Mr. Chobert's two convictions for driving while intoxicated were excluded as well despite his earning his livelihood driving a cab. (6/19/82, Tr. 226)

29. A third prosecution witness, Mark Scanlan, misidentified Mr. Jamal at the scene as the driver of the Volkswagen. (6/25/82, Tr. 8.46, 8.12) Clearly Mr. Scanlan could not tell which of the black males was which, or who shot the officer. (6/25/82, Tr. 8.8, 8.12) Scanlan also contradicted the prosecution theory that Office Falukner fell to the ground as the result of the first shot, testifying that Officer Faulkner didn't fall directly down as the result of the first shot. (6/25/82, Tr. 8.33)

30. Scanlan, who had been drinking, admitted there was "confusion" about what he saw, that his testimony was based on his assumptions about what must have happened, and that he "could have been mistaken" about where the events happened. (Id. 8.33, 37, 65,68)

31. The "Confession": The prosecution claimed Mr. Jamal confessed as he lay with his arms handcuffed behind him on the emergency room waiting room floor just after he arrived. Yet Doctor Regina Cudemo was present and did not hear the claimed confession. Instead, she saw an officer apparently kick Mr. Jamal and heard Mr. Jamal moan. (6/29/82, Tr. 24) Doctor Anthony V. Coletta, treated Mr. Jamal within five to ten minutes of his arrival. (6/24/82, Tr. 66, 73, 167; Tr. Exh. D-14) He found Mr. Jamal to be "weak...on the verge of fainting...if you tried to stand him up he would not have been able to stand." (6/28/82, Tr. 28.76)

32. Although Doctor Cudemo did not hear Mr. Jamal say anything, and Doctor Coletta found Mr. Jamal to be barely conscious, two Commonwealth witnesses claimed over two months afterwards that Mr. Jamal was struggling violently and shouted out a confession. These two witnesses were Officer Gary Bell, Officer Faulkner's partner and "best friend," and a hospital security guard, Priscilla Durham, who first denied knowing Officer Faulkner, then admitted talking to him on a number of occasions, sometimes over coffee. (6/24/82, Tr. 44, 38, 156) Ms. Durham acknowledged crying when informed he had died. (6/1/82, Tr. 115)

33. Although Officer Bell made a log report that night and volunteered a statement to homicide detectives the following week (Exh.24), and Ms. Durham had continuous contact with police, neither one reported hearing the supposed "confession" until months later when they were interviewed by detectives from Internal Affairs who were investigating a complaint initiated by Mr. Jamal for having been abused by the police in the hospital. Bell's interview occurred on February 25, 1982, and Priscilla Durham's sometime in March, 1982. (6/24/82, Tr. 140. 169,45)

34. All the witnesses agreed that Mr. Jamal was too feeble and weak to walk into the hospital on his own power. Officers were with him without interruption from the moment he entered the hospital. One of those officers, Gary Wakshul, stayed with Mr. Jamal from the time he was driven from Locust Street until the doctors started treating him in the hospital. Wakshul wrote a police report immediately after the episode which he described being with Mr. Jamal throughout this period, noting "[d]uring this time the Negro male made no statements." (7/1/82, Tr. 51) The jury, however, never heard from Wakshul because the police made him unavailable by sending him "on vacation."

35. The Gun and Physical Evidence: The gun was not shown to have fired the fatal shot. (6/23/82, Tr. 108) In fact, the prosecution either did nor perform or did not report sufficient test results to show whether the gun was recently shot or fired the fatal bullet.

36. The Commonwealth's ballistics expert performed tests of the bullet removed from the officer, but these tests were inconclusive as to identification. (6/23/82, Tr. 108) The Commonwealth apparently did not perform certain tests which could have excluded Mr. Jamal's gun. (Fassnacht Aff. p 4.B, Exh. 3)

37. Ballistician George Fassnacht, whom the defense has now retained, has reviewed the police reports and in his opinion the reported police ballistics tests were incomplete, and Mr. Fassnacht would have tried to perform additional tests which might have excluded Mr. Jamal's gun as a possible murder weapon. (Id.) Further, Mr. Fassnacht concludes that based on the existing evidence regarding Officer Faulkner's jacket, he would have expected nitrate residue to be found if Mr. Jamal's gun fired the bullet which hit Officer Faulkner in the back. (Id. p 4.A) There was none.

38. Although Mr. Jamal was taken into custody immediately after the shooting, no test was employed to determine if he had recently fired a weapon - a test ordinarily done in such a case. (Id. p 4.D) According to expert Fassnacht, the test for determining if a weapon has been recently fired is a simple one: simply smell the barrel for the unquestionable odor of gunpowder. (Id. p 4.C) Surprisingly, the police, upon recovering Mr. Jamal's gun moments after the shooting, failed to apply this test - or if they did, covered up the result (See Exh.23).

39. Furthermore, the Medical Examiner judged the fatal bullet to be a .44 caliber (Exh. 26). Mr. Jamal's gun was a .38 caliber pistol.

40. The prosecution argued that Mr. Jamal was shot while allegedly standing over a falling Officer Faulkner. That claim is medically impossible because of the downward trajectory of Mr. Jamal's bullet wound. (Hayes Aff. p 4, Exh. 4) Since trial, Mr. Jamal's counsel has retained the services of an expert pathologist, John A. Hayes, Jr., M.D. Dr. Hayes, a highly qualified medical examiner, had reviewed the medical evidence. In Dr. Hayes's opinion, the prosecution's theory of how Mr. Jamal was shot was medically impossible. (Id.)

41. The prosecution attempted to hide this fact by relying on Dr. Colletta's theory that the bullet could have pursued a downward path as the result of a "ricochet" or "tumble." Dr. Colleta's opinion bespeaks his acknowledged lack of expertise. Dr. Hayes unqualifiedly dismisses such a theory as unfounded based on the medical evidence. (Id.)

42. Moreover, Dr. Hayes contradicts the Medical Examiner's finding that the gunshot wound to Officer Faulkner's back was a contributing cause of death. (Id. p 6)

43. A defense attack on the medical evidence and the competence of the autopsy would have been buttressed by the fact that the Assistant Medical Examiner failed to detect a second wound in Officer Faulkner's throat during the autopsy. (6/25/82, Tr. 170-74) Then, when this wound was discovered, it was not disclosed to the defense. Nor were the autopsy slides which reflected the second wound. (Id.)

44. Mr. Jamal, an indigent defendant, lacked the resources necessary to test the evidence and challenge the prosecution's expert testimony. The court denied Mr. Jamal's requests for necessary funds to retain and pay experts. (Jackson Aff. p 4, Exh. 1; 4/29/82, Tr. 10-11; 5/13/82, Tr. 16-18) With expert assistance, Mr. Jamal would have been able to show that the evidence disproved the prosecution's theories, and that the prosecution experts had tailored the scientific tests to preclude the possibility of Mr. Jamal's innocence.

45. The Shooter Flees: No less than four witnesses to the shooting, situated in four different locations on Locust, including a key prosecution witness, reported seeing a person, identified as the gunman who shot Officer Faulkner by one of them, flee before the police arrived. All said he ran east on Locust on the south side of the street in the direction of Camac Street, an alleyway which intersects the street and provides a ready escape route.

46. Dessie Hightower, called by the defense, testified that less than 13-15 seconds after the shooting stopped he saw a person who looked Jamaican (because he wore dreadlocks) running east down the south side of Locust past a residential hotel on the corner of where Camac joins Locust. (6/28/82, Tr. 126-127, 149-50, 152) Police demanded that Hightower take a polygraph test on the issue of his seeing the shooter flee. Hightower swears he took the test and passed. (Hightower Aff., Exh. 5) The defense was never apprised of that fact.

47. As described above, witness Robert Chobert initially reported that the shooter ran away, or ran thirty steps (about the distance to Camac Street), but recanted this story under police pressure. (6/1/82, Tr. 23, 78; 6/19/82, Tr. 235-37; Exh. 15)

48. Veronica Jones, called by the defense, also told homicide investigators during her initial interview that one or more people ran from the scene ("sort of jogging"). (Exh. 22) After the gunfire stopped she recalled seeing substantially what Mr. Chobert and Hightower had reported: someone running in an easterly direction on the south side of Locust. However, after being arrested, questioned for five hours, and offered a deal, Ms. Jones denied on the stand ever telling the interviewing detectives anything about anyone fleeing the scene. (6/29/82, Tr. 99, 106) This was after police told her she could work the street with impunity like Cynthia White if she implicated Mr. Jamal. (6/29/82, Tr. 135-36, 129) The trial court excluded this testimony. (6/30/82, Tr. 4)

49. Debbie Kordansky, a resident of the St. James Hotel which overlooked the scene of the shooting, reported hearing gunshots between 3:45 and 4:00 a.m. Shortly thereafter, she looked out her window and "saw a man running on the south side of Locust Street." (Exh. 18)

50. In all, two people to the west and behind the police car, and one person north and high above the scene, all reported seeing someone flee down the south side of Locust after the shooting. No follow-up investigation of these claims was ever done. On the contrary, police coerced witnesses to recant that testimony.

51. The Suppressed Evidence: Police engaged in widespread efforts to suppress evidence favorable to Mr. Jamal.

52. New evidence reveals that another witness was intimidated by the police so severely that he left Philadelphia prior to trial for fear of police harassment. This witness, William Singletary, reported that Mr. Jamal was not the shooter and that the true shooter was a third black male who fled the scene. He also saw that Cynthia White was not at the scene during the shooting, but arrived later. He was forced by police to sign a false police statement that he did not see anything.

53. Another witness, Robert Harkins, was driving past in his taxicab and saw the shooter, who was "taller" and "heavier" than Officer Faulkner. (Exh. 17) Mr. Harkins was shown a photo array, but that fact was never revealed to the defense.(Buechler Aff., Exh.6)

54. As discussed above, police coerced witnesses White, Jones and Chobert, made Officer Wakshul unavailable for trial, and suppressed the Hightower polygraph. Police did not disclose the deal made to protect Ms. White while she worked as a prostitute. Nor did police disclose their five-hour interview of Veronica Jones in January 1982, in which they offered her the same deal.

55. Philadelphia police conducted surreptitious surveillance of Mr. Jamal from his youth as a member of the Black Panther Party. Copies of reports were maintained in police files. This evidence of police bias against Mr. Jamal was not turned over to the defense. Further, these files are evidence that despite the constant scrutiny of Mr. Jamal by the police, he engaged solely in constitutionally protected speech and not in any criminal activity. (Cooperstein Aff., Exh. 12)