After police arrived at the scene, Abu-Jamal was arrested and transported to the emergency room at Jefferson University Hospital, where a crush of police officers and medical personnel were waiting. Abu-Jamal arrived about half an hour after Faulkner.
It was at the hospital that another critical portion of the prosecution case played itself out. According to the testimony of police officer Garry Bell and security guard Priscilla Durham, Abu-Jamal confessed to the murder of Faulkner in the emergency room. Bell and Durham claim he shouted, "I shot the motherfucker and I hope the motherfucker dies."
Attorneys for Abu-Jamal point out that neither reported the alleged confession until months later--Bell until Feb. 25, 1982 and Durham until March 1982--when they were interviewed by internal affairs cops investigating an Abu-Jamal complaint that police had beat him up at the hospital.
In his statement five days after the shooting, Bell did not mention the confession, and though Durham later said she had included the details in a statement, she was never able to produce such a document. Durham was also unable to substantiate her claim that she reported what she heard to superiors the day after the shooting.
Moreover, the defense noted that Bell was a close friend of Faulkner's and that Durham had seen Faulkner socially--thereby motivating them both to concoct their accounts of a confession.
Another police officer, Gary Wakshul, who was with Abu-Jamal continuously from Locust Street until doctors began treating him, initially filed a report that "during this time, the Negro male made no statements." Two months later, in February 1982, he told investigators he did recall hearing a confession.
Wakshul never testified in the original trial, however. He was on vacation and Judge Sabo declined to order him to return to Philadelphia.
The prosecution's claims were further discredited by the statements of two doctors, Dr. Regina Cudemo, a psychiatric resident, and Dr. Anthony Coletta, a surgical resident, who heard no admission of guilt in the emergency room.
The defense charges that Abu-Jamal was beaten and kicked at the scene by police. One woman claimed to have witnessed the beating and said she vomited in disgust. Dr. Cudemo also said she saw an officer kick Abu-Jamal in the hospital. Abu-Jamal filed a complaint, but an internal affairs investigation by police exonerated the officers.
Hospital records showed that when he was admitted, Abu-Jamal had a four-centimeter laceration on his forehead, swelling over his left eye and on the right side of his neck and jaw, and a cut on his lip. John Hayes, a forensic pathologist for the defense, noted that the forehead wound is "consistent with being struck by a blunt object."
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