Abu-Jamal's 1st attorney grilled again

It was another difficult day on the stand for Mumia Abu-Jamal 's initial defense attorney, Anthony Jackson.

Abu-Jamal's current defense team sought to portray Jackson as incompetent in his 1982 defense of Abu-Jamal, but as honest today when he confessed his errors and tried to help the internationally known death-row inmate win a new trial.

Prosecutor Charles "Joey" Grant sought to show the opposite: that Jackson was a good lawyer back in 1982 but was lying now on the witness stand to help his former client.

In the end, an embattled Jackson concluded that "I did the best I could" in Abu-Jamal's trial. "If people are saying now that isn't good enough, then so be it."

Before yesterday's session got under way, the celebrated defendant drew attention away from the courtroom. Between 3 and 3:30 a.m., a mural of Abu-Jamal on a wall at 23rd Street and Allegheny Avenue in North Philadelphia was defaced by vandals, police said. No arrests have been made. The mural was cleaned up with water and restored to its original form.

If yesterday's five hours on the stand were difficult for Jackson, it became clear during his testimony that it had been far more difficult back in 1982, when he was defending Abu-Jamal against charges that he killed Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in December 1981.

During cross-examination, Jackson said that Abu-Jamal shouted at him numerous times and accused him of being part of the prosecution because he would not follow Abu-Jamal's demand that he stop presenting his case.

"He berated, humiliated, and disrespected you during the trial, didn't he?" Grant asked Jackson. Jackson indicated that was correct.

During two days of cross-examination, Grant has been trying to establish that Abu-Jamal "controlled" both Jackson and his own defense - deciding what witnesses should be called and what legal strategies to use.

Jackson countered that he ran the defense himself except for the times when Abu-Jamal represented himself and Jackson was backup attorney.

Also during yesterday's questioning of Jackson, the prosecutor sought to undercut two of the key defense contentions that Abu-Jamal's trial had been unfair - that the court did not give Abu-Jamal enough money to pay for experts, and that the prosecution did not produce a police officer who could significantly help the defense. In both cases, the defense said that Common Pleas Judge Albert F. Sabo did not intervene properly.

Officer Gary Wakshul had ridden in the police wagon with Abu-Jamal from the crime scene to the hospital - where the prosecution argued Abu-Jamal called out "I shot the motherf-er and hope he dies." In a police statement, however, Wakshul said: "The Negro male made no comment."

When Jackson called Wakshul - on the day that closing arguments were scheduled - prosecutors said that Wakshul was on vacation. Sabo refused to recess the trial to wait for his return.

The defense has argued then and now that a police statement made clear that Wakshul was on a "no vacation" schedule - confirming to them that Wakshul should have been available and was "hidden" from them.

In court yesterday, Grant first offered evidence that Wakshul had also made a second statement, in which he said Abu-Jamal had indeed blurted out a confession. The second statement, Grant said, was well-known by Abu-Jamal's defense in 1982.

In addition, Grant argued that the supposed "no vacation" notation on Wakshul's statement was a misunderstanding by Abu-Jamal and his lawyers, who Grant frequently reminded the courtroom were from New York rather than Philadelphia.

"No vacation" on a Philadelphia police report, Grant said, meant only that the officer had not put in for summer vacation yet. It did not mean, as the defense alleged, that Wakshul could not go on vacation.

The only reason Wakshul was not made available, Grant said, was that the defense did not ask for him until the last day of the trial, when he was indeed on vacation.

Much of the morning testimony featured Grant asking Jackson to review his fee request filed with the court after Abu-Jamal's trial.

Jackson had complained that his defense was hampered because he only had a few hundred dollars to spend on defense experts. Jackson said he had hired an investigator, a photographer and ballistics expert George Fassnacht, but could not pay any of them enough to do an effective job.

Grant, reviewing Jackson's fee request, came up with at least $1,400 spent on the photographer, investigator and Fassnacht - far more than the customary amounts authorized then by the courts.

Grant also suggested that the pre-trial judge, Common Pleas Court Judge Paul Ribner, had approved the initial payments to Jackson's experts and said he would approve more money if Jackson could prove it was justifiable. The decision not to go back to the judge, Grant said, was Jackson's.

"No, that's not true," said Jackson angrily. "I couldn't get another dime, not another dime from anybody. If I could, I would. I'm not a fool."