Witness in police killing recants
Mumia Abu-Jamal's lawyers filed an appeal. The witness now says police coerced her to lie in his 1982 trial.
A key witness in the Mumia Abu-Jamal murder case has given a sworn statement saying she testified falsely at Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial after Philadelphia police promised her lenient treatment on criminal charges then pending against her.
Armed with the statement from Veronica Jones, attorneys for Abu-Jamal filed an appeal yesterday with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court asking for the opportunity to have the woman testify.
"This is the first irrefutable evidence that the conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal was obtained through false testimony," said defense attorney Leonard Weinglass.
"If Veronica Jones had testified to the truth" in 1982, "she would have corroborated others" whose accounts pointed to Abu-Jamal's innocence, Weinglass said.
A spokesman for the District Attorney's Office said he could not comment because the case was still active.
Abu-Jamal, a former radio reporter, was convicted in the 1981 slaying of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel J. Faulkner and sentenced to death. The case has attracted international attention from Abu-Jamal sympathizers, who contend that the jailhouse author was wrongly convicted by a racist judicial system.
After a lengthy hearing last summer, Common Pleas Court Judge Alfred F. Sabo denied Abu-Jamal's motion for a new trial. Abu-Jamal's appeal of his death sentence is before the state Supreme Court.
In a statement to police after the Dec. 9, 1981, shooting, Jones - a prostitute at the time - said she saw two unidentified men leaving the murder scene. The Abu-Jamal defense contends that those two may have played a role in the killing.
During the trial, however, Jones said that earlier statement was in error, and that she never saw any men leaving the area.
In the sworn statement filed yesterday, Jones reaffirmed her initial account, saying she had seen two men "first walk and then sort of jog away from where" Faulkner "was lying on the ground."
Weinglass said yesterday that Jones changed her testimony after being arrested on charges that included robbery, assault and possessing an instrument of crime. After her trial testimony, Weinglass said, she was sentenced to two years' probation on those charges.
In yesterday's appeal, Weinglass wrote that "days before she took the stand as a defense eyewitness at the 1982 trial, Philadelphia police detectives had visited her in jail, where she faced major felony armed robbery charges, and threatened and coerced her to change her testimony.
"Bowing to this police intimidation, Jones changed her testimony at trial by repudiating her true eyewitness statement . . . thus seriously undermining Jamal's defense.''
Weinglass also said yesterday that William Cook, Abu-Jamal's brother and an eyewitness to the shooting, is prepared to testify. Cook did not testify at the 1982 trial or at last summer's hearing.
Inquirer staff writer Dianna Marder contributed to this article.