by C. Clark Kissinger, October 4, 1996
"This courtroom is not for justice! It's to bring us in here and badger the hell out of us," shot back Veronica Jones. This came just after Assistant District Attorney Arlene Fisk informed Veronica that she was going to be placed under arrest as soon as she got off the witness stand after testifying in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Fisk had just finished heaping every bit of racists garbage she could on Veronica. No detail of Veronica's life was to be spared, even down to the details of who she was living with, how much she had been behind in her rent, how much welfare she used to get, and the name of the street she lived on.
Yes, Veronica testified, she had worked as a prostitute, had a criminal record, had abused drugs, and taken welfare while working. In short, her life has not been all that different from so many other women who are ground down in this society, and forced to do things in order to survive and feed their children. Now what it is like to be a poor woman in America was used against her.
But there was also something different about her history. Something that the state of Pennsylvania and Judge Albert Sabo have worked 14 years to hide.
Sitting in a cell awaiting trial on a robbery charge back in 1982, Veronica was visited by two white men in suits. She thought they were her lawyers, but they were police detectives. It seems that Veronica Jones had been on the street the night that Mumia and Officer Faulkner were shot, and she had been interviewed by detectives. She told them that she heard shots, looked around the corner, and saw two Black men jogging away. This fact was written in the report of her interview.
But this was very inconvenient for the police. They wanted to pin the shooting of Officer Faulkner on Mumia, and so evidence of others fleeing the scene now needed to be "disappeared." The two men offered Veronica a deal she couldn't refuse. She was 21 years old with three small daughters. They told her she was facing five to ten years in prison - five to ten years separated from her young children. She might well lose custody of them entirely.
There was a way out, however. If she would simply alter her testimony, and deny seeing the two men running from the scene, well then, things would go a lot better for her. Five to ten years. Think about it.
Veronica did think about it. And at Mumia's trial she changed her testimony from the first police interview, and denied seeing two men run away. She lied. And now, 14 years later, she had come into court, with two of her grown daughters in the courtroom, to set the record straight. In Philadelphia, that will get you arrested.
Nothing upsets Judge Sabo more than the truth. Sabo, who has presided over more death sentences than any sitting judge in America, treats facts as malleable things to be reshaped to meet the needs of the police and the political establishment. He is so blatantly incompetent and prejudiced, that even the anti-Mumia Philadelphia Daily News wrote in an editorial that "Albert Sabo is a poster boy for merit selection of judges." [1]
In an accompanying news story, the Daily News added: "He refuse to hear any objections and sided with the prosecutor on every issue. He often answered questions addressed to witnesses. And at one point, he called the testimony of a defense witness 'baloney'" [2]
Anti-Mumia columnist Jill Porter described it this way: "Sabo has long since abandoned any pretense of fairness. He's openly hostile to the defense and lavishly liberal with the prosecution. Defense attorneys barely get to voice their objections to testimony before Sabo over-rules them with a snarl - and threatens to throw them out if they continue to object." [3]
But lest you think Mumia may have some shot at justice in Philadelphia, it's important to remember that these papers there are dumping on Sabo because he is making the railroad of Mumia look too obvious and odious. They want a nice quiet execution, all proper like.
It was anything but quiet in Sabo's courtroom October 1, 2 and 3. Persecutor Arlene Fisk was met with righteous jeers, while people cheered for Mumia and applauded loudly when his lawyers made telling points. At one point a scuffle broke out when bailiffs tried to manhandle Mumia's son Jamal.
On the second day, the bailiff refused to let people wearing Mumia buttons into the court, saying that it was a law. The next day, when Mumia's lawyers complained that Fraternal Order of Police members were wearing their buttons, he was forced to admit that his claim about a law was a lie and he had just made it up.
Outside the courthouse supporters of Mumia from the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Refuse & Resist!, and other groups were demonstrating loudly. The police pulled up in a bus to threaten to take people in a mass arrest and ordered the sidewalk closed.
After the prosecution's blatant attempt to continue the intimidation of Veronica by having her arrested in the court for failing to make a court appearance two years ago, people poured out to chant "Free Veronica" and "Free Mumia." Money poured in from all over, but it was not until 5 a.m. the next morning when she was finally bailed out.
In fact, the warrant brought into court by two New Jersey police officers summoned by D.A. Fisk was for a different name and social security number than Veronica Jones, but Judge Sabo refused to give her one day to return to New Jersey and clear up the matter. He ordered her arrested at once.
On the third day of the hearing, Veronica came back to the courtroom and sat defiantly with Mumia's supporters to demonstrate that she would not be intimidated. Her stance was best captured in her own words from the witness stand the first day: "My children learned from my mistakes. That's why they're strong Black women today!"
The three-day hearing was happening because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had ordered Judge Sabo to hear the testimony of Veronica Jones and rule on whether it was admissible evidence that should be added to the record of last summer's hearings on a motion for a new trial. The prosecutors quickly claimed that Veronica Jones is a "newly discovered witness." If this were true the law would require the defense to prove that she was not available to testify last summer and that they had made a serious effort to locate her in order for her testimony to be admissible now. Sabo naturally agreed.
Yet the idea that Veronica Jones is a "newly discovered witness" is ridiculous. She testified at Mumia's original trial in 1982. Far from being newly discovered, she was in fact hidden - by the prosecution and Judge Sabo who did everything they could to make sure that Mumia's lawyers could not find her.
A circle of Catch-22's had been set up. The D.A. pointed out that there was all kinds of information about Veronica in her probation files, so why did it take all these years for the defense to find her? But the defense didn't have the probation files, because private citizens can't get these confidential files. Well, says the D.A., why didn't you subpoena them. Good idea, says the defense, but you can't subpoena them unless you are involved in a court case, and Mumia wasn't in court until he filed for his new trial last year. OK, the D.A. says, so why didn';t you subpoena the files then? We did, says the defense, but Judge Sabo quashed the subpoenas!
Barred from access to all the relevant files in the case, the defense employed four Philly private investigators, one in New Jersey, and a computer search firm in California, and it still took almost a year to find her. If she was so easy to find, as the D.A. claims, why didn't New Jersey officials find her two years ago on the warrant for a missed court date? Why is it that Veronica is arrested only when she comes forward to testify in defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal?
It took a lot of courage for Veronica Jones to come into court and set the record straight. She had nothing to gain personally by doing this, and the first thing she heard on the witness stand was Judge Sabo threatening her with up to seven years in jail for perjury is she now asserts she lied in the first trial.
Uncovering her testimony is an important step in uprooting a whole chain of prosecutorial misconduct, suppression of evidence, and judicial bias that have been at the heart of the railroad of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The clock is now ticking, and within 30 days of October 3, Judge Sabo will rule on the admissibility of Veronica Jones''s testimony - testimony that would have been available at Mumia's trial in 1982 had it not been for police coercion of a 21-year-old mother threatened with losing her children. Testimony that the state thought was safely "lost", like the bullet that killed Officer Faulkner has been conveniently lost.
Now is the time to make your voice heard. Send letters of protest to Hon. John P. Flaherty, Jr. Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, fax 215-560-1808, with copies to the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (fax 215-476-7551) or to Refuse & Resist! (fax 212-677-6063).
sources: footnotes:
Author's notes from the three-day hearing
1. Philadelphia Daily News, October 3, 1996.
2. Philadelphia Daily News, October 3, 1996.
3. Philadelphia Daily News, October 2, 1996.
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