Refuse and
Resist!

IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS
OF PHILADELPHIA COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

_____________________________________

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA,
CRIMINAL DIVISION

Respondent,

v.

Nos. 1357-1358
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL,
(January Sessions, 1982)
a/k/a Wesley Cook,

Petitioner

_____________________________________

PETITIONER'S SUPPLEMENTAL OFFERS OF PROOF

Petitioner Mumia Abu-Jamal ("Jamal"), by his attorneys, respectfully submits the following supplemental offers of proof in support of the offers made on the record and denied in the course of the June 26, 1997 to July 1, 1997 remand hearing. Jamal also submits this memorandum to protest the unfairness of the proceedings and the court's rulings precluding the presentation of the defense case concerning Pamela Jenkins' testimony.

The Court's Improper Limitation on the Scope of the Remand Hearing

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania granted Jamal's request for a remand "for the limited purpose of taking additional testimony with respect to Pamela Jenkins." (May 30, 1997 Order; emphasis added.) As Jamal explained in his Memorandum on Status and Scope of Remand Hearing, the scope of the remand hearing plainly encompassed the issues raised by Jenkins' testimony as set forth in Jamal's remand application: (1) that "in late 1981 police had pressured [Jenkins] to perjure herself and falsely identify Jamal as the shooter in this case -- despite the fact that Jenkins had not even been present at the scene" (Application, ¶ 3); (2) "that police applied improper pressure and threats to secure [Cynthia] White's testimony" (Application, ¶ 4); and (3) that "Jenkins' description of police intimidation of prostitutes fits the pattern of police/prostitution activities in Philadelphia's center city area at that time, exemplified by the testimony concerning police intimidation and manipulation of two prostitute eyewitnesses at trial, Cynthia White and Veronica Jones, and by the federal investigation of police corruption in the center city area in the early 1980's" (Application, ¶ 5). In addition, Jamal offered to present evidence that the Commonwealth has instituted a retaliatory prosecution of Jenkins in response to the Supreme Court's May 30 remand order. (Memorandum on Status and Scope of Remand, pp. 3-4.)

Despite the clear mandate of the Supreme Court's order, this court repeatedly insisted that Pamela Jenkins would be the only witness permitted to testify, and on this basis the court peremptorily quashed Jamal's numerous witness and document subpoenas:

THE COURT: What further proceedings? We are here for a limited purpose: To take the testimony of Pamela Jenkins. That's all. I am not hearing anything else, do you understand? . . . I don't care who you subpoenaed. They are quashed. I am here only for Pamela Jenkins. That's what the Supreme Court sent it down for and that's all I am hearing.

Mr. WEINGLASS: So that we are clear at the beginning: We are only to call Pamela Jenkins?

THE COURT: That's all.

Mr. WEINGLASS: And we are precluded from all the others?

THE COURT: Right.

Mr. WEINGLASS: All the subpoenas are quashed?

THE COURT: They are quashed. I don't even know what subpoenas you issued.

(Tr. 6/26/97: 7-10.) [1]

The defense called Pamela Jenkins, who confirmed the testimony presented in her verified statement:

Jenkins further testified that she had seen Cynthia White in Philadelphia in 1997, and that she last saw White in the company of former Philadelphia police officer Tom Ryan and Det. Richard Ryan, the same officers who Jenkins said pressured her to falsely implicate Jamal in the 1981 shooting. (Id: 50-51.)

When Jenkins' testimony was concluded, this court indicated that the parties should return to the Supreme Court. (Id: 131.) At this point, the prosecution "joined in [defense] counsels' motion that they be permitted to call additional witnesses." (Id.) Even then, the court refused to permit the defense to present any further evidence concerning Jenkins' testimony. Nonetheless, the court agreed to permit the prosecution to present evidence to respond to Jenkins' testimony. (Id: 132-34.) At this point defense counsel accurately objected "to being precluded and the prosecution is being allowed to go ahead." (Id: 134.)

From this point forward, despite the defense objections, the hearing ceased to be conducted as an adversarial proceeding. Instead, the hearing became little more than a dialog between the prosecution and the court on how best to preclude the defense from presenting evidence to corroborate Jenkins or to refute the prosecution's "rebuttal" evidence. The defense was totally precluded from presenting any witnesses other than those agreed to, or invited by, the prosecution.

On the other hand, the prosecution was given an open door to call witnesses, but declined to present any evidence pertaining to the central focus of Jenkins' testimony -- that Cynthia White was a police informant who had been pressured by police to falsely identify Jamal as the shooter. Instead, the prosecution claimed that Jenkins' testimony was incredible and thus irrelevant because a "Cynthia Williams" who was supposedly really "Cynthia White" had died in 1992 and thus Jenkins' claim of having seen White in 1997 was "perjured." (Tr. 6/30/97: 120.)

Because he was prevented from presenting evidence to corroborate Jenkins or to refute the prosecution's claims, Jamal submits the following supplemental offers of proof and verified statements to support his efforts to present evidence on these issues.

Evidence Concerning the 1992 Camden Death of "Cynthia Williams"

On Thursday, June 26, the prosecution presented supposed "self-authenticating" documents which purportedly conclusively established the death of Cynthia White in Camden, New Jersey, in 1992. This evidence, presented through Homicide Detective Raleigh Witcher, consisted of a Philadelphia police printout of Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") computer data, along with a death certificate of "Cynthia Williams," aka "Mildred Saunders" in Camden, New Jersey.

Det. Witcher claimed that the FBI computer records contained fingerprint data which "matched" the fingerprint information for Cynthia White in Philadelphia police files, and that the FBI information showed that, according to New Jersey records, this person was "deceased." (Tr. 6/26/97: 143, 178.) Det. Witcher further produced a prosecution exhibit which was an amalgam of various documents, but which the prosecution falsely asserted was a "self-authenticating" document bearing the "seal from the State of New Jersey." (Id: 143.) This exhibit included a purported death certificate for "Cynthia Williams, a\k\a Mildred Saunders," with a social security number of 127-50-6809, a number also listed in Philadelphia and FBI records as one of the numbers used by Cynthia White. (Id: 145.) Det. Witcher claimed that there was a fingerprint "match and it's authenticated in the FBI report here." (Id: 178-79.) Based on this evidence, the prosecution repeatedly claimed to have "proved" that Cynthia White was dead, and the court accepted that claim.

However, on cross-examination, the defense established that the exhibits provided by Det. Witcher were not the complete and conclusive "self-authenticating" proof which the prosecution claimed. To begin with, Det. Witcher claimed that the identification of the dead Camden woman, "Cynthia Williams," and the Philadelphia witness, Cynthia White, was established through fingerprint matches. Det. Witcher explained that Cynthia White's fingerprint class numbers were included in Commonwealth Exhibit 2, the FBI computer printout and which matched White's fingerprint information in the Philadelphia identification system files. (Id: 154-55.) Yet despite this claimed fingerprint "match," the prosecution and Det. Witcher did not bring the alleged fingerprint cards from either Philadelphia or Camden to court. (Id: 154, 178.) The reason, as it later became clear, was that there was in fact no such fingerprint "match" between the Philadelphia and the New Jersey fingerprints.

Det. Witcher also was forced to concede that the FBI printout report was incomplete because additional information could have been, but was not, generated through that system. (Id: 170.) Det. Witcher further acknowledged that the FBI report was not generated based on fingerprint information. (Id: 177-78.)

Moreover, the defense was not provided with a copy of the prosecution documents until after Det. Witcher left the stand. On further review, it was clear that Commonwealth Exhibit 4 was not the "self-authenticating" record which the prosecution claimed. Instead, it was an amalgam of several incomplete pages from several documents from various sources stapled together to create the impression of an official record which never in fact existed:

Plainly the sealed certificate of death and the attached fax pages were taken from different documents, and the prosecution had simply stapled them together to create the false impression of a single "self-authenticating" sealed document.

On top of all these peculiarities with the Commonwealth's documents, Det. Witcher admitted that the prosecution team had been searching for Cynthia White since 1995. (Id: 149, 164.) Det. Witcher personally was involved in searching "records both local and out of the locale. We did not locate her." (Id: 149-51.) The detective claimed that he first became aware of the Camden death certificate on about May 30, 1997, when "someone came up with" it. (Id: 148.) Obviously, the prosecution identification team had access to the FBI database throughout their search for Cynthia White (id: 177, 7/1/97: 84), and would not have continued searching records for her if they believed the New Jersey death report was accurate and that the Camden deceased was in fact Cynthia White.

During the defense "rebuttal" case, the court and prosecution precluded the defense from presenting its own witnesses who had information that Cynthia White was alive, thus refuting the claim that White had died in Camden in 1992. The prosecution refused to provide the defense with its own files on Cynthia White or with the Camden files on the Camden death. Of course, without access to this information in its totality, the defense lacked a fair ability to test the prosecution claims. Instead, the court permitted the prosecution to spoon feed just those pages which the prosecution elected to disclose, while withholding the bulk of the documents. The court further denied the defense any ability to subpoena the necessary, withheld information. In this manner, the prosecution insisted that the defense should call certain unidentified "New Jersey" officials whom the prosecution would choose. But the prosecution would not produce the underlying files, or even identify the New Jersey officials. The defense refused to proceed on such an unfair basis, and rested.

Then, apparently aware that the purported "proof" of White's death was not conclusive or even genuine, the court and the prosecution "reopened" the hearing on July 1, 1997 to "verify" the death of Cynthia White. Once again the prosecution presented documentary evidence from the Camden County prosecutors office and claimed that the fingerprints of the black female who died in Camden "matched" the fingerprints of another black female identified as "Cynthia Drake," and reportedly also known in Camden as "Cynthia Williams" or "Mildred Saunders" or "Cynthia White" or many other names. (Commonwealth Exhibit 8; Tr. 7/1/97: 29.) [2]

Yet the documents themselves refuted the claim that this New Jersey woman was in fact the Philadelphia witness Cynthia White. The fingerprint information for the Philadelphia witness Cynthia White was demonstrably different from that of the dead New Jersey woman. Det. Witcher testified that the fingerprint identification information which "matched" the Philadelphia identification records for Cynthia White was that contained on Commonwealth Exhibit 2:

PM 11 12 CO 16 DO 08 13 PI 18

But this fingerprint information does not match the fingerprint codes of the woman who died in Camden in 1992, as reflected in the Camden prosecutor's files relied on by the Commonwealth (Comm. Exh. 8, Camden ID card):

PM 13 12 17 16 PO 18 13 CI 20

Comparing these identifiers side by side shows that fully six out of ten fingers (in bold) have entirely different fingerprint classifications, precluding any possibility of a fingerprint "match": [3]

Philadelphia: PM 11 12 CO 16 DO 08 13 PI 18
Camden: PM 13 12 17 16 PO 183 13 CI 20.
(See Tr. 7/1/97: 49-51.)

Moreover, the Camden County version of the FBI computer printout report for "Cynthia White" bears the repeated caution: "This response is not supported by fingerprint comparison." (Id: 32, 35.) The defense contended that the prosecution had manipulated the FBI computer data to delete this same warning from Commonwealth Exhibit 2 -- and this defense contention was confirmed by the Camden printout. In other words, there is no fingerprint confirmation that the person known as "Cynthia Drake" or "Cynthia White" or "Cynthia Williams" or "Mildred Saunders" in New Jersey criminal records is the same person known as "Cynthia White" in Philadelphia. [4] Hence there simply is no fingerprint confirmation or otherproof that the Camden deceased is the Cynthia White who testified in this case.

Without fingerprint identification, there is no identification, as the prosecution's own witnesses indicated. "[F]ingerprints are the one true identifier." (Id: 63.) Certainly the other information provided about the New Jersey deceased is insufficient to support an identification. There was no eyewitness identification of the body. The social security number attributed to the deceased -- 127-50-6809 -- was issued to a Hispanic woman named Migdalia Cruz, born in Puerto Rico in 1957, who is not Cynthia White. (See Milton Ver. St. (Exh. 2).) The prosecution has also refused to produce all the photographs contained in the Camden files. (Tr. 7/1/97: 22.) Moreover, the body itself has been cremated and the New Jersey files have been purged, making verification of the identification impossible. [5]

The sequence of the identification process was also suspect, as shown by the three different revisions of the death certificate contained in the Commonwealth exhibits. First, the medical examiner filled in some portions of the death certificate and identified the deceased as "Cynthia Williams." This name apparently was based on a Camden County welfare card which was found in a closet in the abandoned house where the body was discovered. (Comm. Exh. 8.) The further information on later revisions of the death certificate was provided not by Camden officials but by the Boyd Funeral Home. This information apparently came from a phone call by Detective Boyd of the Camden Police Department. Det. Boyd called a Mrs. Ruth Ray in Brooklyn, New York, and asked if she knew "Cynthia Williams." Mrs. Ray said she did not know such a person, but that she knew someone in Camden called Mildred Saunders. Later Det. Boyd called back to say that the deceased was Mildred Saunders. (See Ruth Ray Ver. St. (Exh. 3).) After this call from Det. Boyd, the Boyd Funeral Home began pressuring Mrs. Ray to send money to pay for the burial of the deceased. The Funeral Home also completed the death certificate with the information that "Cynthia Williams" was "aka Mildred Saunders."

There are many other small but telling inconsistencies on the face of the prosecution's exhibits. The Camden identification reports for "Cynthia Drake" -- the dead woman -- show that she had a surgical scar on her right arm, but not the left. The autopsy for the dead woman describes a scar on the left arm, but not the right. Commonwealth Exhibit 2 indicates that Cynthia White has a scar on her nose -- a mark not mentioned in any of the New Jersey information. These contradictions -- which come from the face of the prosecution's own exhibits -- defeat the prosecution claims to have "proved" the death of Cynthia White. Moreover, the prosecution withholds the bulk of its files on White, including its efforts to locate this witness over the past several years. These circumstances once again point to the need for full disclosure of the prosecution and police files on this case and on this witness.

Thus, despite the prosecution's claims of conclusive and "self-authenticating" proof -- which were accepted as good coin by the court (Tr. 6/30/97: 140, 7/1/97: 13, 87-88) -- the prosecution's evidence proved nothing. Because the prosecution's claims were so vulnerable, the court and prosecution cooperated to prevent the defense from presenting evidence on the issue of Cynthia White's alleged death. Jamal renews and supplements his offers of proof on this issue with the attached verified statements:

Evidence Corroborating The Substance of Pamela Jenkins' Account

The court not only precluded the defense efforts to refute the claimed "death" of Cynthia White, but also prevented the defense from presenting substantive corroboration of Pamela Jenkins' testimony that Cynthia White was a police informant in 1981 and that police pressured Jenkins and White to give false testimony in this case. Jamal renews and supplements his offers of proof as follows:

In addition, Jamal offers White's court files demonstrate that she used the alias "Lucky," as testified by Veronica Jones and Pamela Jenkins, a fact the Commonwealth has stubbornly and falsely denied. See MC # 8005-2895 (5/30/80) (alias "Lucky"); MC # 8007-0195 (alias "Lucky"); MC # 8007-0475 (alias "Lucky"). Jamal had subpoenaed these files at the 1996 remand hearing and again in 1997, but the Court quashed both subpoenas and refused to accept the documents.

CONCLUSION

By preventing the presentation of this defense evidence, quashing the defense subpoenas, and denying the defense discovery, even as the prosecution presented unauthentic and partial documents and withheld clearly relevant evidence and information, this court has once again denied Petitioner the elementary ability to obtain a full and fair hearing on his claims. A full and fair hearing in this matter can begin only when the prosecution and police files, in their entirety, are produced for inspection by the defense. Respectfully submitted,

LEONARD I. WEINGLASS
6 West 20th St., Suite 10A
New York, New York 10010
(212) 807-8646

DANIEL R. WILLIAMS
Moore & Williams, LLP
740 Broadway Suite 500
New York, New York 10003
(212) 353-9587

JONATHAN B. PIPER
Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal
8000 Sears Tower
Chicago, IL 60606
(312) 876-8000

RACHEL H. WOLKENSTEIN
67 Wall Street, Suite 2411
New York, New York 10005
(212) 406-4252

STEVEN W. HAWKINS
National Conference of Black Lawyers
918 F Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20004
(202) 347-2411

DAVID RUDOVSKY, Local Counsel
Bar No. 15168
Kairys, Rudovsky, Kalman & Epstein
924 Cherry Street, Suite 500
Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 925-4400

Attorneys for Petitioner Mumia Abu-Jamal Dated: July 14, 1997

PROOF OF SERVICE

I hereby certify that I am this day serving the foregoing document upon the persons and in the manner indicated below which service satisfies the requirements of Pa. R. A. P. 121:

Service by United States Mail addressed as follows:

Hugh J. Burns, Jr., Esquire
(counsel for District Attorney of Philadelphia County)
Assistant District Attorney
1421 Arch Street
Philadelphia, Pa. 19102
(215) 686-5728

Dated: July 14, 1997

Jonathan B. Piper
Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal
8000 Sears Tower
Chicago, Illinois 60606
(312) 876-8000
(Counsel for Appellant Mumia Abu-Jamal)
(Pro Hac Vice)

Footnotes:

1. The court made clear its frustration that Jamal was being permitted a supplementary hearing at all: "Have you ever heard of a PCRA that has come back for a remand two times? Two times?" (Id.: 11.)

2. The documents reflecting the fingerprint identification information for the deceased Camden woman were listed under the name "Cynthia Drake," which did not appear on the death certificate.

3. On some of the other Camden reports the sixth identifier is listed as "08."

4. The information provided by both prosecution and defense investigators concerning their efforts to locate Cynthia White -- combined with the information provided in 1996 by defense investigators concerning their efforts to locate Veronica Jones -- demonstrate that it is common for prostitutes and drug users to use a variety of aliases and false social security numbers in their dealings with police. The widespread use of aliases demonstrates the unreliability of any identification based on data other than fingerprints -- as the Commonwealth's own witnesses testified at this remand hearing.

5. The prosecution presented no details about the specific method of fingerprint identification allegedly used by New Jersey to identify the Camden fingerprints. As a result, there is no basis on which to determine whether the New Jersey identification was based on generally-accepted scientific methods or has any reliability.


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