A King’s Bench Petition to the PA Supreme Court
The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) promised big firms to fight Mumia’s freedom. They got George Bochetto, a pugilistic lawyer who owed the FOP a favor, and a weak petition full of vague inferences of bias. They are throwing random information up against the growing storm of accountability as a strategy of distraction.
George Bochetto
In this latest legal filing the FOP tried and failed to create a narrative that the new evidence, which was suppressed for 37 years, is irrelevant. The new evidence is, in fact, game changing. You know the kind of evidence where a key witness writes a note to Joe McGill, the prosecutor, and asks him, “Where is my money?” The Philadelphia Bulletin photographer’s pictures prove that this driver’s cab is not even at the scene. Yet somehow - after his testimony against Mumia - he is asking the prosecutor for the money he is owed. Sound bad? it is.
During an evidentiary hearing in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, Joe McGill will try to spin this as an innocent request for “lunch money.”
It is all about credibility. That is why the PA and the U.S. Constitutions both call for new and previously undisclosed evidence to be heard in open court. This King's Bench petition actually declares that the new DA, Krasner, should have colluded with McGill to bury the evidence.
Don’t forget: soon McGill will have to explain that he did not not suppress African American participation in Mumia Abu-Jamal’s trial during jury selection.
Good luck with that, Joe! Because the DA’s office was not less racist before the ADA Jack McMahon made the training tape instructing staff to strike Black jurors. In justifying keeping young African-Americans off the jury, Jack McMahon said ''The only way you're going to do your best is to get jurors that are unfair.'' McMahon, when asked, explained, ''That's not being racist -- that's being realistic.'' (See this YouTube video for examples of these tapes and this New York Times account for more on this story.)
FOP Lodge Five President John McNesby
Once you begin to look into the deep racism of Philly’s past DA's office and police practices, you will see why they are so desperate to try to petition their way out of a fair fight. The longstanding pattern and practice of stepping on the scales of justice is being revealed.
This November 12, Bochetto, backed by the FOP, filed a self-styled King’s Bench petition asking the PA Supreme Court to intervene on behalf of Maureen Faulkner in a pending appeal before the Superior Court. The request seeks to remove Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner from prosecuting Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case. This unusual procedural move is extremely unlikely to succeed. In the petition they argue that Paul George, a lawyer on Krasner’s current staff, was an attorney of record, local counsel for Mumia, and that this creates an impermissible bias. George, as is common practice for potential conflicts, has been screened off work on the case. They argue other and even more tenuous and desperate six-degrees-of-separation biases.
As FOP is losing ground, politicians are abandoning them. At their recent press conference, the only politicians there were two recent losers: ousted City Council member Allen Tauberberger (“Looks like I’m cleaning out my office” Taubenberger told WHYY, “Numbers are numbers”) and Jack O’Neil, who placed a distant sixth to Krasner in the last election.
But remember, the FOP does not fight fair. Their members have been charged with hitting folks who are handcuffed. They are protecting decades of dirty cops and, yes, prosecutors who are guilty of misconduct and disbarrable offenses. Some of those folks who may be exposed are very well connected, like Ed Rendell and Ron Castille. So while the FOP are the foot soldiers, remember they represent and have been in bed with those who created and perpetuated the system of mass incarceration masquerading as justice.
Yes, Ed Rendell, former Mayor of Philadelphia and Governor of Pennsylvania, is in the same boat as the shock troops he allowed free reign to illegally arrest and incarcerate poor people of color in Philly for decades.
Joe McGill and Maureen Faulkner at the Lodge Five FOP event announcing their legal action.
How many scandals have to hit the front pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer before we all understand the prosecutors KNEW that cops routinely lied on probable cause? Lying why? Could be racism. And it could also be simply to increase their pay, padding their overtime. It is common knowledge in the courts and at city hall; everyone knows that is how the game of arrests and court appearances and police overtime is, and has been, played. They need an assembly line of Black and Brown bodies, vulnerable people, to pad their pay.
Voters are beginning to wonder: Who pays for that 6500-person majority-white police force with New Jersey mortgages and shore homes? Who is still paying for that? Who is paying now for all the indicted and un-indicted co-conspirator cops who are retired with full pay?
The protestations of the Fraternal Order of Police reflects their last futile effort and frustrations as they try to prevent justice from being done in Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case.
And they are losing. The FOP is losing the battle for public opinion, the battle in the courts, and the battle to keep the lid on the legacy of police corruption in Philadelphia.
The courts and the prosecution are finally open to hearing the crimes of the Frank Rizzo-led police force and the District Attorney’s office led by the likes of Ed Rendell, Lynne Abraham and Ron Castille.
Consider this: the real king makers in Philly need to cloud the issue to try and frame the issue. Talking about Krasner’s bias is a distraction and a ploy. Ed Rendell and Castille need to turn the focus away from explicit police and prosecutorial corruption and their complicity.
At the same time, we must remember that Larry Krasner and the DA’s office will fight to uphold the conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The truth is that Krasner is only going to petition the court for Mumia’s release when the case is already won, if then. This is not only because he is a “big L liberal” but because the evidence of Mumia’s innocence has been suppressed by the courts and prosecution for 37 years and it needs to be fully heard. It will take a whole lot more organizing and diligent, steadfast and brilliant lawyering for Mumia’s case to unravel as it sits before a very entrenched and unfavorable Philadelphia court system.
The new hearing in the Common Pleas Court will be an adversarial one, and it will test the new evidence and the credibility of the police and the prosecution.
“The bottom line is this. We are at the end of our line with our case,” said Maureen Faulkner in the Philadelphia Tribune and Harrisburg Capital Star.
The next step is freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal, his family and his supporters.
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