Yet another witness has come forward to expose the police frame-up which has kept celebrated journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal on death row for over 20 years.

In a declaration filed last week in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit by Jamal's attorneys, Kenneth Pate swears that his half-sister, Priscilla Durham, in a telephone conversation with Pate in 1983 or 1984, repudiated her testimony against Jamal at his 1982 trial for the murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Durham, a security guard, was on duty at Jefferson Hospital on December 9, 1981, when Jamal and Faulkner were brought into the emergency room with gunshot wounds. According to Pate, Durham told him that the only statement Jamal made at the hospital was, "Get off me, get off me, they're killing me," when the police were interfering with his medical treatment. This directly --contradicts-- Durham's testimony at Jamal's trial that she heard him yell out, while surrounded by numerous police, "I shot the motherf---er and I hope he dies."

The story of Jamal's purported "confession" at the hospital was not reported for two months by any police officers. According to Pate, the police appealed to Durham to "stick with" them because, as a security guard, she was part of the "brotherhood" of law enforcement officers. Durham claimed at Jamal's trial that she had reported the alleged confession to her supervisor. Jamal's jury never heard the testimony of a police officer responsible for guarding Jamal at the hospital who had filed a written report shortly afterwards in which he said that Jamal had made no statements ­ the trial judge refused a defense request for a continuance in order to locate the officer.

Pate's declaration now fully explodes the "confession" story as a complete fabrication. With the presentation of Pate's testimony, Jamal's attorneys have now provided the courts with sufficient proof to refute every piece of alleged evidence used to convict Jamal at his 1982 trial: Witness statements by Yvette Williams and private investigator Mike Newman prove that the prosecution's purported "eyewitnesses," prostitute Cynthia White and cab driver Robert Chobert, did not even see the shooting. Arnold Beverly's dramatic declaration, corroborated by a lie detector test and a wealth of other evidence, establishes that he, not Jamal, shot Officer Faulkner in a "mob hit" procured by corrupt police and organized crime because Faulkner was an obstacle to the "pay-offs" racket that corrupt police were running in center city Philadelphia in the 1980's.

Despite the fact that no jury today could possibly convict Mumia Abu-Jamal after hearing all the evidence now available, he remains in prison and the Philadelphia District Attorney, egged on by the Fraternal Order of Police, remains committed to seeing him executed despite the evidence which proves his innocence.

For information on how persons or organizations can join in the amicus ("friend of the court") brief filed in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in support of Mumia's innocence by noted criminal defense attorney Michael Yamamoto, please e-mail icffmaj@aol.com or howardkeylor@attbi.org.

For more information:
Contact attorney Eliot Grossman at (626) 943-1945.