via Rachel Wolkenstein PHILLY BOOK LAUNCH — VERONICA & The CASE of MUMIA ABU-JAMAL

BLACK & NOBEL BOOKSTORE, Saturday, October 20 1-3pm
(Erie and Broad St)

With Valerie Jones (Veronica’s sister), Ramona Africa, Michael Coard, Hakim Hopkins,
Rachel Wolkenstein and Veronica’s family reading from her memoir.

Read the just-out article by Linn Washington in the Philadelphia Tribune, October 16, 2012:

New Book Reveals Sex Angle in Abu-Jamal Case

By Linn Washington Jr.

Members of Philadelphia’s criminal justice system brutally raped Veronica Jones – literally and figuratively.

Two policeman literally raped Jones in a remote section of Fairmount Park according to her account contained in a recently released book “Veronica & the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal as told to her sister Valerie Jones.”

–

That book also recounts one of the most outrageous incidents in the sordid history of Philadelphia court system abuses.

Philadelphia’s District Attorneys Office, aided-&-abetted by a local judge, figuratively raped Jones with an act of ugly witness tampering/intimidation: arresting Jones on the witness stand for a minor matter fished from the files of New Jersey police…police who were not pursuing that check-cashing charge.

That unusual and improper 1996 courtroom arrest incident should have incensed all due process defending appeals court judges but it didn’t – again dramatizing the officially sanctioned abuses riff in the Abu-Jamal case.

–

Veronica Jones became involved in the Abu-Jamal case on the December 1981 night when Policeman Daniel Faulkner was murdered.

–

Jones recounted seeing two men flee from the Center City site of Faulkner’s murder.

Abu-Jamal’s attorneys have maintained that Faulkner’s real killer fled the crime scene – consistent with eyewitness accounts by Jones and others.

–

Months of persistent pressure from Philadelphia police – including threats – led to Jones’ denying her crime scene observations during Abu-Jamal’s 1982 murder trial that put him on death row for thirty years.

Jones’ attempts to clear her conscious for providing false testimony in 1982 led to that insulting 1996 courtroom assault.

–

Many will see the most tantalizing aspect of Jones’ book, penned after her 2009 death by her sister, as not the rapes Jones endured but Jones’ first ever revelations about her intimate relationship with slain Officer Faulkner.

Jones had always publicly stated that Faulkner was a friend who often helped her when she worked as a prostitute in Center City for a few years.

–

The book recounts the evolution of that relationship between Jones and Faulkner from one of respective work-related street contacts to consenting sexual encounters.

–

Now some will shout – and shout loudly – that Jones’ accounts of her intimate involvements with Faulkner constitute a despicable sliming of the dead officer’s memory.

–

However, Jones’ account contains particular physical descriptions evidencing knowledge plausibly obtained from carnal contact since those descriptions are not contained in any publicly available documents.

–

While neither Faulkner nor Jones is alive to address Jones’ sex account written and verbal records list Jones persistently maintaining she knew Faulkner and Faulkner helped her.

There is a Philadelphia Police Department detectives’ interview report of Jones six days after Faulkner’s 12/9/81 murder where she states, “I knew Faulkner he saved me from being robbed once and he helped me once when a guy was beating me.”

–

When Jones came forward in early 1996 to describe her 1982 trial deceptions she stated she knew Faulkner and would do nothing to harm him. Jones said she needed to clear her conscious more than specially aiding Abu-Jamal.

Since 1996 Jones repeatedly acknowledged that she felt Abu-Jamal was falsely convicted in part from her flawed trial testimony.

–

During that 1982 trial when Jones tried to describe police orchestrated deceptions and deals Judge Albert Sabo barred the jury from hearing that testimony at the request of the trial prosecutor.

Many will reflexively dismiss Veronica Jones’ accounts just like they dismiss all evidence of grievous errors-&-omissions in the Abu-Jamal conviction.

–

But simply saying it isn’t so doesn’t mean it isn’t so.

In 1996 Judge Sabo caustically rejected Jones’ recantations weeks after he allowed NJ detectives to arrest Jones inside his courtroom at the behest of Philly prosecutors.

During that contrived courtroom arrest a sobbing Jones defiantly declared mistreatment would not force to lie against Abu-Jamal again.

–

Typically Sabo and prosecutors took no actions against anti-Abu-Jamal witnesses who admitted committing crimes comparable to the offense triggering Jones’ arrest.

–

The Pa Supreme Court curtly sanctioned Sabo’s mistreatment but a federal district court judge reviewing an Abu-Jamal appeal found the “cold paper record” of Jones’ 1996 testimony believable.

Yet, that federal jurist weaseled falsely claiming he had no legal authority to right Sabo’s wrong against Jones or Sabo’s other violations warranting a new trial for Abu-Jamal.

That 1996 courtroom-rape incident resurfaced recently when Republican Party national officials played dirty politics in a suburban Philadelphia congressional race.

–

GOP officials unleashed a smear campaign against a Democratic challenging an incumbent GOP congressman castigating that candidate as “radical” because her lawyer husband helped “cop killer” Abu-Jamal.

–

That husband represented Jones during that 1996 proceeding where she recanted her original testimony.

The low-balls thrown by justice system officials at Veronica Jones and others who counter the narrative of Abu-Jamal’s guilt convince millions around the world that this prolific writer is a political prisoner.

This past Saturday the French city of Bobigny named a street in honor of Abu-Jamal, making a statement about his unjust incarceration and his revered stature as a writer opposing injustice everywhere.

This Saturday an event for Veronica Jones’ book is scheduled for the Black and Nobel Book store in North Philly at 1pm.

–

Jones’ book contains a Forward and Commentary by Abu-Jamal, who applauds her “courage!”

That book also features a fact-providing Legal Afterword by attorney Rachel Wolkenstein, a longtime legal advisor to Abu-Jamal who was present during that ’96 courtroom rape of Veronica Jones.

-30-

–

Linn Washington Jr. is a graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship Program.