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Exactly 64 days after that officer filed his no-comment report, he told detectives his delay in revealing the confession resulted from him not realizing the confession "had any importance until today."
Evidence of perceived injustice underlying Abu-Jamal's conviction literally hides in plain sight.
One glaring example is photos of the Dec. 9, 1981, crime scene taken by police investigators that don't show two central elements of the prosecution's case against Abu-Jamal.
A main pillar of the prosecution's case against Abu-Jamal was eyewitness testimony from a cab driver named Robert Chobert.
Prosecutors proclaimed Chobert sat in his cab when watching Abu-Jamal murder the police officer. But police crime scene photographs don't show Chobert's cab behind Officer Faulkner's patrol car where prosecutors say it was parked.
The trailer for a forthcoming film about Faulkner's slaying features four police photos showing different angles of the crime scene. Chobert's cab is not shown in any of those photographs.
There are only two possible scenarios for the missing cab in those official crime scene photos: either police tampered with the crime scene by removing the cab or the cab was never there. Either scenario is a major legal violation that should warrant a new trial.
Also missing from official police crime scene photographs are bullet marks in the sidewalk around the fallen body of Faulkner fired from Abu-Jamal's gun.
Prosecutors claimed Abu-Jamal executed Faulkner by firing four times at the fallen officer's body at point blank range, hitting Faulkner once in the face and missing three times.
Yet, a sophisticated computer examination of crime scene photos conducted a few years ago by a NASA scientist who analyzes deep space photographs revealed no bullet marks in that section of sidewalk that should be clearly visible if Abu-Jamal acted as prosecutors claim.
It is impossible ballistically for three specialized high-velocity bullets to strike a sidewalk at point blank range without leaving any marks.
The prosecution's other prime eyewitness was Cynthia White, a prostitute with a long arrest record and pending criminal charges at the time of Abu-Jamal's June 1982 trial.
During Abu-Jamal's trial, the prosecutor told the jury that White hadn't received any offer of leniency or other considerations in exchange for her testimony.
Yet immediately after Abu-Jamal's conviction, Philly prosecutors dropped those charges pending against white.
Examples of Injustice
Remember that Philadelphia police and prosecutors applied that "open-and-shut guilt" assertion to four other men arrested for three separate murders in 1981 -- the year of Abu-Jamal's arrest.
