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That is, whoever drove the wrong way on 13th around that time crossed Locust and went further south rather than making a turn onto Locust, a fact that was, and surely still is, known to Abu-Jamal prosecutor Joseph McGill. Even so, the mere -- and unfounded -- suspicion that the unspecified car observed by the unknown security guard might have been Billy Cook's VW made it into the papers the very next day, creating a long-lived myth Abu-Jamal's detractors now try to capitalize on -- and in rather shameless ways, as we will see later on (see below).
Apart from the above, McGill certainly also has to know there is positive evidence for the falsity of the "one-way" thesis. Prosecution witness Albert Magilton, a pedestrian who testified to not having seen the shooting himself but said he first saw both Faulkner and Cook approaching the intersection and, a while later, Abu-Jamal running across the street, stated at Abu-Jamal's trial that Cook had approached the intersection 13th and Locust driving on Locust, not 13th Street.
Thus McGill must be aware that his claim about Cook's "traffic violation" is false.
And his claims about this become doubly dishonest given the fact that he was also the prosecutor in Billy Cook's trial for aggravated assault on March 29, 1982, two and a half months before Abu-Jamal's murder trial began in which he also served as the prosecutor. Nowhere in this trial (nor in Abu-Jamal's own trial) did McGill make the slightest allusion to Cook having driven the wrong way on 13th Street, even though proving a traffic violation on Cook's part would have certainly made it easier to have Cook convicted for his alleged offense.
McGill's Tale II: How Faulkner Got Shot in the Back
McGill then claims that Faulkner took Billy Cook to the sidewalk on the southern side of Locust: "He took him right over to the sidewalk, this is police procedure." Then, according to McGill, Cook punched Faulkner "in the mouth," after which Faulkner turned Cook around to arrest him. At Abu-Jamal's trial, the star witness and prostitute Cynthia White had testified to exactly this version.
And then, "while this was occurring, and almost simultaneous to when this was occurring, which was rather curious," Abu-Jamal allegedly started running, "with his gun out," from the parking lot on the north side of Locust and started to shoot at Officer Faulkner.
The scurrilous thing about this is that the shot that hit Faulkner in the back exited just below his throat and that if Faulkner arrested Cook turning his back towards the street, it would have required almost a miracle for Cook to escape that bullet.
But there is more: Assuming the direction from which Abu-Jamal approached the scene according to McGill, the gunshot traces found at the scene are totally inexplicable.
One full bullet was found quite low in the right part of the door frame of the building Locust 1234, the entrance of which we see on the photograph. Apart from this, a bullet fragment entered the upper part of the entrance door and ended up in a wall of the vestibule 2 meters within the building, and sharply to the right of the position where the bullet struck the door.
For the first one to be the one which struck Faulkner in the back, there is almost no imaginable position (being on his knees and bending forward would come closest, but there is no evidence for this). Any possible relation of the second gunshot trace with McGill's scenario is even more mysterious as it was only one quarter of a full bullet, found sharply to the right from Abu-Jamal's alleged direction towards the scene.
That is troublesome enough, but a quarter century ago, McGill had presented a witness at both the trials of Cook and Abu-Jamal whose testimony was just as problematic -- and in flat contradiction with Cynthia White's testimony.
At Cook's assault trial, where Joe McGill also acted as the prosecutor, but never asked Cook whether he committed a "traffic violation" by driving down 13ththe wrong way, the central (and together with Cynthia White only) prosecution witness Michael Scanlan claimed that Faulkner, standing in the street roughly facing in the direction given by the left-hand arrow, had spread-eagled Cook on the hood of Cook's own VW when Abu-Jamal shot him in the back, an achievement hardly feasible even for a professional body artist given the fact that Abu-Jamal approached the building we see on the photo above from a parking lot on the other side of the street. If Faulkner had indeed managed to spread-eagle the recalcitrant Billy Cook on the hood of Cook's own VW as claimed by Scanlan at Cook's assault trial, and if therefore his own back pointed to the car parked in front of Cooks VW, it is a mystery how Abu-Jamal could
approach the scene without Faulkner noticing him
circle him and get in his back, with him, Faulkner and Cook all crowding in between the car in front of the VW and the VW itself, and
