Faulkner’s and Smerconish’s respect for the uniform is not limited to just a respect for the man or woman in a police uniform who works the street. It is extended to mean respect for all elements of the political order that may be linked with such men and women: the Fraternal Order of Police, local judges and Supreme Court justices, District Attorneys, and any supportive politicians who stand with these groups.

Faulkner expresses throughout her book a near unqualified devotion to these institutional backers of the uniform. Twenty-some years after the trial, she still receives police escort and transport in police vans, to and from court hearings (144-5). She celebrates perceived public relations gains at offices and establishments frequented by Philadelphia police. She thrills to the roar of thousands of bikers on a memorial run for her slain husband, 12,000 of whom once received special escort from the Philadelphia Highway Patrol with Police Commissioner John Timoney leading the caravan (258). The bikers she celebrates would later organize themselves into B.A.C.U.P., Bikers Allied to Commemorate Uniformed Police, Inc.

One early book-signing event displayed respect for the uniform with a full-fledged cultural event at Geno’s Steaks, a Philly establishment renown for its unqualified support for police “This is very pro-cop. We believe in justice,” said Geno’s owner Jerry Vento at the signing event, also explaining why any Abu-Jamal supporters would find the place to be “…a little bad territory for them to come in here.” The signing included a ceremony complete with prayer, taps, and “Amazing Grace” on bagpipes played by the Philadelphia Police and Fire Pipes and Drum Corp.[3]

Faulkner, Smerconish and their supporters surely have every right to celebrate their freedom of speech and their publications, and to gather with their friends as they may wish. But the fact that they abound with respect and rituals for the uniform is not grounds for the integrity of claims they make about Abu-Jamal’s guilt or innocence.

Not only does such claimed allegiance to the uniform beg all the questions that have been debated in this case, it also overlooks the failure and corruption, the doing of injustice, which has been performed by those in police uniform in Philadelphia.

Maureen Faulkner’s support, personally and professionally, for the Fraternal Order of Police, the District Attorneys Office, Police Commissioners, and the police generally, includes her frequent words of praise for those who officiated at Abu-Jamal’s original trial and appellate process, first Judge Albert Sabo and prosecutor Joseph McGill, and also Hugh Burns who overseas the case today for the D.A.’s Office. There is no mention of the historical background of police corruption in Philadelphia.[4] Also unmentioned is the “2003 study by a state supreme court-appointed committee which confirmed that the entire Philadelphia legal system, along with the Pennsylvania appellate courts that review that system are rife with racism, and that death penalty prosecutions, especially in Philadelphia are poisoned by prejudice.”[5] Faulkner and Smerconish go out of their way to intentionally praise Judge Sabo (31-33, 132), even though both the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, hardly Abu-Jamal supporters, called for Sabo’s removal during the 1990s PCRA hearings.

Indeed, this book’s rhetorical strategy, rooting itself in “instincts” of pervasive respect for the uniform, may be, in Philadelphia at least, actually to sabotage the book’s persuasive appeal. With no mention of the history of corruption by uniformed authorities in Philadelphia the authors’ instincts become suspect.

Rhetorical Strategy No. 2 – Define Truth in Narrow Terms

The authors take some pains to tell us what they mean by “truth,” especially in the matter of determining the truth of Abu-Jamal’s guilt or innocence. “Truth,” they say, is “that which is testified to while under oath by an individual in the courtroom and is deemed credible by the court” (215).

Now no one would deny – and the supporters of Abu-Jamal’s claims to innocence or to have a new trial do not deny it either – that it is unimportant to take what has been testified to “under oath” and “deemed credible by the court” with utter seriousness. And so the Abu-Jamal supporters have been just as committed to reading the transcripts as Faulkner and Smerconish claim to be. But this book’s definition of truth as simply what is in the court transcripts is too narrow.

Debates, even at the appellate court levels, always meant looking also at the conditions under which the testimony and transcripts were produced: who was allowed to testify and who not, who may have been vulnerable to pressure from authority and who not, who may have been biased in presiding over the case and who not? Abu-Jamal’s advocates have pressed questions in all these areas, arguing, for example, that opportunities to testify before a jury in court are being denied to Veronica Jones who claims that she was pressured by police to not testify for Abu-Jamal, and still denied also to Terri Maurer-Carter who claims to have heard Judge Albert Sabo say during a break from the original trial, “Yeah, and I’m going to help ‘em fry the n-----.” They have argued that Judge Sabo’s bias limited and shaped the ways testimony was taken and what went into the transcripts.

There are many other examples of these ways of questioning the conditions under which testimony was taken and given. No argument is settled simply by the fact of what the transcripts say, but rather by careful reflection on the conditions that generated those transcripts, i.e. the social, political and procedural conditions that have enabled and limited those transcripts. That is the domain of “truth” not really explored by Smerconish and Faulkner.

Indeed, their very definition of what truth is turns readers away from bothering with those important questions. Truth is not guaranteed by what’s in a transcript record, but by assuring due process in constructing that record.

Rhetorical Strategy No. 3 – Caricature Advocates for Abu-Jamal’s New Trial

Faulkner and Smerconish sustain a caricature of the movement for Abu-Jamal, a depiction that uses distortion and exaggeration. Let us admit that at times individuals in support of Abu-Jamal have dished out distortion and exaggeration of Faulkner and Smerconish, or of their supporters. With regard to this book’s view of the Abu-Jamal supporters, though, the caricature is most severe. Consider three ways in which this is so.

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