“The second-most important prosecution witness, cab driver Robert Chobert, simply was not parked in the spot, allegedly right behind Officer Faulkner’s police squad car, where he claimed to have been and from where he claimed to have observed Mumia fire the shot that killed the officer. Polakoff says that even before he photographed the spot, the cab had not been there. Since the place was teeming with police only minutes after the shooting (the first officers arrived only 40 seconds after the events), Chobert also wasn’t able to move his cab – it was simply never there, but was parked in a quite different spot, namely to the North on 13th Street, as Chobert himself told a defense investigator in 1995.”
Moreover Polakoff also had his own comments on what he saw and heard at the scene. Schiffmann writes in Race: “According to Polakoff, at that time all the officers present expressed the firm conviction that Abu-Jamal had been the passenger in Billy Cook's VW and had fired and killed Faulkner by a single shot fired from the passenger seat of the car.”
“Polakoff further reports that this opinion on the part of the police about what had happened was apparently based on the testimony of three witnesses who were still present at the crime scene, namely, by the parking lot attendant in charge of the parking lot on the Northern side of Locust Street, by a drug addicted woman apparently acquainted with the parking lot attendant, and another woman. As Polakoff later heard from colleagues in the media, the parking lot attendant had disappeared the day after, while the drug-addicted witness died a couple of days later from an overdose. Whatever it was that these witnesses saw or did not see, we will probably never know – the interesting fact in any case is that neither of them ever appeared in any report presented by the police or the prosecution.”
Polakoff told Schiffmann that he was simply ignored when he repeatedly contacted the DA’s office to give them his account – and his photos – of the crime scene.
Schiffmann has informed Mumia’s lawyers about Polakoff’s evidence – who are looking into it further.
No Bullet Traces in Sidewalk
The prosecution claims that Mumia stood over and shot at Faulkner 3-4 times (with only one shot hitting him) while Faulkner was lying on his back. Schiffmann asserts that if this was true, there would have had to have been 2-3 large divots in the pavement (next to Faulkner’s body) resulting from the bullets’ impact. Since photos and police reports do not reveal any damage or bullet fragments in that location, Schiffmann concludes that the prosecution scenario must be false.
While this “missing divots” observation was publicly revealed in 2001 by Mumia’s former lawyers, Schiffmann is literally the first writer to investigate this further.
To support the assertion Schiffmann interviewed a German ballistics expert and was told that “such divots couldn’t possibly have been overlooked.” Says Schiffmann: “They were simply not there.”
Furthermore, photographer Pedro Polakoff, “emphatically denied that there could be any such divots beneath the blood or anywhere else in the area of the sidewalk to be seen on his photos.”
After asserting the fraudulence of the prosecution’s scenario, Schiffmann goes further and declares that the three prosecution witnesses supporting this scenario must have been lying. Even ignoring previous evidence that witnesses Robert Chobert and Cynthia White falsely testified, “the absence of any bullet traces or bullets in the sidewalk in front of 1234 Locust is irrefutable physical evidence that these two, plus witness Michael Scanlan did not tell the truth at Mumia’s trial. By that simple observation a central part of the prosecution’s theory is simply blown out of the water – and new evidence is on the table thereby for the coaching, coercion and manipulation of witnesses.”
Bullet and Fragments at Crime Scene
Schiffmann’s entirely original ballistics analysis is the most explosive section of Race Against Death. Researched for more than three years, this chapter analyzes both the unexplained bullet & fragments found in the doorway of 1234 Locust Street and the copper bullet jacket found on the sidewalk (all a full car-length from Officer Faulkner’s body).
Most likely the bullet shot into Faulkner’s Back (traveling at an upward angle and exiting slightly beneath his throat) came from the sidewalk behind Faulkner as he was facing northwest towards Mumia and towards the parking lot situated at the northeastern corner of the intersection 13th and Locust where Mumia came from. The most logical way for Mumia to approach the scene was diagonally from Northwest to Southeast – but the only bullet fragment found in or around 1234 Locust that could have had anything to do with the shot in Faulkner’s back traveled from Northeast to Southwest, at a sharp angle from where Mumia was approaching the scene! (For all this, see the diagrams attached to this article.) In his book, Schiffmann gives a meticulous ballistic analysis showing that even if Mumia had approached the scene in an indirect and awkward way by almost circumventing it first, the bullet fragment in question cannot have come from a shot fired by him at that time.
There was no evidence of any bullet further east down Locust – where it would have been had Mumia shot Faulkner from his more logical approach to the scene from a northwestern direction.
Schiffmann writes in Race that “this evidence shows that the first shot that hit Faulkner did not come from the direction from which Abu-Jamal approached the scene, could therefore not have been fired by Abu-Jamal, and was thus necessarily fired by some third person, a possibility that the prosecution has always adamantly denied.”
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
