William Singletary, 65, Courageous Witness of Mumia's Innocence

"I learned from William Singletary's wife, Jeannette, that he died this morning. Bill was a courageous man who lived fighting to make the truth known that Mumia is innocent in the shooting death of police officer Daniel Faulkner. For that Bill suffered severe personal and financial consequences. I've known Bill since June 1990 when he came forward with his eyewitness testimony for Mumia and as a witness at the PCRA hearing in 1995, when I was co-counsel for Mumia." -Rachel Wolkenstein

William Singletary, 65, Courageous Witness of Mumia's Innocence

Mumia is Innocent, Free Him Now! By Steven Argue

William Singletary died on December 31, 2011 at 65 years of age. His wife, Jeannette, passed on this this final message to Mumia Abu-Jamal and all his supporters:

"I didn't know Mumia personally, but love him like a brother. I know what he's gone through and he is innocent. I would give up everything for Mumia to be free."

Mumia Abu-Jamal was framed and sentenced to death in 1981 for the murder of Officer Faulkner in Philadelphia. In 2011 the prosecution announced they would not seek to reinstate Mumia’s overturned death penalty, but Mumia continues to sit in prison for a murder he did not do. William Singletary, at great personal cost, helped reveal the truth of Mumia’s innocence.

William Singletary gave an eyewitness account of Mumia Abu-Jamal not being the shooter. He also gave an eyewitness account, one of many, of police threats and intimidation to obtain false testimony against Mumia Abu-Jamal. While William Singletary did sign a statement saying that Mumia did it on the night of the murder, he immediately stated after that he signed that statement under the duress of police threats. Of that statement he says, “That's what they made me say, I stayed in there [in a police interrogation room] from 4:30 to 9:30 a.m. and when I left, I felt like I had been raped.”

That night, while trying to intimidate William Singletary for refusing to lie about what he had seen, the police told William Singletary that they would beat him up in the elevator and destroy his business if he didn’t sign. He came out immediately after saying that what they forced him to sign was a lie. Cops with guns drawn then showed-up at his business, trashing his work place and hassling the drivers working for him. This police intimidation and harassment caused William Singletary to close his business. He then fled Philadelphia fearing for his life and the safety of his family.

William Singletary said he saw another man shoot Officer Faulkner, and it was not Mumia Abu-Jamal. He was in fact the only credible eyewitness to actually see who shot Officer Faulkner. He said that a man in a green army jacket got out of the VW stopped by police, shot Faulkner, and ran. This account was corroborated by other eyewitnesses as well as by physical evidence. Mumia Abu-Jamal was not wearing an army jacket that night and not riding in the VW. Nor did Mumia run away, he was shot and ran nowhere. The jacket Mumia was wearing is in evidence and it is a red quilted ski jacket with a couple blue stripes. Nor was William Cook, the driver of the VW, wearing a green army jacket.

The prosecution’s star witness, Cynthia White, gave two extremely different versions of events at two different trials. One version was given at William Cook’s trial, and a differing version at Mumia’s trial. At Cook’s trial she said there was a passenger in Cook’s VW. At Mumia’s trial she claimed there was no passenger.

In the case of Mumia, eyewitnesses have said that the passenger in Cook’s VW was one of the actual killers. Yet Mumia was not riding in the VW and the prosecution claims that Mumia was the lone killer. So in Mumia’s trial, it was useful for the prosecution to disappear the passenger from the testimony, despite White’s other testimony that there was a passenger. These two differing versions, obviously including perjured testimony, were cynically used by prosecutors to fit differing prosecutions.

There is also physical evidence of a passenger in the VW, evidence that was illegally suppressed by the prosecution for 13 years. That evidence was an ID found on the body of Officer Faulkner. It was in the name of Arnold Howard. At the time of the shooting, as a result of this evidence, Arnold Howard was arrested by the police and tested to see if he had fired a gun the night of the shooting (something interestingly enough never done to Mumia Abu-Jamal). Arnold Howard told the police that he had loaned his ID to Kenneth Freeman. (Transcript for August 11, 1995, pp. 130-131.)

Along with physical evidence, the VW driver, William Cook, also placed Kenneth Freeman as the passenger in the VW. In Cook’s signed declaration of what happened he also says Freeman was carrying a .38 that night. Cook went on to say, in that declaration, that after the shooting,

“Poppi [Kenneth Freeman] talked about a plan to kill Faulkner. He told me that he was armed on that night and participated in the shooting. He was connected and knew all kinds of people. I used to ask him about it but he talked but never said much. He wasn't a talker. I didn't see Poppi [Kenneth Freeman] for a while after that. Poppi [Kenneth Freeman] had been in Germany in the army. That night he was wearing his green army jacket.”

On May 14, 1985, according to the testimony of Arnold Howard, Kenneth Freeman’s naked corpse was found outside in the cold handcuffed. No investigation was carried out on Freeman’s death and the coroner reported the cause of death to be a heart attack. This has the appearance of an extra-judicial police murder of an actual killer of Officer Faulkner, but has not been investigated.

The prosecution’s version of events denies anyone on the scene wearing a green army jacket. Besides Singletary and Cook, five other eyewitnesses also put a man in a green army jacket on the scene. These were stake out Officer Forbes (the putative first officer to arrive), Officer Stephen Trembetta, Robert Magiltan, Michael Scanlan, and Arnold Beverly, who has confessed to being one of two people who killed Faulkner. Beverly states in his confession that he was also wearing a green army jacket that night as well.

In addition, the prosecution’s version of events denies anyone running from the scene. Six eyewitnesses contradict this by saying they saw men running from the scene. These would have been the real shooter or shooters. Those eyewitnesses are Dessie Hightower, William Singletary, Veronica Jones, Robert Chobert, Arnold Beverly, and William Cook.

Before the trial, Veronica Jones changed her story before she testified. In her original version of events, contained in a report she gave to police, Veronica Jones said she saw two men running from the scene. Yet at the trial the two men running were missing from her testimony. This came as a complete surprise to the defense because Mumia’s supposed attorney, Anthony Jackson, did not even bother to interview witnesses before the trial. Earlier in the trial Mumia was denied his legal rights when his attempt to fire Anthony Jackson was denied by Judge Sabo.

Jones retracted her 1982 court testimony in 1996, saying that her original police report was the truth, and that she was coerced by the police into saying she didn’t see anybody running from the scene. She gave this testimony despite being forcefully reminded by Judge Sabo that her testimony could be seen as an admission of perjury and could land her seven years in prison. She was in fact arrested from the witness stand, but for a bounced check from a different state, being served with an insufficient warrant by out of state New Jersey State Troopers.

Despite the police harassment, and a review of her entire criminal history on the witness stand, including her life as a prostitute, Jones brought her children to court to learn from her mistakes. She explained that she was relieved to be setting things straight because what she did to Mumia with her false testimony had been eating her up inside over all those years.

On the stand, admitting to perjury, Jones explained that she was awaiting trial for an unrelated robbery charge in 1982 when police detectives approached her in her cell offering to give her a deal by changing her story as a witness in Mumia’s case. She had originally stated that she heard two shots, looked around the corner, and saw two men running from the scene. The two men running fit the version of William Singletary where he saw someone else shoot Mumia and run, but it didn’t fit the police/prosecution story being woven against Mumia.

She explained that the deal offered by the police was that she could go to prison for five to ten years and lose custody of her two young children or she could get out of the predicament by lying for the police saying that nobody was running from the scene.

Despite the importance of the testimony of Veronica Jones in Mumia’s case, both in corroborating eyewitnesses who say the actual killer or killers ran from the scene, and as another witness testifying to a clear pattern of police intimidation to acquire falsified testimony, Judge Sabo ruled in 1996 against her testimony being heard by a new jury trial.

Likewise, in the original trial, Sabo ruled in favor of prosecution objections when Veronica Jones was already admitting to being the target of the police in their attempts at gaining false testimony:

"I had got locked up [together with other prostitutes] I think it was in January [1982]. […] I think sometime after that incident. They were getting on me telling me I was in the area and I seen Mumia, you know, do it, intentionally. They were trying to get me to say something that the other girl [Cynthia White] said. I couldn’t do that."

As Jackson continued this questioning, Veronica Jones said, “we had brought up Cynthia [White]’s name and they told us we can work the area [as prostitutes] if we tell them [what the police wanted to hear].” At this point Judge Sabo ruled in favor of prosecutor McGill’s objections and would only allow further questions of Veronica Jones on what she saw the night of the shooting. As from the beginning of the trial, ruling after ruling has declared police misconduct is not open to scrutiny and a court of law is no place for evidence of Mumia’s innocence.

So it is established, with her contradictory stories, that Cynthia White was not telling the truth. This would be bad enough. But, in fact, none of the nine eyewitnesses who testified at the trial and subsequent hearings can remember seeing Cynthia White at the immediate scene at all. None, this includes the other prosecution witnesses.

William Singletary states that he saw her earlier down the street. When he saw her she said, “Hey, how you doing? It's cold out here.” Then noticing his car she said “a brand-new Cadillac Eldorado, 1982 model, wow, that's a great car! You ain't that bad-looking either. But I don't date black guys.” To which Singletary says he responded, “And I don't date prostitutes.” Singletary says that she then walked down the street and didn’t actually see the shooting. ("Witness: Abu-Jamal didn't do it" Philadelphia Daily News Dec. 8, 2006)

In fact, Cynthia White confessed to both Pamela Jenkins and Yvette Williams that she did not see the shooting and that the police put the screws to her to lie. In addition, a mountain of testimony shows a clear pattern by the police to try to get similar perjured testimony from other people.

In a hearing after the trial, Pamela Jenkins testified, “I know that Cynthia White worked as a prostitute in the Center City area, specifically at Locust and 13th Street, during 1980 and 1981, and that she was a prostitute, police informant, and turned tricks for the police officers in the district.”

If in fact Cynthia White was a police informant, and this information was withheld from the defense by the prosecution, that alone would be legal grounds for a new trial, but it gets much worse.

Jenkins testified at hearings in 1997 that Police Officer Thomas Ryan tried to make her testify that she saw Mumia shoot Officer Faulkner at the original trial, even though she was not at the scene of the shooting. Jenkins, 15 and a prostitute, was the girlfriend of Officer Ryan at that time. She also testified that she worked both as a prostitute for the police and as a police informant for the corrupt Center City Police.

Jenkins also testified that Cynthia White told her in late 1981 that she was also being pressured to testify against Mumia, and that White was afraid for her life. In a signed affidavit Jenkins states,

“Tom Ryan, Richard Ryan and other police officers pressured me and asked me if I had seen the shooting of the police officer and whether I had been in the area of the shooting that night. When I said 'no' they pressured (me) some more and asked me was I really sure that I hadn't been on the street that night and seen the shooting. It was clear to me that Tom Ryan and Richard Ryan wanted me to perjure myself and say that I had seen Jamal shoot the police officer." .......................

Whatever the exact motive or motives, the mountain of police, prosecutorial, and judicial misconduct in this case proves that the criminal “justice” system both had (and has) no interest in finding the real killer or killers while at the same time desiring to imprison and execute an innocent man.

Despite great personal cost, William Singletary stuck to his story and told the truth. He stands as an exemplary fighter in the struggle for justice.

FULL TEXT CAN BE FOUND AT THE LINK BELOW:

The Revolutionary Tendency of the Socialist Party (RT-SP) demands: Freedom for all political prisoners including Mumia Abu-Jamal! And we call for an end to the corrupt, repressive, and brutal police occupations of communities of color throughout the United States through the abolition of all current police forces and the building of new ones controlled by the people through a new revolutionary proletarian democracy. Join the RT-SP.

For more information on the RT-SP see: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/01/07/18704314.php

For more information on what you can work for Mumia’s freedom, see: http://www.laboractionmumia.org/index.html

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