Philadelphia Inquirer -  R. Halperin�s news - SEPTEMBER 13, 2001

PENNSYLVANIA: Abu-Jamal team releases video of confessor

It shows Arnold R. Beverly reading the affidavit in which he says he killed Officer Daniel Faulkner. Prosecutors call it "absurd."

Mumia Abu-Jamal's attorneys yesterday put a face on the mystery man they say confessed to murdering Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, releasing a 7-minute videotape of Arnold R. Beverly reading his 1999 affidavit.

The videotape was filed in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia as part of Abu-Jamal's federal appeal, and it was released to reporters. It is the 1st public image of Beverly since Abu-Jamal's new legal team disclosed the affidavit in May.

 Beverly's affidavit contends that he, not Abu-Jamal, fatally shot Faulkner on Dec. 9, 1981, as part of a "mob hit" contracted by corrupt police officers and organized-crime figures angry at Faulkner for interfering in illegal gaming, drug dealing and prostitution in the area of 13th and Locust Streets.

 Prosecutors have said the statement is "absurd" and at odds with every other witness on or near the scene when Faulkner was killed.

 "I'm here to depose to the following, and I'm willing to depose at any time in any courtroom of law," Beverly says in the videotape's introduction.

 He is seated at a table in front of a nondescript, light background. Beverly, a thin man with a goatee, appears to be in his 40s. His face is partly obscured by a black baseball cap and aviator-style sunglasses. His black shirt appears to cover a bulletproof vest.

 Although filed in federal court, the videotape's legal significance is questionable. Beverly was not speaking under oath, the videotape was not notarized, and, Abu-Jamal attorney Marlene Kamish said, it was made in the last 2 weeks.

 Hugh Burns, a Philadelphia assistant district attorney who is representing the commonwealth in the federal appeal, said he had received a copy of the videotape but described it as meaningless.

 "His statement is ridiculous nonsense, and videotaping it doesn't make a difference," Burns said. "I guess that means if I'm taped reading the Gettysburg Address, that makes me Abraham Lincoln."

 The tape's release, however, is the latest in a series of public events designed to draw attention to the efforts of Kamish and cocounsel Eliot Grossman to expand Abu-Jamal's challenge of his death sentence in federal and state courts.

 "Beverly is ready and willing to testify, although that hasn't seemed to impress the federal courts," Kamish said. "What we're trying to do is to make that point very, very strongly."

 "This is a confessed killer," she added, "and to exclude this kind of evidence is an appalling, appalling situation."

 Kamish, however, declined to discuss other details about Beverly, including his background and whereabouts.

 Abu-Jamal fired his longtime lawyers, Leonard Weinglass and Daniel R. Williams, this year after Williams wrote an account of the case, Executing Justice, which was published in May.

 Abu-Jamal, a former radical activist and radio journalist, said the book's disclosures violated the lawyer-client relationship, although Weinglass and Williams maintained that it had been written with Abu-Jamal's assent.

 After Kamish and Grossman took over the case, they announced that they had discovered the 1999 Beverly affidavit in the prior legal team's files.

 Williams' book says he and Weinglass did not use Beverly's affidavit because they did not believe him and felt it would harm Abu-Jamal's credibility and his chances of getting a new trial.

 Thus far, Kamish has not been successful in getting a judge to consider the Beverly affidavit.

 In July, U.S. District Judge William H. Yohn Jr. denied Kamish's request for an emergency deposition, or sworn interview, of Beverly, writing that Kamish had not shown the "requisite good cause to depose Beverly" and had not found anything to corroborate his story.

 Kamish has asked Yohn to reconsider that decision as well as his decision refusing her permission to amend and refile Abu-Jamal's federal habeas corpus appeal - his last round of appeals to reverse his conviction and death sentence in the shooting.