Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 00:22:24 -0400
From: "C. Clark Kissinger"
Subject: Sabo's Ruling on Pamela Jenkins' Testimony
Sender: owner-spg-l@asterix.xs4all.nl

Judge Sabo Announces Opinion on Pamela Jenkins Hearing

On July 24, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Albert Sabo announced his ruling on the evidence presented by Pamela Jenkins and other witnesses in the hearings held June 26 to July 1: "Upon review and consideration of the testimony offered by Pamela Jenkins it is hereby ordered and decreed that the Defendant, Mumia Abu-Jamal's petition for Post Conviction Collateral Relief is denied."

In his twenty-page opinion, Sabo rejected every piece of testimony offered by Mumia's defense team, and accepted every claim offered by the prosecution. In particular, he accepted the District Attorney's claim that the 1982 trial witness Cynthia White was dead, based on a partial copy of a death certificate for a Cynthia Williams. This claim was substantiated solely on verbal assurances by several police officers that they had found the fingerprints of the deceased to match those of the Cynthia White. Yet the fingerprints themselves were never produced and the fingerprint code on the death certificate did not match that given for Cynthia White in Philadelphia police records.

Still Sabo concluded that: "Jenkin's testimony was effectively discredited by the Commonwealth and conclusively proven to be fabricated. A great part of Jenkins' testimony involved purported communications with and sightings of White at a time when White was deceased."

Judge Sabo also included a succinct statement of his own bias in the case, as follows: "Finally, it should be noted that the evidence against Abu-Jamal was overwhelming, including multiple eyewitness accounts, highly compelling circumstantial evidence and incriminating admissions by the Defendant." This last point is a reference to the "confession" allegedly made by Mumia the night of the shootings - a "confession" that police officers suddenly "remembered" two months after the incident.

Sabo's opinion on Pamela Jenkins' testimony will be forwarded to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court which is still considering Mumia'a appeal of Judge Sabo's 1995 decision not to grant him a new trial.