Maureen Faulkner’s lonely life sentence
For 37 years, Maureen Faulkner has stood a lonely vigil. She is the widow of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. He was gunned down Dec. 9, 1981. After a struggle following a street altercation, a wounded Faulkner lay on a sidewalk at 13th and Locust streets when a man stood over him and fired a bullet into his face at point-blank range.
A local activist and radio host, Mumia Abu-Jamal, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison. He has maintained his innocence.
Over the past nearly four decades, Abu-Jamal and his supporters have used every legal weapon in their arsenal in their attempt to overturn the verdict and win a new trial.
And Maureen Faulkner has met them at every step along the way, resolute in her determination that the man who so callously snuffed out her husband’s life never be free again.
Maureen Faulkner will never be free again. She lives with the reality of her husband’s murder every day.
She was back in Philadelphia again this week, determined that Daniel Faulkner’s life not be trampled in the push to overturn his killer’s verdict. As supporters of Abu-Jamal rallied outside the Criminal Justice Center at 13th and Filbert streets, Maureen Faulkner stood resolute inside the courtroom.
The latest twist in this legal saga in which Abu-Jamal and his supporters have used every legal avenue in the book in an attempt to win him a new trial hangs on a constitutional question.
And, oddly enough, a retired state Supreme Court justice. Ron Castille was a former Philadelphia District Attorney. The Abu-Jamal defense team is raising the question of whether Castille violated the convicted killer’s constitutional rights by not recusing himself from his appeals. Castille was the city’s top lawman from 1986 to 1981, before winning a seat on the high court. As D.A., Castille opposed Abu-Jamal’s successful appeals of the original death sentence imposed in the case. At issue is a memo written by Castille that Abu-Jamal’s lawyers argue show he was strongly involved in the push to have him executed for his crime.
They are backed up by a U.S. Supreme Court case that again involved Castille. In Williams vs. Pennsylvania, the justices ruled that Castille had erred when he involved himself in the appeals of another convicted Philadelphia killer.
The Philadelphia D.A.’s office told the judge that an exhaustive search had failed to turn up the memo in question.
Judge Leon Tucker did not rule on the request, instead scheduling another hearing for Aug. 30.
And so Maureen Faulkner’s lonely vigil will continue.
Every person is entitled to exhaust every legal opportunity in their quest for justice. This case is no different. After all, it’s been going on for 37 years.
Maureen Faulkner puts it a slightly different way. She believes Abu-Jamal and his supporters are “grabbing at straws.”
Some people believe Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner. Maureen Faulkner knows the feeling. She says she and her family have been political prisoners, trapped in the legal system by a neverending series of appeals and technical questions she fears one day will allow the man who was convicted of her husband’s murder, who was originally sentenced to death, to one day walk out of prison a free man.
There is an oddity in the legal arguments made by Abu-Jamal and his supporters that lies at the heart of this case.
No one seems to talk much about the events of Dec. 9, 1981. Officer Daniel Faulkner made what appeared to be a routine traffic stop for a car that was traveling the wrong way down a one-way street. Faulkner had the driver exit the car. A scuffle ensued. That’s when the driver’s brother ran up to the scene from a parking lot across the street. The man shot Faulkner in the back four times. Despite his wounds, Faulkner returned fire, striking the man. Before he fled, the wounded suspect stood over the fallen officer and shot him in the face, killing him.
The suspect attempted to flee but collapsed a short distance away and was captured by police, with the murder weapon still in his hand.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of murdering Officer Faulkner and sentenced to death. In December 2001, a judge threw out the death sentence and ordered a new sentencing hearing. In December 2011, the district attorney’s office abandoned the request for a new hearing on the death sentence and Abu-Jamal was sentenced to life in prison. In March 2012, the state Supreme Court rejected an appeal to overturn the life sentence.
Notice that single word – “life” sentence.
It’s the same one Maureen Faulkner has been serving, only she’s been doing it without her husband.
There are plenty of cases out there involving wrongfully convicted individuals, victims of a rigged system, corrupt cops or crooked prosecutors.
This does not strike us as one of them.
We hope the judge rejects this latest request and keeps a convicted cop killer behind bars.