On Monday, March 10th, attorneys for Mumia Abu Jamal filed new legal papers

centered on testimony from a former Philadelphia police informant by the name of Pamela Jenkins that gave further proof that police manipulated and pressured witnesses to give false testimony against Mumia Abu Jamal.

Pamela Jenkins was the central government witness in the federal investigation in the corrupt 39th precinct scandal which saw hundreds of convictions overturned and people released due to revelation that police in the 39th District (precinct) in Philadelphia had been guilty of gross corruption which included the framing of innocent people. Her testimony led to the

conviction of six 39th District officers.

In a signed statement to Mumia's attorneys in January, Pamela stated that

police officer Tom Ryan, one of the convicted police, had pressured her to give false testimony against Mumia in the shooting of police officer Daniel Faulkner. In her affidavit Pamela, who is a former prostitute and girlfriend of Tom Ryan, 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 "

In her affidavit, Pamela Jenkins also stated that the state's star witness against Mumia Abu Jamal during his trial in 1982, Cynthia White, was also subject to police coercion to make her give false testimony against Mumia. She states,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 police officers in

the district.... During the same period of time, Cynthia White told me that

she was afraid of the police and that the police were trying to get her to say

something about the shooting. Lucky [Cynthia White] also told me that she

had been threatened with her life by a police officer because of the Jamal case

In the legal papers filed by Mumia's attorneys with the Pennsylvania Supreme

Court it states, "In the days after the shooting, [White] was arrested at least twice for prostitution. Her picture was posted in the 6th District with instructions for arresting officers to 'Contact Homicide' Each time police picked White up and took her statement, she revised her story [on Faulkner's shooting] Without explanation, bench warrants against her were not prosecuted."

At the press conference following the filing of the new legal papers on March 10th, Leonard Weinglass, Mumia's lead attorney stated that Pamela Jenkins' affidavit "adds to the testimony already given by Veronica Jones about police intimidation and by witness William Singletary, calls for a new trial without further hearing, and in accordance with the doctrine of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania even mandates an absolute dismissal of the case against Mumia.

The testimony given by William Singletary and Veronica Jones both gives

credence to and supports what Pamela Jenkins is now saying. At Mumia Abu

Jamal's PCRA hearing in 1995 William Singletary testified that he had been

threatened by police to withdraw his original statement that he saw the shooter and it wasn't Mumia. Veronica Jones testified in a supplementary hearing in October of last year that Philadelphia police had threatened her with arrest and up to 15 years in prison if she did not change her original statement that she had seen two men run from the scene of Faulkner's shooting as Mumia lay

wounded on the ground.

At the October 1996 hearing in which Veronica Jones testified to her coercion, the state continued it's intimidation by threatening to have her arrested for perjury and passing a bad check. When she continued to tell the truth about what really happened, she was taken from the stand in handcuffs and carted off to jail. Despite this blatant attempt to scare Veronica into sticking with the story she had told at Mumia's trial, Veronica stood firm and would not change her story.

At the press conference on March 10th she made a public plea for Cynthia White to surface and tell the truth. She said, "We know we can bring this down to a nutshell if you just come forward. We've all lost a lot by coming forward, I've lost somebody I love dearly... Just do it this one time, one favor, that's not asking a lot. Then maybe you can clean up your past, like the rest of us are doing."

Cynthia White has not been seen since 1987 when she walked out of court following being released on her own reconnaissance after being arraigned on

felony robbery, assault and weapons charges. Detective Douglas Culbreth, who

was one of the detectives involved in the investigation on Mumia's case. told the GOUT that Cynthia White was a witness in a very high profile case and the district attorney's office agreed that Cynthia White would be allowed to sign her own bail. After Detective Culbreth's intervention Cynthia White signed herself out, skipped bail and has never been arrested in Philadelphia since, according to the legal papers filed by Mumia's attorneys.