Tuesday, April 10, 2001	Go to: S M T W T F S
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Abu-Jamal is allowed to fire lawyers, judge rules

The convicted killer has 60 days to hire counsel. He is working on his final appeal.

By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

A federal judge yesterday approved a request by convicted police killer Mumia Abu-Jamal to fire his longtime legal team.

In a brief opinion, U.S. District Judge William H. Yohn Jr. wrote that, because Abu-Jamal had hired his own lawyers, "he may change counsel at any time for any reason subject to court approval."

Thus, Yohn added, he had no need to hold a hearing or comment on Abu-Jamal's stated reason for firing his lawyers: that his lawyer had purportedly violated the lawyer-client relationship by writing an insider's account of the celebrated case.

Yohn postponed for 60 days any further action in Abu-Jamal's federal appeal of his death sentence in the 1981 murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner to give him time to hire new lawyers.

Defense attorney Daniel R. Williams, whose soon-to-be published book, Executing Justice, precipitated the controversy, declined comment on Yohn's ruling.

Williams has denied breaching the attorney-client privilege and maintained that he wrote the book with Abu-Jamal's approval.

In addition to his March 7 petition to fire Williams and veteran defense lawyer Leonard I. Weinglass, Abu-Jamal has also sued Williams and his publisher, St. Martin's Press, to block publication.

U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska in New York City has set a hearing for later today on Abu-Jamal's request for a preliminary injunction stopping publication.

Representatives of Justice for Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, the nonprofit group founded by Faulkner's widow Maureen, also could not be reached for comment.

Last month Maureen Faulkner called Abu-Jamal's move to dismiss his lawyers a "ploy" to "disrupt and prolong the appeal process."

Abu-Jamal is in the first phase of his third and final appeal of his conviction and death sentence, a federal process known as habeas corpus.

Abu-Jamal, 45, was convicted of shooting Faulkner, a decorated five-year veteran officer, who had pulled over Abu-Jamal's brother in an early morning traffic stop in Center City.

Abu-Jamal, driving a taxi, reportedly passed by, spotted Faulkner and his brother, and parked the cab.

Abu-Jamal has always maintained his innocence and said he was framed by police because of his activities with the radical Black Panthers group.

His appeal contends that his defense was undermined by an incompetent trial attorney and by the trial judge's refusal to authorize spending more money for his lawyer to hire pathology and ballistics experts who might have proved he was not the shooter.