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Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Loss, Pain, and Injustice
The first book to definitively lay out the case against Mumia Abu-Jamal—and those who’ve elevated him to the status of political prisoner
Maureen Faulkner’s husband, Philadelphia police office Danny Faulkner, was shot between the eyes on a cold December night in 1981. Mumia Abu-Jamal was unanimously convicted of the crime by a racially mixed jury based on: the testimony of several eyewitnesses, his ownership of the murder weapon, matching ballistics, and Abu-Jamal’s own confession.
After his conviction, however, a national anti-death penalty movement was started to “Free Mumia;” Mike Farrell, Ed Asner, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jesse Jackson rallied on his behalf, and led the charge. For his part, while on death row, Abu-Jamal published several books, delivered radio commentaries, was a college commencement speaker, found himself named an Honorary Citizen of France, and had his defense coffers enhanced by ticket sales from a sold out (16,000-person) concert featuring Rage Against the Machine.
Here, from Maureen Faulkner and acclaimed talk show host / journalist Michael Smerconish, is the first book to carefully and definitively lay out the case against Abu-Jamal, and those who’ve elevated him to the status of political prisoner. Smerconish, a lawyer, has provided pro bono legal counsel to Faulkner for over a decade and knows both the legal intricacies and personal subtleties of the case like no other person. He’s personally acquainted himself with the more than five thousand pages of trial transcript. “My reading starkly revealed that Abu-Jamal murdered Danny Faulkner in cold blood and that the case tried in Philadelphia in 1982 bore no resemblance to the one being home-cooked by the Abu-Jamal defense team.”
As Abu-Jamal’s lawyers contemplate their final appeal, Faulkner and Smerconish weave a compelling, never-before-told account of one fateful night and the 25-year-long rewriting of history.
Maureen Faulkner’s husband, Philadelphia police office Danny Faulkner, was shot between the eyes on a cold December night in 1981. Mumia Abu-Jamal was unanimously convicted of the crime by a racially mixed jury based on: the testimony of several eyewitnesses, his ownership of the murder weapon, matching ballistics, and Abu-Jamal’s own confession.
After his conviction, however, a national anti-death penalty movement was started to “Free Mumia;” Mike Farrell, Ed Asner, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jesse Jackson rallied on his behalf, and led the charge. For his part, while on death row, Abu-Jamal published several books, delivered radio commentaries, was a college commencement speaker, found himself named an Honorary Citizen of France, and had his defense coffers enhanced by ticket sales from a sold out (16,000-person) concert featuring Rage Against the Machine.
Here, from Maureen Faulkner and acclaimed talk show host / journalist Michael Smerconish, is the first book to carefully and definitively lay out the case against Abu-Jamal, and those who’ve elevated him to the status of political prisoner. Smerconish, a lawyer, has provided pro bono legal counsel to Faulkner for over a decade and knows both the legal intricacies and personal subtleties of the case like no other person. He’s personally acquainted himself with the more than five thousand pages of trial transcript. “My reading starkly revealed that Abu-Jamal murdered Danny Faulkner in cold blood and that the case tried in Philadelphia in 1982 bore no resemblance to the one being home-cooked by the Abu-Jamal defense team.”
As Abu-Jamal’s lawyers contemplate their final appeal, Faulkner and Smerconish weave a compelling, never-before-told account of one fateful night and the 25-year-long rewriting of history.
349 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 23, 2016
This felt like a long read by about 3/4 of the way through, but I'm glad I got around to it. The endless, repetitive nature of the recurring nightmare that is this author's life is captured perfectly in this book. I learned a great deal about a large gap in our legal system: the right of the defendant, or in this case convict, to drag the victim's family and friends into court over and over and over for reasons that are 100% manure. I was shocked to learn how long this is going on -- Mumia shot her husband all the way back in 1981! -- and even more shocked to learn that MOVE is the group keeping the fire lit under his nonsensical claims. I completely disagree that this is about political correctness or the ascendancy of the left wing, and I disagree with Maureen Faulkner's repeated statements that MOVE caused their own house fire, but the main point of the book -- that you wouldn't support Mumia Abu-Jamal if you knew the facts of his case -- is another matter entirely. Read this if you have any interest at all in this case, in Internet advocacy or in people's mass belief in stupid ideas.
December 31, 2014
I did not finish this account of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner's death and the staged trial of Mumia Abu-Jamal, written by the officer's widow, Maureen Faulkner and Michael A. Smerconish, but read enough to say that I found it disingenuous and one-sided.
I do not claim to be unbiased on this case. Having been introduced to Mumia's commentaries through local radio broadcasts aired in my Philadelphia-area workplace in 1972, having read of harassment and murders carried out by the FBI's Counter-Intelligence Program (CoIntelPro) against groups such as the American Indian Movement and the Black Panthers (see Agents of Repression The FBI's Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party the American Indian Movement), which were working to defend their communities against armed aggression by government officials at all levels, I doubted the allegations against Mumia from the start.
I found that the Faulkner book did not address most of the important points raised by advocates for Mumia in earlier books that I had read, including Race for Justice by Leonard Weinglass and Killing Time An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal by Dave Lindorff. Included in an appendix was a very limited, and unilluminating, selection from the trial transcripts. I read at least the first half of the book, and skimmed the remainder to confirm my impression that the authors focused little attention on the debate over Mumia's guilt, while providing a lot of information about the Faulkners in happier times, and the widow's suffering.
The book failed to address defense contentions that prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense and refused to take statements that contradicted their allegations, that testimony from key witnesses such as White and Chobert had been coerced, contradicting their own earlier (improperly withheld) statements, and that Officer Wakshul's disputed testimony of his belated recollection contradicted his own earlier statements.
Another of the issues not addressed was the assertion by defense attorney Leonard Weinglass in 1995, that the "bloody shirt" episode so emotionally described by Faulkner could not be true, since "Mr. Jamal was not in the courtroom at the time the criminalist displayed Officer Faulkner's shirt ..." (see 1995 FAIR article, Mumia Abu-Jamal: Silenced on Death Row).
I had noticed this book on a new acquisitions shelf at the Free Library of Philadelphia (FLP), some time after its 2008 publication. I was curious why FLP had over 50 copies of this book in its catalog, but not a single copy of what I considered the best book I had read on the subject, The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal, also published in 2008. I thought it unlikely that FLP would have purchased so many copies and wondered whether they might have been donated by the authors, or the publisher, or one of the groups lobbying for Mumia's execution.
I obtained the O'Connor book through Inter-Library Loan around the same time, and after I finished reading it, I requested that FLP purchase a copy. As of 12/31/2014, FLP has one copy, with one more on the way. As of today, FLP holds 34 copies of the Faulkner book, of which 3 had been checked out. I have checked this catalog record a number of times over the years and believe that I never saw more than 2 or 3 copies in circulation, even in 2009.
O'Connor is a long-time crime reporter who begins by saying that he had known little of the case beforehand but had been inclined to think Mumia guilty. He concludes that the likely shooter was Kenneth Freeman, of whose presence at the crime scene the jury was not told. See Johanna Fernandez on What Fox News and Hannity Blocked Me From Saying: Mumia as Fuel for Right-Wing Agenda.
I do not claim to be unbiased on this case. Having been introduced to Mumia's commentaries through local radio broadcasts aired in my Philadelphia-area workplace in 1972, having read of harassment and murders carried out by the FBI's Counter-Intelligence Program (CoIntelPro) against groups such as the American Indian Movement and the Black Panthers (see Agents of Repression The FBI's Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party the American Indian Movement), which were working to defend their communities against armed aggression by government officials at all levels, I doubted the allegations against Mumia from the start.
I found that the Faulkner book did not address most of the important points raised by advocates for Mumia in earlier books that I had read, including Race for Justice by Leonard Weinglass and Killing Time An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal by Dave Lindorff. Included in an appendix was a very limited, and unilluminating, selection from the trial transcripts. I read at least the first half of the book, and skimmed the remainder to confirm my impression that the authors focused little attention on the debate over Mumia's guilt, while providing a lot of information about the Faulkners in happier times, and the widow's suffering.
The book failed to address defense contentions that prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense and refused to take statements that contradicted their allegations, that testimony from key witnesses such as White and Chobert had been coerced, contradicting their own earlier (improperly withheld) statements, and that Officer Wakshul's disputed testimony of his belated recollection contradicted his own earlier statements.
Another of the issues not addressed was the assertion by defense attorney Leonard Weinglass in 1995, that the "bloody shirt" episode so emotionally described by Faulkner could not be true, since "Mr. Jamal was not in the courtroom at the time the criminalist displayed Officer Faulkner's shirt ..." (see 1995 FAIR article, Mumia Abu-Jamal: Silenced on Death Row).
I had noticed this book on a new acquisitions shelf at the Free Library of Philadelphia (FLP), some time after its 2008 publication. I was curious why FLP had over 50 copies of this book in its catalog, but not a single copy of what I considered the best book I had read on the subject, The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal, also published in 2008. I thought it unlikely that FLP would have purchased so many copies and wondered whether they might have been donated by the authors, or the publisher, or one of the groups lobbying for Mumia's execution.
I obtained the O'Connor book through Inter-Library Loan around the same time, and after I finished reading it, I requested that FLP purchase a copy. As of 12/31/2014, FLP has one copy, with one more on the way. As of today, FLP holds 34 copies of the Faulkner book, of which 3 had been checked out. I have checked this catalog record a number of times over the years and believe that I never saw more than 2 or 3 copies in circulation, even in 2009.
O'Connor is a long-time crime reporter who begins by saying that he had known little of the case beforehand but had been inclined to think Mumia guilty. He concludes that the likely shooter was Kenneth Freeman, of whose presence at the crime scene the jury was not told. See Johanna Fernandez on What Fox News and Hannity Blocked Me From Saying: Mumia as Fuel for Right-Wing Agenda.
March 30, 2009
To anyone who thinks that they know anything about the murder of Daniel Faulkner, I suggest you read this book. It is a scary look into one woman's fight to keep the sentence of her husband's killer. Now 30 years after the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, Mumia Abdul Jamal is still alive and is supported by A-list celebrities who claim his innocense, completely ignoring evidence presented in court. This book gives a disturbing look into our justice system.
March 29, 2008
The question is not if he did it but why he become a folk hero? This book does a good job teling the events that led up to Mumia becoming well known arond the globe. They do a good job laying out the evidence & refuting all objections put out by his team (who are raking in money to defend him). An easy read.
February 25, 2008
A must read for those of you who are sick of criminals manipulating the system - oh, it also calls-out stupid celebrities of support murders through their dumb azz causes
January 21, 2008
This is a tough book to read because I feel for the widow of Officer Danny Faulkner. Mumia is somewhat of a modern day Alger Hiss except that the latter supporters were mainstream liberals while the supporters of Mumia are mostly kooks. This book tells the story of what actually happened on the evening of December 9, 1981 when Mumia Abu-Jamal murdered Danny faulkner while the latter was arresting Mumia's brother for driving the wrong way down a one-way street. It contains portions of the trial transcript and other relevant documets. It was actually a very easy case. Moreover, the president of General Motors would not have gotten a fairer trial. The defense attorney had won 16 out of 23 death cases prior to this one. I cannot imagine any criminal defense attorney who could have won this one. After discussing the trial, the book goes into how certain people championed Mumia's cause. Perhaps the worst offender is Amy Goodman and the Pacifica Radio network. The book shows how a group of dedicated albeit misguided supporters can totally rewrite events. The book will make you mad but read it anyway.
July 17, 2008
I was busy with my 1st baby when all of this happened and in light of the recent cop killings in Philadelphia and an interview with Maureen Faulker, I was drawn to it. It's amazing how they made out Mumia to be a folk hero. Movie, media and television personalities along with many college students & groups - France named a street for him and our former Mayor Street was a closet supporter. My heart goes out to Maureen because it's been dragging on for so many years. On the downside, the story was too repetitious - by the time I got to the end of the book, I was too worn out to read the court transcripts at the end.
March 4, 2008
I enjoyed this book for the info that it provided as well as the insight of the slain officer's widow. I did find it repetitive at times.
April 23, 2013
Mumia should have been "fried" a long time ago.....
July 17, 2021
Maureen Faulkner published her book twenty six years after the 1981 murder of her husband, Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. While on patrol duty, he had stopped a car driven by William Cook; a scuffle broke out between the officer and the driver outside the car. Cook's brother, Wesley Cook, aka Mumia Abu-Jamal, was the driver of a taxi which happened to be at the same late-night red light district scene. He took it upon himself to leave his cab, and then he shot the officer in the back with his registered revolver. The officer had the chance to return fire, hitting Mumia, before falling to the ground. Mumia walked over to the the injured officer and emptied the remaining four bullets into him, killing him instantly. Mumia was arrested for murder.
The following year, Mumia was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in a Philadelphia court. In the movies, this would be a convenient ending to the story but it did not happen that way here. In fact, the story is still developing. Maureen Faulkner has been witnessing the twists and turns the case has taken in court and enduring the publicity surrounding it from its beginning.
Her first ordeal of trying to mentally navigate the American justice system occurred during the 1982 trial of Mumia. His followers, which included a highly vocal contingent of members of the anarchist/primitivist group MOVE, intimidated and insulted the widow inside and outside the courtroom. Mumia was a disrupting factor himself, causing the presiding judge to expel him for a good portion of the time that the trial took place. Mrs. Faulkner joins the original prosecutor in insisting that despite all of the distractions caused by the defendant and his friends, Mumia received a fair trial. Appellate courts have agreed.
During the time period leading up to the book's publication, there have been three post-conviction appeal hearings conducted. None have found any evidentiary reason to reconsider the imposition of the death sentence or the original conviction. Nothing of any substance was introduced which would give credence to the defendant's request for relief at these hearings, but they did serve the defense's purpose of continuing to keep the case present in the public eye while Mumia's supporters kept pressing the message that he was wrongfully convicted.
This case wasn't just tried in the criminal courts. The defendant in the Faulkner murder case has become an international cult figure. The anguish of dealing with all of this attention to her husband's murderer, and the marshaling of support from left-wing ideologues and Hollywood celebrities are two of the main reasons that Maureen Faulkner needed to write a book putting forth her view of the truth of the matter. It's one thing to experience the aftermath of the murder of a loved one. It's quite harder to see the convicted murderer represented in his appeals by internationally known lawyer Leonard Weinglass, of Chicago Seven, Pentagon Papers and Hearst Kidnapping trial fame and to have cities thousands of miles away honor him, first with Mayor Brown's issuance of a certificate for Mumia's "outstanding service" to San Francisco during a city-sponsored "Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal day", followed by naming of a street in Mumia's name in a district of Paris, France.
This book therefore doesn't end with any kind of "closure" for the victim's family. At the time of publication, Maureen was writing about the need to travel to Philadelphia for yet another post-conviction hearing. This time, the appeal reason was based on accusations that the wording to the jury instructions in the original trial caused confusion regarding "aggravating" and "mitigating" factors. As explained by the trial's prosecutor, former assistant D.A. Joe McGill,the appeal forces the decision as to whether the jury had been given instructions with the proper spacing of key words, such as " .. how many words away from the word mitigating was to the word unanimous" (Location 3915).
That issue was not finally resolved by the appeals court until the Faulkner book came out. Since then, there have been developments, which I will report, as they stand to the best of my knowledge at the time of this review:
In 2008, a Federal appeals court cited flawed jury instructions following the trial, and said Mumia's death sentence should be thrown out. In 2011, prosecutors agreed with the defense that Mumia's sentence should be reduced to life in prison. In 2012, a final appeal for a new trial was rejected. This was supposed to be Mumia's last chance of appeal in Pennsylvania. However, a new issue arose upon the accusation that Mumia couldn't have received fair consideration by the Pa. Supreme Court in his appeals because former Justice Ronald Castille made statements about police killers when he had been Philadelphia D.A. This would give Mumia another chance to reargue his appeal because of the perception of bias.
One month later, in January 2019, current Philadelphia D.A. Larry Krasner filed notice that he would challenge the higher court order to review the Mumia case. Meanwhile, his office announced it had found six boxes of Mumia case materials in a storage area; these materials were not, evidently, disclosed or used at trial. How this bears on the chance for appeal is in the hands of the state Superior Court.
Then, in April 2019, D.A. Krasner dropped his challenge to Mumia's new appeal for retrial. This was upsetting, of course, to the victim's family, and in September 2019 Maureen requested the state Supreme Court to remove Krasner from involvement in the case, based on allegations that the law firm where Krasner's wife worked had represented Mumia, as had a top deputy of the D.A.
In February 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered appointment of a Special Master to look into Maureen Faulkner's request, and by March a Senior Judge from McKean County was appointed for that purpose.
In December 2020 a divided state Supreme Court ruled the Philadelphia city prosecutors would not be disqualified from the Mumia case, thereby rejecting Mauree Faulkner's argument.
Mumia has been in court on another matter during his current incarceration. He had filed suit originally against the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections concerning its failure to provide him with anti-viral drugs to combat Hepatitis C. In January, 2017, in a ruling with implications for the medical treatment of other inmates in need of expensive medications, a Federal judge ordered the state to make the medicine available to Mumia. In July 2019, the Federal 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, upholding a lower court's decision, held that Corrections Department employees are not immune from being sued over their decisions concerning the violations of the rights of inmates who are denied HepC drugs.
The following year, Mumia was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in a Philadelphia court. In the movies, this would be a convenient ending to the story but it did not happen that way here. In fact, the story is still developing. Maureen Faulkner has been witnessing the twists and turns the case has taken in court and enduring the publicity surrounding it from its beginning.
Her first ordeal of trying to mentally navigate the American justice system occurred during the 1982 trial of Mumia. His followers, which included a highly vocal contingent of members of the anarchist/primitivist group MOVE, intimidated and insulted the widow inside and outside the courtroom. Mumia was a disrupting factor himself, causing the presiding judge to expel him for a good portion of the time that the trial took place. Mrs. Faulkner joins the original prosecutor in insisting that despite all of the distractions caused by the defendant and his friends, Mumia received a fair trial. Appellate courts have agreed.
During the time period leading up to the book's publication, there have been three post-conviction appeal hearings conducted. None have found any evidentiary reason to reconsider the imposition of the death sentence or the original conviction. Nothing of any substance was introduced which would give credence to the defendant's request for relief at these hearings, but they did serve the defense's purpose of continuing to keep the case present in the public eye while Mumia's supporters kept pressing the message that he was wrongfully convicted.
This case wasn't just tried in the criminal courts. The defendant in the Faulkner murder case has become an international cult figure. The anguish of dealing with all of this attention to her husband's murderer, and the marshaling of support from left-wing ideologues and Hollywood celebrities are two of the main reasons that Maureen Faulkner needed to write a book putting forth her view of the truth of the matter. It's one thing to experience the aftermath of the murder of a loved one. It's quite harder to see the convicted murderer represented in his appeals by internationally known lawyer Leonard Weinglass, of Chicago Seven, Pentagon Papers and Hearst Kidnapping trial fame and to have cities thousands of miles away honor him, first with Mayor Brown's issuance of a certificate for Mumia's "outstanding service" to San Francisco during a city-sponsored "Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal day", followed by naming of a street in Mumia's name in a district of Paris, France.
This book therefore doesn't end with any kind of "closure" for the victim's family. At the time of publication, Maureen was writing about the need to travel to Philadelphia for yet another post-conviction hearing. This time, the appeal reason was based on accusations that the wording to the jury instructions in the original trial caused confusion regarding "aggravating" and "mitigating" factors. As explained by the trial's prosecutor, former assistant D.A. Joe McGill,the appeal forces the decision as to whether the jury had been given instructions with the proper spacing of key words, such as " .. how many words away from the word mitigating was to the word unanimous" (Location 3915).
That issue was not finally resolved by the appeals court until the Faulkner book came out. Since then, there have been developments, which I will report, as they stand to the best of my knowledge at the time of this review:
In 2008, a Federal appeals court cited flawed jury instructions following the trial, and said Mumia's death sentence should be thrown out. In 2011, prosecutors agreed with the defense that Mumia's sentence should be reduced to life in prison. In 2012, a final appeal for a new trial was rejected. This was supposed to be Mumia's last chance of appeal in Pennsylvania. However, a new issue arose upon the accusation that Mumia couldn't have received fair consideration by the Pa. Supreme Court in his appeals because former Justice Ronald Castille made statements about police killers when he had been Philadelphia D.A. This would give Mumia another chance to reargue his appeal because of the perception of bias.
One month later, in January 2019, current Philadelphia D.A. Larry Krasner filed notice that he would challenge the higher court order to review the Mumia case. Meanwhile, his office announced it had found six boxes of Mumia case materials in a storage area; these materials were not, evidently, disclosed or used at trial. How this bears on the chance for appeal is in the hands of the state Superior Court.
Then, in April 2019, D.A. Krasner dropped his challenge to Mumia's new appeal for retrial. This was upsetting, of course, to the victim's family, and in September 2019 Maureen requested the state Supreme Court to remove Krasner from involvement in the case, based on allegations that the law firm where Krasner's wife worked had represented Mumia, as had a top deputy of the D.A.
In February 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered appointment of a Special Master to look into Maureen Faulkner's request, and by March a Senior Judge from McKean County was appointed for that purpose.
In December 2020 a divided state Supreme Court ruled the Philadelphia city prosecutors would not be disqualified from the Mumia case, thereby rejecting Mauree Faulkner's argument.
Mumia has been in court on another matter during his current incarceration. He had filed suit originally against the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections concerning its failure to provide him with anti-viral drugs to combat Hepatitis C. In January, 2017, in a ruling with implications for the medical treatment of other inmates in need of expensive medications, a Federal judge ordered the state to make the medicine available to Mumia. In July 2019, the Federal 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, upholding a lower court's decision, held that Corrections Department employees are not immune from being sued over their decisions concerning the violations of the rights of inmates who are denied HepC drugs.
May 24, 2018
Ms. Faulkner, along with the help of Michael Smerconish, painstakingly recounts the details of the murder of her husband, Officer Daniel Faulkner. She documents her ongoing battle with the Jamal lawyers, as well as political support groups, to set the record the straight and remain loyal to the facts. She insists on the guilt of Mumia and confronts every claim made in Mumia's defense in "Jamal-land." Mumia becomes, in spite of her efforts, a celebrity, giving commencement speeches and even having a street named after him in Paris. These two figures are symbols of a broader struggle in American culture.
February 10, 2017
Admittedly, the writing style took some getting used to. However the information was clear and concise. Mrs. Faulkner has been through hell. I have never had a doubt backing her in the past. This book gave me more information, making me more resolute in that stance.
December 2, 2017
i believe in the justice system....but this guy is a cold blooded killer and idiots
out there support him and hes gotten way too many appeals.....and the celebrity
he has become because of this makes me sick
out there support him and hes gotten way too many appeals.....and the celebrity
he has become because of this makes me sick
Want to read
December 23, 2008I had no idea there was a book written by Maureen Faulkner. This is a case I care about. So interested in reading this book.
May 22, 2013
He should fry
August 8, 2013
Excellent book! Please read if you are confused by the whole Mumia controversy. Yes it is written by Daniel Faulkner's widow but is very interesting.
June 29, 2016
Very informative.
June 9, 2020
There is alot of debate on the issue of this book. Please remember it was written by Maureen and what her and her family have been going through still after all these years. We have to remember at the time our DA Ed Rendell who later went on to become our Mayor anf Governor made her a promise. If she agreed not to pursue the death penalty he would never see the light of day.
Just this year, our new DA Krasner wanted to retry him. He did not even call her. She heard it from a local news station. She has had to deal with this since 1981. She need closure not celebrities willing to champion him.
Just this year, our new DA Krasner wanted to retry him. He did not even call her. She heard it from a local news station. She has had to deal with this since 1981. She need closure not celebrities willing to champion him.
September 12, 2020
A first hand account of what the spouse of a fallen officer has to endure. And the nonsense that the officer’s killer ( I refuse to mention him by name ) and his defense team and supporters put her through. A good read altogether.
January 30, 2026
Maureen Faulkner, I applaud you.
October 23, 2009
This is not a book I would have picked up on my own. A friend (you know who you are) lent it to me. It is the story of Maureen Faulkner, young widow of the police officer shot by Mumia Abu-Jamal. Though I had heard of Abu-Jamal, I knew little about the murder, the trial and the many appeals. The book is obviously and understandedly very one-sided. While I feel tremendous sympathy for Maureen, I found the book repetetive and poorly written, a complaint I have about most autobiographies and books written by "non-writers."
Regarding the bigger issue of the death penalty, even after reading this book I remain ambivalent. In a practical sense, the death penalty makes sense, rather than housing, feeding and providing what many consider luxuries to convicted killers. However, in a deeper sense, reflective of my upbringing and religion, I believe that only God should take a life.
Regarding the bigger issue of the death penalty, even after reading this book I remain ambivalent. In a practical sense, the death penalty makes sense, rather than housing, feeding and providing what many consider luxuries to convicted killers. However, in a deeper sense, reflective of my upbringing and religion, I believe that only God should take a life.
June 11, 2012
This was a difficult but rewarding read. While Mumia has become a celebrity cause and commencement speaker, many people are unfamiliar with the details of the case. Written by his widow and a conservative media icon, there is an obvious bias in the writing, but this is an important side to the story that deserves to be told alongside the other Mumia rhetoric.
September 24, 2011
Poorly written. I like listening to the author on the radio and the story is one I care about and share Michael's view on, but the book is so poorly written as to bore me to tears. Didn't finish it.
March 5, 2014
This book gives a good overview of the case from the widow's perspective. One thing that bothered me was she kept saying he wasn't a political prisoner yet she kept referring to his Black Panther Party affiliations. You can't have it both ways.
Read
March 28, 2008Found out about it from BBC
May 27, 2009
Waste of eyesight.
April 4, 2014
Wow. Powerful and at times, hard to get through. An ongoing tragedy that makes you think.
January 26, 2015
Sorry France, he did it. Don't care much for the death penalty, but this guy is such a steaming turd. Excellent book by a idiot author.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews