"The Bible teaches that the truth will set us free, but Michael Smerconish and Maureen Faulkner teach us that even a powerful truth needs courage as its ally."
--Chris Matthews, Host of Hardball and the Chris Matthews Show
"Maureen Faulkner is a genuine American heroine. While influential people garner cheap headlines with stories of false injustice, Maureen Faulkner fights behind the scenes and in public to preserve the good name of her husband. This is a real justice story!"
--John Timoney, Miami Chief of Police
"This is a harrowing book, told with uncommon grace and dignity. Maureen Faulkner is an incredible woman. The story she tells, of being denied for more than a quarter century the dignity of burying her police officer husband in peace, is even more incredible."
--Buzz Bissinger,
Author of Friday Night Lights
Maureen Faulkner's husband, Philadelphia police officer 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, Alec Baldwin, and Susan Sarandon 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 (20,000-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.
