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THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
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Abu-Jamal team cites tape In affidavit, man confesses to killing By Joseph A. Slobodzian Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/14/2001
The videotape was filed Wednesday in US District Court in Philadelphia as part of Abu-Jamal's pending federal appeal and also released to reporters. It is the first public image of Beverly since Abu-Jamal's new legal team disclosed the affidavit in May.
In the affidavit, Beverly says that he, not Abu-Jamal, killed the Philadelphia police officer on Dec. 9, 1981. He said the killing was part of a ''mob hit'' contracted by corrupt police officers and organized crime figures angry at Faulkner for interfering in illegal gaming, drug dealing, and prostitution in the city.
Prosecutors have said the statement is ''absurd'' and at odds with every other witness on or near the scene when Faulkner was slain.
''I'm here to depose to the following and I'm willing to depose at any time in any courtroom of law,'' Beverly says in introducing the videotape.
In the video, Beverly is seated at a table in front of a nondescript light background. Beverly, a thin man with a goatee who appears to be in his 40s, has his face partly obscured by a black baseball cap and aviator-style sunglasses. His black shirt appears to be over a bullet-proof vest.
Although filed in federal court, the videotape's legal significance is questionable. It is not taken under oath or notarized and, according to Abu-Jamal lawyer Marlene Kamish, was made in the last two weeks.
Assistant District Attorney Hugh Burns, who is representing the state in the federal appeal, said he received a copy of the videotape but described it as meaningless.
''His statement is ridiculous nonsense and videotaping it doesn't make a difference,'' Burns said. ''I guess that means if I'm taped reading the Gettysburg Address that makes me Abraham Lincoln.''
The public release of the tape, however, is the latest in a series of public events designed to draw attention to efforts by Kamish and co-counsel Eliot Grossman to expand Abu-Jamal's challenge of his death sentence in federal and state courts.
''Beverly is ready and willing to testify although that hasn't seemed to impress the federal courts,'' Kamish said. ''What we're trying to do is to make that point very, very strongly.''
''This is a confessed killer,'' Kamish added, ''and to exclude this kind of evidence is an appalling situation.''
Kamish, however, declined to discuss other details about Beverly, his background, or current whereabouts.
Abu-Jamal fired his longtime lawyers, Leonard Weinglass and Daniel R. Williams, this year after Williams wrote an inside account of the case, ''Executing Justice,'' which was published in May.
Abu-Jamal, a former radical activist and radio journalist, contended that the book's revelations violated the lawyer-client relationship, although Weinglass and Williams maintained it was written with Abu-Jamal's assent.
After Kamish and Grossman took over the case, they announced that they had discovered the 1999 Beverly affidavit in the prior legal team's files.
Williams's book says that he and Weinglass did not use Beverly's affidavit because they did not believe him and thought that using it would harm Abu-Jamal's credibility and his chances of getting a new trial.
Thus far, Kamish has not been successful in getting a judge to consider the Beverly affidavit.
In July, US District Judge William H. Yohn Jr. denied her request for an emergency deposition, or sworn interview, of Beverly. The judge wrote that Kamish had not shown the ''requisite good cause to depose Beverly'' and had not found anything to corroborate his story.
Kamish has asked Yohn to reconsider that decision as well as his decision refusing her permission to amend and refile Abu-Jamal's federal habeas corpus appeal.
This story ran on page A11 of the Boston Globe on 9/14/2001.
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