Assata Shakur's Appeal Attorney
Shares Facts in Case (2005)
PLEASE REDISTRIBUTE
STATEMENT OF FACTS IN THE NEW JERSEY TRIAL OF
ASSATA SHAKUR:
Written by Evelyn A. Williams, dated June 25, 2005
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As a member of Assata’s New Jersey trial
legal defense team, and her appeal lawyer, I think a correct statement
of the circumstances of New Jersey Trooper Werner Foerster’s
death as established by exhibits, trial testimony and forensic evidence
and that conclusively repudiate the revisionist lies now being advanced
by the State of New Jersey as “fact”, need to be repeated.
It is be remember that the only surviving eyewitnesses
to the NJ Turnpike shoot-out were (1) Sundiata Acoli, (2) Trooper
Harper, (3) Assata and (4) the driver of a car traveling along the
NJ Turnpike at the time of the incident. Zayd Malik Shakur, a passenger,
was killed during the shootout.
1. Sundiata did not testify at trial, nor did he
make any pre-trial statements.
2. Harper’s testimony and actions are contained
in the following documents (admitted into evidence)
a. The three official investigative reports prepared
by Harper, in which he wrote that after he stopped the Pontiac,
he ordered Sundiata to the back of the car to show his driver’s
license to Trooper Foerster who had arrived at the scene. That Sundiata
complied without incident. That as he looked into the inside door
of the Pontiac to check the registration, Foerster yelled at him
and held up an ammunition clip. He stated that at the same time
Assata reached into a red pocketbook, removed a gun from it and
fired at him. That he immediately ran to the rear of his car and
fired at Assata, who had emerged from the car, and was firing at
him from a prostrate position alongside of the Pontiac. And it was
at this point that he shot her. (admitted into evidence)
b. His Grand Jury testimony where he swore under
oath to the truth of the statements he had made in his 3 official
reports. (admitted into evidence)
c. Trial transcripts of his testimony at
both Sundiata’s and Assata’s trials where he admitted,
under cross-examination, that he had lied in all three of his official
reports and in his Grand Jury testimony. That the truth was that
Foerster had never shown him an ammunition clip; that Foerster had
not yelled to him; that he had not seen a gun in Assata’s
hand while she was seated in the car; that Assata did not shoot
him from the car; and that he had not seen a red pocketbook.
d. Audio tapes of the official recorded NJ Turnpike
radio communications between all NJ State Trooper cars traveling
the Turnpike near the scene of the shoot-out, dated May 2, 1973,
which revealed that two additional turnpike patrol cars, those driven
by Trooper Robert Palenchar and Trooper Woerner Foerster, had been
ordered to aid Harper at the stop prior to the shoot-out. (admitted
into evidence)
e. The verbatim, hand-written record of what transpired
inside the NJ Turnpike Administration Building when Harper entered
it at or about 1AM on May 2, 1973, to report the shoot-out to Sergeant
Chester Baginski who was in charge of maintaining the official record
of turnpike occurrences on that (refereed to as the Station Bible).
Harper reported that he had just been involved in a shoot-out after
he had stopped a Pontiac containing three Black people, two men
and a woman, that he had been wounded, and that the Pontiac was
proceeding South on the turnpike. He gave the license plate number,
but did not mention that Trooper Foerster had arrived at the scene.
(admitted into evidence)
f. Audio tapes of the investigation conducted by
Detective Sgt. First Class Richard H. Kelly in the Administration
Building at 7:37AM that morning to determine why over an hour elapsed
from the time Harper entered the Administration Building that night
and the discovery of Foerster’s body. Statements by each of
the troopers present when Harper came into the Administration Building
revealed that Harper had not reported Foerster’s presence
at the scene and that no one was aware of the fact that Foerster
lay on the road beside his car in front of the Administration building
for over an hour, when his body was accidentally discovered by Trooper
O’Rourke who had left the Administration building to investigate
the scene of the shoot-out, less than 200 yards away. (admitted
into evidence)
3. Assata testified that Harper stopped the car
without any known reason, shot her with her arms raised at his demand,
and then shot her in the back as she was turning to avoid his bullets.
Almost mortally wounded, and semi-conscious, she climbed into the
backseat of the Pontiac to avoid further bullets. Sundiata drove
the car five miles down the road and parked it, where she remained
until State Troopers dragged her onto the road.
4. A driver traveling north along the turnpike
at the time of the incident testified at trial that he had seen
a State Trooper struggling with a Black man between a parked white
vehicle and a State Trooper car whose overhead revolving lights
lit up the area. He was unable to identify the Black man, and further
stated that he saw no one else on the road or at the scene. He immediately
reported what he had seen to New Jersey Police Headquarters.
It therefore remained only forensic evidence to
help determine the facts of that night as much as they could be
determined. The forensic evidence examined by both the New Jersey
crime laboratory in Trenton, New Jersey and FBI crime laboratories
in Washington, D.C. established the following:
1. The finger print analyses of every gun and every
piece of ammunition found at the scene showed there were no fingerprints
of Assata found on any of them. (The official analyses admitted
into evidence)
2. Neutron Activation Analysis taken immediately
after Assata was taken to the hospital that night showed there was
no gun power residue on her hands. Effectively refuting the possibility
that she had fired a gun. (The official analyses were admitted into
evidence)
3. As a result of the bullet Harper shot under
her armpit, while her arms were raised in, her median nerve was
severed, immediately paralyzing her entire right arm, shattering
her clavicle, and lodging in her chest so close to her heart that
an operation to remove it was not feasible. A neurologist testified
to that fact at the trial.
4. A pathologist testified that “There is
no conceivable way that the bullet could have traveled over to the
clavicle if her arm was down. That trajectory is impossible.”
5. A surgeon testified that “it was anatomically
necessary that both arms be in the air for Ms. Chesimard to have
received the wounds she did.”
The state offered no expert witnesses to refute
this medical testimony.
6. Photographs depicting the gunshot entry wound
under her armpit and the entry would of the bullet Harper shot into
her back were admitted into evidence during the trial.
Therefore, since no evidence existed that proved
Assata fired the bullet that killed Trooper Foerster, why was she
found guilty of his murder? There are several explanations:
The first is that the climate of hatred, prejudice
and racism that had so contaminated the Middlesex County jury pool
in 1973 that a change of venue was ordered, continued to exist in
1977. The unanimous opinion of the 1973 jury pool was “If
she’s Black, she’s guilty.” After three defense
motions for change of venue, Judge Leon Gerofsky granted the motion,
stating, “It was almost impossible to obtain a jury here comprised
of people willing to accept the responsibility of impartiality so
that defendants will be protected from transitory passion and prejudice.”
The trial was then moved to Morris County where Assata’s trial
was severed from Sundiata’s because of her pregnancy.
In 1977 Assata began trial for the second time
in this same Middlesex County, and this time jury nullification
was insured: The jurors chosen to determine Assata’s guilt
or innocence consisted of five jurors who were either relatives
or close personal friends of state troopers or of state law enforcement
officers.
However, Assata was not convicted of firing the
shot that killed Trooper Foerster. She was convicted as an accomplice
to his murder under New Jersey’s “aiding and abetting”
statute. Under New Jersey law, if a person’s presence at the
scene of a crime can be construed as “aiding and abetting”
the crime, that person can be convicted of the substantive crime
itself. Judge Theodore Appleby charged the jury that they were permitted
to speculate that Assata’s “mere presence” at
a scene of violence, with weapons in the vehicle, was sufficient
to sustain a conviction of the murder of Trooper Foerster. She was
also convicted of possession of weapons – none of which could
be identified as having been handled by her and of the attempted
murder of Trooper Harper, who had sustained a flesh wound at the
time of the shootout.
Now, 32 years after her conviction, a new, fabricated
version of Foerster’s death has emerged:
There is absolutely no evidence to support statements
made by Col. Joseph R. Fuentes, superintendent of the New Jersey
State Police, who said that “It was later determined that
Werner Foerster’s service weapon was ripped from his holster
as he lay wounded on the pavement, and he was executed with two
shots to the head from his own service weapon.”
But his motivation for making those statements
is clear:
1. To justify Assata being placed on the domestic
terror watch list along with Osama bin Ladin. He said, “Anyone
with a mindset that would execute a police officer once they were
on the ground is dangerous enough to be considered a domestic terrorism
threat.” But Assata is the only person convicted of a single
domestic crime who has been classified a terrorist and put on the
terrorism watch list, thereby nullifying the very definition of
“terrorism”
2. To justify the $1 million dollar bounty to be
paid from tax payers money. He said, “The reward money should
make Chesimard a much more attractive quarry for professional bounty
hunters.”
New Jersey State Assembly Speaker, Albio Sires,
a longtime member of CANF (Cuban American National Foundation, representing
Cuban exiles), said: “If Cuba’s citizenry could be informed
of the $1 million bounty and the real story of Chesimard’s
crimes, there is an increased likelihood of her being brought to
Justice…. We want the Cuban people to know the real story
about Joanne Chesimard and not the deceptive representation advanced
by the Castro regime. We want people to realize that she is not
a hero and she is really a violent criminal who is wanted for killing
a State Trooper and escaping justice.”
By falsely asserting that Assata shot Foerster
in the head while he lay helplessly on the ground, killing him “execution
style”, the US Justice Department hopes to strip Assata of
any of the sympathy and political support she now receives in the
United States and from the citizens of Cuba. By labeling her a cold-blooded
cop killer, the hope is that the real circumstances of the NJ Turnpike
as well as all the years prior to that event during which time Assata
was relentlessly hunted with the stated purpose of killing her on
sight for having committed crimes of which the government knew she
was innocent, will be forgotten.
But even as official lies are now being manufactured
to convert Assata into a terrorist, so that Cuba can be accused
of “harboring a terrorist” and to justify kidnapping
her, there are, in fact, two well-known and admitted, convicted
terrorists who are now being given safe harbor in the United States.
The US government has refused to extradite admitted
terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles, (charged with the shoot down of
a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing 73 civilians and convicted of
other terrorist acts including the Bay of Pigs). The US government
has also refused to extradite Posada’s convicted fellow terrorist,
Orlando Bosch, who escaped from Venezuela and came to Miami in 1987
with the assistance of the CANF, Jeb Bush and his father, the then
US Attorney, Gonzalez, who personally approved the bounty, also
approved prisoner torture at Abu Ghreb. Or that the approval came
after New Jersey resident, Michael Chertoff, was named Secretary
of the Department of Homeland Defense.
There are the facts. Let us not forget them.
- Evelyn A. Williams
Then what can you do?
- Add your organization's name to our list of endorsers/Take
petitions.
- Contact your Congressperson. Demand that he/she
rescind House Resolution #254 and ask them to support congressional
hearings on COINTELPRO. You can use a Congressional email service
to look up yuour rep's email: http://www.house.gov/writerep
- Download and print the "Hands
Off Assata Shakur" Flyer
- Plan a showing of the film Eyes of the Rainbow
(1997). This film portrays the life and current struggles of Assata
Shakur. Download and View: Eyes Of The Rainbow
- Keep visiting www.assatashakur.org
for current HOA-Campaign Info.
- Organize a The Hands Off Assata Shakur Campaign
Rally and Teach In in your respective cities and towns
- Send contributions: The Talking Drum Collective, P.O. Box 1921,
Stone Mountain, Ga. 30086
- Any questions, contact us at www.assatashakur.org
using the contact us form.
- Link to this site.
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