Talk:Daniel Faulkner

Summary
I suggest that the paragraph

"Daniel J. Faulkner (December 21, 1955 – December 9, 1981) was a police officer in the American city of Philadelphia who was shot and killed in the line of duty by Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal's trial, conviction, and death sentence has gained international attention."

be changed to

"Daniel J. Faulkner (December 21, 1955 – December 9, 1981) was a police officer in the American city of Philadelphia who was shot and killed in the line of duty. A journalist named Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted for the murder. Abu-Jamal's trial, conviction, and death sentence has gained international attention."

It is a more neutral statement that gives the same information as the present version, without immidiatley asserting that Abu-Jamal was the killer, which undeniably is a controversial statement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.227.135.226 (talk) 13:24, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

This article is about Daniel Faulkner, not Mumia. Stop giving more information about him than is needed. You can go to his page for that.

Use of "allegedly"
The word allegedly refers to a suspect in a crime before or after arrest and trial but most definitely prior to conviction. Once a criminal is convicted of a crime, the crime is no longer alleged unless the conviction is overturned. In the case of Daniel Faulkner's article, use of the word alleged or any of its derivatives is a blatant attempt to politicize the article. -- crash77mike 2005/01/16 17:02 GMT


 * That is true based on laws of libel, but legality aside there is still a question. Now, although before conviction it is compulsory that one use the word "allegedly" it is not necessarily wrong to use the world after conviction. Whether or not the man is convicted, the charges against him are still allegations insomuch as the world "allegation" does not imply either innocence or guilt. Saying that Jamal killed Faulkner, regardless of conviction seems to unintentionally invalidate the alternative theory. Either way you use the word, it will be a politicized article. I would say that he was convicted of killing Faulkner but that conviction is widely disputed. I hope that was coherent. Joe 05:05, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Avoiding the use of "allegation" or any related term, I altered the phrasing concerning Faulkner's murder to reflect that Abu-Jamal was convicted for Faulkner's murder without stating definitively that he committed it. His guilt, however, has been legally established, and without addressing the legitimacy of the proof of this in detail, I nevertheless believe this should preclude avoid further dispute about the way the article's introduction is worded. Since it's such a hotly-contested subject, I think the use of "alleged" in referring to the actually act of the shooting is admissible, at least until someone comes up with something better; I don't think it's too much of a weasel word to say that Abu-Jamal allegedly fired on Faulkner - this is, after all, the allegation in the charges brought against him. The fact that this allegation was legally substantiated doesn't mean it's no longer an allegation. --75.3.52.33 09:53, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, that Faulkner put a bullet into Mumia is well-established, but the order in which the bullets were fired is not. I rephrased to "Faulker also fired" rather than "Faulker returned fire" or anything of that sort to preclude the obvious claim by supporters of Abu-Jamal's innocence that he couldn't have been "returning fire" if Mumia never fired. It's clear enough that Faulkner fired at some point, that a bullet from his gun struck Abu-Jamal, and that Faulkner was also shot, but I think judgment ought to be reserved if possible on the other details of the shooting to avoid framing this as either a plain cop-killing or racial profiling and police brutality; the whole affair is certainly quite controversial enough as is. --75.3.52.33 10:01, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

" journalist, political activist, and member of the Black Panthers", If by journalist and political activist you mean 'a person that makes a violent comment on someone elses radio show, ONCE' then sure, mumia was a journalist and a political activist.

Uh, i'm not trying to argue or start anything, but it wouls be nice if someone could say that Mumia has only been accused of killing Faulkner, and not saying that Mumia did kill him like it was a fact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.206.173.147 (talk) 03:10, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Saying that Mumia "has only been accused" is not accurate. He has been accused, tried, and convicted of the murder.  Gnome de plume (talk) 19:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

This is a very serious issue. If you take the word of the judicial system as absolute truth, this could falsely change history. It is a big difference between being convicted of murder and actually murdering someone. I am not saying he did not do it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.114.74.65 (talk) 03:27, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You are right, the judicial system made mistakes before and it's word can't be used as absolute truth. I don't know if Jamal killed the cop or not, and neither does whoever written this. 187.23.161.130 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:50, 16 November 2009 (UTC).

This is silly. Unless Jamal's conviction is overturned, there is no reason to tiptoe around this article with "allegedly" and "supposedly". If we are not going to take the judicial system's convictions as true unless overturned, then every article pertaining to a criminal would need to be caked with "allegedly". This would essentially be assuming that a justice system conviction means absolutely nothing. Let's not be ridiculous and claim that simply because there have been overturned convictions and mistakes in the past that we should assume that all convicted criminals should be treated as only allegedly guilty despite a conviction. This is especially true for Jamal given the mountain of evidence against him. As Crash77mike clarified, "allegedly" should only be used in regards to post-arrest, post-warrant, or pre-sentencing articles. BeardedScholar (talk) 22:48, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

POV Concerns Addressed
As any reasonable POV concerns appear to have been addressed, I am removing the POV template, as per instructions at POV_check. --ThorstenNY 04:36, 4 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I put the POV tag back. See below.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Poyani (talk • contribs) 19:30, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Phrase "in the line of duty" disputed
Editor User:AntonioMontana has twice removed the phrase "in the line of duty" from the lead sentence:"Daniel J. Faulkner (December 21, 1955–December 9, 1981) was a police officer in the U.S. city of Philadelphia who was shot and killed in the line of duty."

The first removal was made with edit summary "less POV", and reverted by me with summary "This is not POV, it's simple fact. An officer being 'killed in the line of duty' says something quite different than an officer being 'killed'." The phrase was removed again four days later, with summary "Whether or not he was legally in the line of duty is certainly a subject of much controversy. Please do not revert."

Never one to shy away from an absurd waste of my time to prove a point, I googled for  and got 222 hits. I didn't see a single shred of support for such a ridiculous theory among them, or any reference to any such "controversy".

Among the 222 hits, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in its response to an Abu-Jamal appeal stated: In the underlying trial, a jury found Appellant guilty of first degree murder in the December 9, 1981 shooting death of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Appellant was also found guilty of possession of an instrument of crime. At the conclusion of the penalty phase hearing, the jury found one aggravating circumstance, the killing of a police officer acting in the line of duty, and one mitigating circumstance, no significant history of criminal convictions. Finding that the aggravating circumstance outweighed the mitigating circumstance, the jury returned a verdict of death.

Even this Amnesty International article calling for a retrial of Abu-Jamal states that Faulkner died in the line of duty.

I have again reverted the change. Before making this edit again, please bring it up here on this Talk page, with your sources. --CliffC 04:11, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Good catch. There's no controversy.  Faulkner was on duty when he was shot, therefore by definition he was shot in the line of duty, it's that simple.  There is no argument about this, and I fully support your reversions.  I'll try to keep my eye on the lead-in edits.  Ford MF 14:27, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Links to the *official* day-by-day trial transcripts and appeal records?
When someone makes an statement in Trial of Mumia Abu-Jamal or elsewhere like THIS, it would be nice to correct it by citing the official trial transcript or appeal record. Citing a document at http://www.justice4danielfaulkner.com doesn't look very convincing because of where it's hosted, and in this case the site doesn't seem to include any shell-casing testimony, at least not that Google can see. I did find two good cites elsewhere, but I think it's more convincing to link to the official documents. Also the use of frames for the trial transcripts at justice4danielfaulkner.com doesn't seem to allow a direct link to one day's transcript, unless I'm missing something. --CliffC 23:40, 4 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Leads on another source to these documents? Anybody?  --CliffC 00:23, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

How about a better photo? The one we have is only 100x125px
Can someone upload a better picture of Faulkner in uniform? The one we have is ridiculously small. There is a nice uncropped 282x300 version of the 100x125 Faulkner pic we use at http://www.thepolicenews.com/DanielFaulkner.jpg that would work well, but I don't know if we could claim that the same copyright applies. There must be some others out there. --CliffC 10:45, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Daniel faulkner.jpg
The image Image:Daniel faulkner.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check


 * That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
 * That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Media copyright questions. --19:57, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Edits August 2008

 * I counted five places where a pointless "lately", "eventually", or equivalent expressions were used. Of course a trial follows a crime and a sentence follows a conviction -- duh.
 * Community colleges don't award four year degrees. They are two year institutions whose highest degree is associate. Also, don't call an institution of higher education a "university" when its name is "college". Naïve editors.
 * Re quoting Maureen F. from the book she coauthored: Wikipedia would usually disapprove of us linking to a commercial site, like somebody did linking to Amazon for the sake of a footnote. If you want to cite a book, you don't need to link to a bookseller to do it! Christ! Besides, it made no sense to make a footnote for the book if you weren't going to give a page number. The key fact here was, Maureen Faulkner was quoted from this book, so it's redundant to make a footnote consisting only of the book title. The fact that the quote was from this particular book had not been put into the text, so put it in there.
 * A baby is born TO its parents, but born INTO a family. Hurmata (talk) 11:26, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Not a stretch of Roosevelt Blvd, but all of it
From the state legislature's bulletin: "BILLS SIGNED BY SPEAKER. Bills numbered and entitled as follows having been prepared for presentation to the Governor, and the same being correct, the titles were publicly read as follows:". . . . "An Act designating a portion of U.S. Route I in Philadelphia County as the Police Officer Daniel Faulkner Memorial Highway." Clearly, in previous edits, "a portion of U.S. Route I" was paraphrased mistakenly as "a stretch of Roosevelt Boulevard". Roosevelt Boulevard is a stretch of U.S. Route 1. Hurmata (talk) 03:12, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Slaying?
Slaying is a strong and emotive word, suggestive of something more than 'mere' murder. I've swapped it for the word killing. 188.221.105.22 (talk) 00:44, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Obvious Bias
The only way you could say "was murdered by" is if there was no doubt, an open confession in court or something. In this case, major international bodies have flat out rejected the conviction, then it is not proper to speak in the absolute. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.180.61.194 (talk) 21:50, 20 January 2010 (UTC)


 * He has been convicted of the murder of Daniel Faulkner. A conviction is the very definition of "there is no doubt". The only way a conviction may be overturned is if there is reasonable enough doubt of guilt to reopen the trial, which has thus far not happened. Unless this happens, Mumia is officially considered the murderer of Faulkner. BeardedScholar (talk) 22:56, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Major international bodies? Do they supercede a U.S. court of law? Sorry you're troubled by the "obvious bias" against a cop-killer, but the page reads correctly.Mk5384 (talk) 07:06, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * This article is grotesquely biased and full of OR. First of all, the most recent ruling on the subject is from the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals which is calling for a retrial. Secondly, a conviction is not the definition of "there is no doubt". A conviction is the definition of "beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of your peers" and that is only true for a court not totally disgraced by controversy and perjury (as is the case here). The article repeated mentions the activities of Maureen Faulkner in supporting the death sentence, without ever mentioning that there is a HUGE movement including every single human rights body in the world which point to evidence exonerating Abu Jamal. The statement which says that the Supreme Court stated that Abu Jamal should be executed in 2009 is OR and untrue.  The supreme court ruled that the 3rd circuit court should re-examine its ruling, which called for a re-trial.  This was done in 2011 by the 3rd circuit which, again, called for a retrial. Poyani (talk) 19:21, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

There is no call for a retrial, only a new sentencing hearing - that only determines the punishment, not the guilt, which has been established beyond any reasonable doubt —Preceding unsigned comment added by EscEscEsc (talk • contribs) 16:38, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

POV Concerns
I put the POV tag on because of WP:DUE. This article may just be the most extreme case of POV ever present on Wikipedia. There is a large volume of literature from very prominent sources, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN, the ACLU, and numerous other organizations which challenge the conviction. There is literature from government sources too. As noted elsewhere, there has been a large number appeals, many of which (including the very last one) at one point or another, have gone against the verdict. All of this literature is ignored and the article presents a very biased account, almost in complete contradiction of the large majority of published material on this subject. There are 1 or 2 books dedicated to arguing in favor of the death penalty and Abu Jamals guilt. These books are mentioned in the article. Searching through amazon one will result in dozens upon dozens of books detailing prosecution misconduct, police purgery, misconduct by the trial judge, etc. These books and all the material they contain are all excluded. There is a small movement to push ahead for the execution lead by Falkner's widow. This is mentioned. There is a massive international movement against the execution, which includes every single major human rights and civil rights organization in the world. These are excluded. The events described only present the events as they were presented by the prosecution at the trial (which lead to the conviction). The other side (which include an confession by a reputed criminal gangster, to the same murder, article / video) is totally excluded.

The weight of published material on this subject is clearly against the conviction. There are at least 700 words here arguing in favor of the conviction. to achieve due weight with respect to published material there would have to be a 7000+ word essay representing the side against conviction. I don't even know how we can go about achieving this. I propose deleting a large portion of the activities of Maureen Faulkner. It is not notable. It barely received coverage from the hometown paper. Poyani (talk) 19:43, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Then please present this sources.Also its advisable to introduce any new information in talk first. Because the matter is controversial.--Shrike (talk) 05:37, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
 * No Problem. Give me some time to get some proper research on the topic.  I will post everything here on talk before editing the actual article. That way the discussions can be sorted out first.  If after a few days there is no response I will change the article. Poyani (talk) 16:00, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It has been over 6 months. I'm removing the tag. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 21:13, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * No, sorry. Just because some lefties make a big fuss about, this is not a reason to follow their line.The conviction was soundly established and I don't think there any real reasonable doubts about Mumias guilt no matter what lefties do claim. --41.151.75.191 (talk) 12:10, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Heads up
For some reason, Wesley Cook AKA Mumia Abu-Jamal has been chosen as the Wikipedia poster boy ("featured article") of the day. Watch out for vandalism on this page. Mark Shaw (talk) 05:12, 11 July 2012 (UTC)