Daniel Faulkner

Daniel J. Faulkner (December 21, 1955 - December 9, 1981) was an American police officer in the city of Philadelphia who was murdered in the line of duty. Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of first-degree murder for the shooting and sentenced to death (his sentence has since been commuted to life imprisonment without parole after many years of appeals). Faulkner's murder was the culmination of a traffic stop in downtown Philadelphia, not initially involving Abu-Jamal, which escalated into an exchange of gunfire in which Abu-Jamal was himself shot and wounded by Officer Faulkner. Since 2000, the City of Philadelphia has memorialized Faulkner with a street designation and a commemorative plaque.
Life and career
Faulkner was the youngest of seven children in an Irish Catholic family from Southwest Philadelphia. Faulkner's father, who drove a trolley car, died of a heart attack when Faulkner was five. Faulkner's mother went to work and relied on her older children to help raise him. Faulkner dropped out of high school, but earned his diploma and an associate's degree in criminal justice while serving in the United States Army. In 1975, he left the Army, worked briefly as a corrections officer, and then joined the Philadelphia Police Department. Aspiring to be a city prosecutor, Faulkner enrolled in college to earn his bachelor's degree in criminal justice.
Abu-Jamal collapsed nearby and was taken into custody by responding police officers. Daniel Faulkner was pronounced dead-on-arrival. Abu-Jamal was charged with murder in the first degree and convicted of that charge in 1982. Abu-Jamal claims that he is innocent of the crime, with his supporters citing perjured testimony (later recanted) and contend that the Philadelphia Police Department knowingly presented false testimony against him.
Aftermath
Faulkner's widow, Maureen Faulkner, moved to California. In 1994, upon discovering that National Public Radio planned to broadcast a series of commentaries taped by Abu-Jamal from death row, she began a campaign of her own to counter the "Free Mumia" movement. Since then, she has made numerous public appearances in support of upholding Abu-Jamal's conviction and death sentence. In 1999, she visited The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington during its commencement ceremony to protest the selection of Abu-Jamal as one of five commencement speakers. Since he was a death row inmate at the time and therefore unable to attend, the graduates listened to a 13 minute audio recording of his address. On December 9, 2001, she returned to Philadelphia to attend a ceremony honoring Daniel Faulkner on the 20th anniversary of his murder. Five years later, on December 8, 2006, she returned there once again, where she made public comments in which she criticized and characterized Abu-Jamal's supporters as ignorant "know-nothings" and praised District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham for steadfastly defending against Abu-Jamal's many appeals to have his conviction overturned.
In 2000, ten mile long Roosevelt Boulevard was designated the Police Officer Daniel Faulkner Memorial Highway pursuant to an act of the state legislature. (The roadway's official name is still Roosevelt Boulevard.) In 2001, a plaque was set in the sidewalk at 1234 Locust Street to mark the spot of his death.
In 2007, Maureen coauthored a book with Philadelphia radio journalist Michael Smerconish entitled Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Pain, Loss, and Injustice. She describes the work as "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."
On April 26, 2011, the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, ordered a new sentencing hearing of Abu Jamal, due to wrong instructions to the jury by the trial judge.
In October 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to reinstate the death sentence that had been overturned by a lower court; and on December 7, after being given Maureen's blessing (since she says she didn't want to wait for Abu-Jamal's execution because she realized that all those years of endless appeals would only make her suffer more), the Pennsylvania DA dropped the death sentence for Abu-Jamal, instead sentencing him to life imprisonment without parole.

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