Abu-Jamal pursued state post-conviction review, the outcome of which was a unanimous decision by six judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania that all issues raised by him, including the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, were without merit.

[2] On December 7, 2011, District Attorney of Philadelphia R. Seth Williams announced that prosecutors, with the support of the victim's family, would no longer seek the death penalty for Abu-Jamal.

Aspiring to attend law school and ultimately become a city prosecutor, Faulkner was enrolled in college and working toward earning a bachelor's degree in criminal justice administration when he was shot and killed by Mumia Abu-Jamal.

[15] Yvette Williams later claimed that while incarcerated with White in December 1981 she was told by her that she had not seen who shot Faulkner and that she had entirely fabricated a witness account identifying Abu-Jamal out of fear of the Philadelphia police.

[19] Magilton testified to witnessing Faulkner pull over Cook's car but, at the point of seeing Abu-Jamal start to cross the street toward them from the parking lot, he turned away and lost sight of what happened next until he heard gunshots.

[22] The original report of Gary Wakshul, a police officer who accompanied Abu-Jamal to and at the hospital, relates that "the negro male made no comments".

[8] Over two months afterwards, when interviewed by police Internal Affairs officers, Wakshul claimed to have remembered hearing Abu-Jamal's alleged confession.

The extracted slugs were identified as Federal brand .38 Special +P bullets with hollow bases, which matched the shell casings in Abu-Jamal's handgun retrieved at the scene.

"[34] For a similar period, William Cook also did not testify at the trial or make any statement about events that night other than saying to police at the crime scene repeatedly: "I ain't got nothing to do with this!

According to Cook, Freeman was sitting in the front passenger seat, armed with a .38, wearing a green army jacket, knowing of a plan to kill Faulkner, and participating in the shooting.

[36] Freeman's handcuffed and naked corpse was discovered in North Philadelphia on the night of the police bombing of the MOVE communal residence in 1985 and neither his name nor the fact of his presence at the crime scene was raised at any stage during the course of the trial and sentencing in 1982.

[37] At the time of his death, Daniel Faulkner was in possession of the replacement temporary driver license of Arnold Howard which the latter had recently "loaned" to Freeman for unspecified purposes.

At a post-conviction review hearing in 1995, William "Dales" Singletary testified that he witnessed the shooting and that the gunman was the passenger in Cook's car wearing an army overcoat.

[39] Singletary's account was deemed "not credible" and "medically impossible" (he claimed that Faulkner spoke after being shot in the eye at point blank range, which would have been instantaneously lethal, and that a police helicopter was in attendance, which no other witnesses described).

[25] Police officer Vernon Jones testified that at the crime scene Singletary had said that he had not witnessed any shooting other than hearing some shots that he thought were firecrackers.

[40] William Harmon, who had convictions for forgery, fraud and theft by deception, testified that he had seen a man other than Abu-Jamal kill Faulkner and flee in a car which pulled up at the crime scene.

[41] Court stenographer Terri Maurer-Carter stated in a 2001 affidavit that the presiding Judge had exclaimed, "Yeah, and I'm going to help them fry the nigger", in the course of a conversation regarding Abu-Jamal's case.

[45] In corroboration of the four prosecution eyewitnesses, Robert Harkins testified in 1995 that he had witnessed a man stand over Faulkner as the latter lay wounded on the ground, who shot him point-blank in the face and who then "walked and sat down on the curb".

In the sentencing phase of the trial Abu-Jamal read to the jury from a prepared statement and was then sworn and cross-examined about issues relevant to the assessment of his character by Joseph McGill, the prosecuting attorney.

He claimed that his rights had been "deceitfully stolen" from him by the Judge, particularly focusing on the denial of his request to receive defense assistance from John Africa (who was not an attorney) and his being prevented from proceeding pro se.

[54] The Philadelphia Office of the District Attorney, Daniel Faulkner's family, including his wife Maureen, the Fraternal Order of Police, and other law-enforcement-related organizations have expressed approval of the conviction and sentence—being of a view that Abu-Jamal murdered Faulkner while the latter was making a lawful arrest in the line of police duty, and that Abu-Jamal had received a fair trial.

[25] Its execution was suspended while Abu-Jamal pursued state post-conviction review, the outcome of which was a unanimous decision by six judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on October 31, 1998, that all issues raised by him, including the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, were without merit.

The charge and verdict form created a reasonable likelihood that the jury believed it was precluded from considering any mitigating circumstance that had not been found unanimously to exist.

[63] Eliot Grossman and Marlene Kamish, attorneys for Abu-Jamal, criticized the ruling on the grounds that it denied the possibility of a trial de novo at which they could introduce evidence that their client had been the subject of a frameup.

[64] Prosecutors also criticized the ruling; Maureen Faulkner described Abu-Jamal as a "remorseless, hate-filled killer" who would "be permitted to enjoy the pleasures that come from simply being alive" on the basis of the judgement.

[1] On July 7, 2008, appellate counsel petitioned the court for rehearing en banc, seeking reconsideration of the decision by the full Third Circuit panel of 12 judges.

The petition was denied on July 22, 2008,[68] and on April 6, 2009, the United States Supreme Court also refused to hear Abu-Jamal's appeal, letting the 1982 conviction stand.

[69] On December 7, 2011, District Attorney of Philadelphia R. Seth Williams announced that prosecutors, with the support of the victim's family, would no longer seek the death penalty for Abu-Jamal.

[3][70] Faulkner had indicated she did not wish to relive the trauma of another trial, and that it would be extremely difficult to present the case against Abu-Jamal again, after the passage of 30 years and the deaths of several key witnesses.

Williams, the prosecutor, said that Abu-Jamal will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole,[71] a sentence that was reaffirmed by the Superior Court of Pennsylvania on July 9, 2013.