At the 1982 trial, Chobert’s testimony was as follows:

“I heard a shot. I looked up, I saw a cop fall to the ground, and then I saw Jamal standing over him and firing some more shots into him. Then I saw him [Jamal] walking back about ten feet and he just fell by the curb.”

N.T. 6/19/82, 210-211

Anthony Jackson made sure that the jury heard about Chobert’s discrepancy regarding the distance that he had originally stated Jamal “ran” before he fell in his initial statement as it compared to his testimony. While cross-examining Chobert, Jamal’s attorney repeatedly questioned him about the fact that he had altered this detail in his story. Chobert stood up to this blistering cross-examination and stated,

“I know who shot the cop and I ain’t going to forget it.”

N.T. 6/19/82, 27

Michael Scanlan

Michael Scanlan was a businessman who was visiting Philadelphia on December 9, 1981. He was returning to his hotel at 3:52 AM on December 9, 1981, having just dropped off a friend at his apartment. While sitting in his car, roughly 100 feet from 13th and Locust Street and waiting for the light to change, Michael Scanlan watched the entire murder unfold before him. In his statement, given at 4:24 AM, just 32 minutes after the shooting, Scanlan said:

I was coming down Locust St. in my auto, having just dropped a friend off at the Academy of Music at Broad and Locust. I had just stopped at the red light where the club Whispers is located. I noticed the Officer approach a black guy standing outside a car, in front of it. The Officer asked him a few questions and then he spread the guy across the car with his arms out, and the guy turned back around and swung at the Officer. The Officer pulled his Billy club out and swung hard at the guy, hitting him several times on the arm and the back. The guy was bigger than the Officer. Then I noticed another black guy come running across the street towards the Officer and the guy he was hitting. Then the guy running across the street pulled out a pistol and started shooting at the Officer. He had the gun pointed at the Officer. He fired while he was running at the Officer once, and the Officer fell down. Then he stood over the Officer and he fired three or four more shots point blank at the Officer on the ground. I looked around for another Policeman and didn’t see one, so I took off in my car to look for one. I found one on Walnut Street about a block towards Broad. I told them I had just seen an Officer get shot and told them where. I followed them down in my car. I lost them but I just went back down there.

Michael Scanlan Statement 12/9/81, 4:24 AM

In addition to detailing the step-by-step process by which Jamal killed Faulkner, Michael Scanlan was also clearly able to identify the shooter by the clothes he was wearing. In his statement Scanlan said:

I saw he [the shooter] had long, wide, sideburns, dark skin, wearing a black knit cap, like over the back of his head, holding the hair in. He had a long-sleeved sweater on. I think it was red and black, or yellow and black.

Scanlan Statement, 12/9/81

In fact, at the time of the shooting Jamal was wearing a red and blue-striped jacket.