Mr. Jackson immediately began to work on Jamal’s defense. The record reflects that the court initially allocated roughly $13,000 to pay for Jackson’s services and for investigative costs. It later allocated an additional amount, in excess of $1,400 to hire investigative experts in Jamal’s behalf. (N.T. 7/28/95, 29-30) Jackson has acknowledged that he also received undisclosed amounts in additional funding from Jamal’s friends and family, as well as organizations that began donating money to Jamal.

Jackson hired a ballistics expert (George Fassnacht), an investigator (Robert Greer) and a photographer. Greer admittedly began his work on the case in January of 1982 and, over the next six months, spent over 70 hours interviewing witnesses and developing statements for Jackson to review. Jackson acknowledged in his 1995 testimony that he had spent over 7 hours on three different occasions reviewing the ballistics findings with Fassnacht, and that he had reviewed each of over 75 witness statements “at least 10 times each” (N.T. 7/28/95, 57). In April 1982, he told Judge Albert Sabo that he would be ready to proceed with the trial in early June.

On May 13, 1982, only a few weeks before the trial began, Jamal suddenly and unexpectedly decided to remove Jackson as counsel and personally take control of his own defense. (It later became clear that Jackson’s removal was Jamal’s first step towards implementing MOVE’s courtroom strategy of disruptions and intimidation.) Jamal took physical control of Jackson’s notes, the witness statements, and various other important documents. Jackson would later find himself again acting as lead counsel on the second day of the trial, but Jamal failed to return many of these statements to him, hampering his efforts to conduct a defense in spite of Jamal’s disruption tactics. (N.T. 7/27/95, 105-9)

Jamal represented himself at his preliminary hearing. In May 1982, he continued to represent himself, with the assistance of Anthony Jackson, before Judge Albert Sabo in an unsuccessful attempt to suppress the evidence against him.