He did it!

Applying this three-word declaration to the Mumia Abu-Jamal case triggers intense reactions even 25 years after the arrest of the man known internationally as the death row journalist.

For advocates of Abu-Jamal’s execution, this declaration is orthodoxy, an unquestioned statement of fact.

For opponents of Abu-Jamal’s execution, this declaration is heresy, a cruel contortion of facts.

Amazingly, opponents of Abu-Jamal and his supporters use the same set of facts to defend their diametrically different positions on the declaration that he did it – shot and killed Officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec. 9, 1981.

Even more amazing is the fact that the “facts” that opponents and supporters bomb each other with today include important facts that were never considered by the jury that sent Abu-Jamal to death row in July 1982.

That jury never heard all the facts available at the time because of a confluence of circumstances that crippled the trial process.

These circumstances included misconduct by police and prosecutors, pro-prosecution bias by the trial judge plus ineffectiveness by Abu-Jamal’s defense attorney – who found himself hobbled by authorities and harangued by his client.

This perfect storm of circumstances kept the jury in the dark regarding illuminating evidence, thus destroying any semblance of the constitutionally required fair trial.

“During the trial of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the jury was left unaware of much of the crucial information regarding the death of Officer Faulkner,” stated the report Amnesty International issued in February 2000 calling for a new trial in this controversial case.

Police and prosecutors, for example, improperly withheld extraordinary evidence that another person was probably at the scene of the crime with Abu-Jamal’s brother and most likely shot Faulkner.

Authorities contend that Faulkner’s stopping the car of Abu-Jamal’s brother for a traffic violation triggered a fatal chain of events.

Eyewitnesses initially told police that Faulkner’s shooter ran away…although the prosecution’s star witnesses at trial reversed their initial statements to later claim Abu-Jamal shot the officer.

Police arrested Abu-Jamal at the crime scene. His brother was also at the scene when police arrived.

“The initial thing that officers and witnesses were saying was that the passenger in the VW shot the officer and split,” said Pedro Polakoff, the press photographer who arrived at the ’81 shooting scene before police crime scene investigators.

Polakoff, during an August interview, said he offered to provide his photos and information from eyewitnesses during both the 1982 trial and Abu-Jamal’s 1995 appeals hearing but authorities “just blew me off!”

Withholding evidence of another person at the crime scene sabotaged Abu-Jamal’s trial defense that claimed the real shooter fled the scene.

The salient issue regarding the mounds of evidence that jurors didn’t get a chance to consider is not whether jurors would have accepted it as evidence of Abu-Jamal’s innocence.

The issue is that court rules and constitutional rights require that jurors hear all available evidence.

Even IF he-did-it, American law requires a fair trial, a fact ignored by Abu-Jamal’s opponents, most of Philly’s news media and incredibly even Pa.’s appellate courts that persistently emphasize the importance of fair trial rights.

In 1959, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court stated in a ruling involving a Philadelphia murder case that all defendants are entitled to all fair trial safeguards “even if the evidence of guilt piles as high as Mt. Everest” – irrespective of what judges or prosecutors think.

The Amnesty report criticized Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court for not applying law fairly in legal matters involving the Abu-Jamal case.

Some of those embracing he-did-it succeeded in getting Congress to approve a resolution last week condemning a suburb of Paris for naming a street in honor of Abu-Jamal.

Not surprisingly, none of the Pa. co-sponsors of this resolution – including Philly Reps. Allyson Schwartz and Bob Brady – or the other representatives who voted for the resolution, like Chaka Fattah, have exerted comparable efforts to correct the state’s flawed justice system.

None of the Pa. supporters of this resolution are vocally pushing for implementation of recommendations in the 2003 Pa. Supreme Court’s Race Bias Commission report that found “race based problems” in Philadelphia death penalty cases.

Even some of those who feel he did it, feel his death sentence is excessive.

“I agree that a life sentence is better in this case,” said Peter Wirs, a Republican ward official in Germantown, now working with Philly’s anti-Abu-Jamal police union on case related matters. “I don’t agree that the death penalty is effective.”

Amazingly, even the man who put Abu-Jamal on death row, former Philly prosecutor Joseph McGill, reportedly told a newsman recently that Abu-Jamal could have been convicted of a lesser homicide charge if he had waged a true defense instead of focusing on attacking the judicial system.

McGill’s admission speaks volumes about the structural deficiencies in Abu-Jamal’s ’82 trial according to Dave Lindorff, the Philadelphia area investigative reporter who wrote “Killing Time” the seminal 2003 book on this case.

“This latest statement … is a significant concession on (McGill’s) part,” Lindorff said last week.

“What Abu-Jamal ended up with was the worst of all possible worlds – an incompetent defense counsel, but no right to represent himself either. That’s why he had no “true defense.”

Lindorff wonder’s, “Does anyone, including McGill, want to see a man die, or spend his life behind bars, because he never had a “true defense?” What kind of America is that?”

Linn Washington Jr. is an award-winning writer who teaches journalism at Temple University.