Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, has an army of fans. One of them, J. Patrick O'Connor, is guilty of writing the sloppiest, most one-sided crime book of the year.

In his new book, O'Connor mixes recycled conspiracy theories with his own sweeping pronouncements, most devoid of fact.

		"THE FRAMING OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL" By J. Patrick O'Connor Lawrence Hill Books ($16.95)

"From the outset," he writes, "the investigation into the shooting death of Daniel Faulkner was conducted with one goal in mind: to hang the crime on Mumia Abu-Jamal, no matter what it took. There was no search for truth, no attempt at providing the slain officer with the justice he deserved."

If O'Connor was after truth, he did not do much searching himself. He never bothered to interview the prosecutor, Joseph McGill, but he spends a dozen pages trying to demonize him.

By ignoring the prosecution's side of the story, O'Connor minimizes evidence unfavorable to Abu-Jamal. His book reads like a defense brief as he attacks witnesses, vilifies the judge and advances a preposterous claim.

The sum of it is that a man shot Faulkner on a downtown Philadelphia street, then slipped away as at least four witnesses watched. Along came Abu-Jamal, who stepped into a frame-up, purportedly because police disliked his militancy.

Trouble is, the police who arrested Abu-Jamal at the scene of the shooting did not know him. Then 27, Abu-Jamal was a former Black Panther and a former radio commentator. He had been fired by a radio station and was driving a cab at the time.

To be sure, Abu-Jamal, now 54, is a celebrity prisoner. But he achieved that status after his conviction, when he was a death-row inmate writing books and doing radio commentary. He had such a low profile in 1981 that no prominent attorney took up his cause.

More important, police had no reason to manufacture a case against him. He provided them with an abundance of physical, circumstantial and direct evidence, all pointing toward his guilt.

Abu-Jamal and his .38-caliber handgun, with five empty cartridges in the chamber, were found at the shooting scene. He had a gunshot wound to the chest, probably a retaliatory strike from Faulkner, 25, who was shot first in the back by his attacker and then in the face.

Taken to a hospital, Abu-Jamal confessed to the shooting. He said he hoped Faulkner would die. A hospital guard heard him and reported his damning comments. She had no history with Abu-Jamal, no grudge that would motivate her to commit perjury.

Nor did the guard know that Faulkner had pulled over Abu-Jamal's younger brother, William Cook, just before the shooting. Witnesses said Cook punched Faulkner. The policeman fought back, hitting Cook with a flashlight.

Three of the four witnesses -- some of them prostitutes and law breakers, but people with eyes and ears -- identified Abu-Jamal as the man who raced into the confrontation just before Faulkner was shot. One saw Abu-Jamal with a gun. Another saw him standing over the fallen policeman.

So farfetched is the claim of a frame-up that O'Connor ends up knocking down his own theory midway through the book.

In recapping the trial, he denounces Abu-Jamal's court-appointed lawyer, the late Anthony Jackson, for failing to argue that Abu-Jamal may have killed Faulkner to save himself.

"It must have never dawned on Jackson that Abu-Jamal may have shot Faulkner in self-defense" after the officer shot him first, O'Connor wrote.

Just like that, O'Connor changes his thesis. No longer is Abu-Jamal an innocent. Instead, he might be a cop killer with an unusual defense.

But by the book's end, he is back on the innocence bandwagon, attacking police, the prosecutor and anyone who doubts the defense version -- or versions -- of the case.

In O'Connor's view, those who do not accept Abu-Jamal's story at face value have to be guilty of something.