Cop killer’s mother begs for his life

The mother of admitted police killer Rasheed Scrugs asked a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury today to spare his life for the sake of his four children.

Annah Abdul-Ghaffar told the jury of eight women and four men her son could still exert a positive influence on his 18- and 15-year-old sons from a first marriage and boys 6 and 8 from a later relationship.

"Those four grandchildren, they wait for his phone call," Abdul-Ghaffar testified.

Abdul-Ghaffar began her time on the witness stand by looking toward the audience filled with family and friends of Officer John Pawlowski "to express my deepest sympathy to the Pawlowski family from myself and my son."

She said the victim-impact testimony from the slain officer's widow, brother and father was "devastating, heart-rending. I was crying and so was my son."

Abdul-Ghaffar was the final witness presented by Scrugs' defense lawyers in their effort to convince the jury to sentence Scrugs, 35, to life in prison without parole rather than death by lethal injection.

Defense attorney David Rudenstein said he hoped Scrugs' father, William Burnette, might testify after lunch but added that he had been unable to reach Burnette for most of the last week.

Scrugs told Common Pleas Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes that he did not wish to testify in his defense and he declined the judge's offer to postpone his decision to see if his father shows in court.

"My decision is not to testify," Scrugs said. "He's not going to show up anyway."

Once the defense rests, Deputy District Attorney Edward McCann said he will present rebuttal testimony by a forensic psychologist to counter testimony Friday from a defense psychologist, who testified that Scrugs' shooting of Pawlowski on Feb. 13, 2009 may have partly been the result of smoking PCP-laced marijuana beforehand.

Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes has told the jury that on Tuesday it will hear closing arguments from the defense and from prosecutors McCann and Jacqueline Juliano Coelho, followed by her instructions about Pennsylvania's death penalty law. The jurors will then begin deliberations.

Scrugs, a paroled robber from West Philadelphia who had been laid off and was working as a gypsy cabdriver, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder Oct. 21 on the first day of his trial.

That moved the case into the penalty phase, in which the jury must decide whether Scrugs should spend his life in prison without chance of parole or die by lethal injection.

Pawlowski, 25, an officer for five years who was recently married and an expectant father, was shot to death by Scrugs when the officer and his partner responded to a 911 call from a cabbie, who said Scrugs had roughed him up and was menacing him.