It looks like those "Don't Snitch" t-shirts* are working for the bad guys after all.

From Philly.com comes this story of our witness intimidation capital, the City of Brotherly Fear.

'I DON'T REMEMBER'




Key witness flips at trial in Faheem Thomas-Childs' slaying

Coached by her father, Taniesha Wiggins said only: 'I don't remember'

Just as Taniesha Wiggins was about to take the stand yesterday as the first prosecution witness in the 2004 murder of 10-year-old Faheem Thomas-Childs - a case that has become a symbol of the city's problem with witness intimidation - she asked to see her father, who was motioning to her.

He leaned over and spoke, sotto voce, to Wiggins, 18: "Just remember to say what I told you to say: 'I don't remember.' "

And she did just that for about two hours - despite repeated reminders from Assistant District Attorney Jason Bologna about her sworn statements, in writing and on videotape, to Philadelphia police detectives.

Kennell Spady, 21, and Kareem Johnson, 22, are on trial in Faheem's slaying.

Authorities say that on Feb. 11, 2004, Spady and Johnson set off a chain of events in front of the T.M. Peirce Elementary School in North Philadelphia that ended in a shoot-out and the killing of Faheem, a third grader. Their intended mission, police said, was to avenge the shooting of Johnson three months earlier.

From the beginning, the case has been imperiled by a paucity of witnesses and the fear that those who speak up will become targets.

Even a $100,000 reward did little to bring forward those who saw or knew of the incident. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson, District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham, and community leaders pleaded for people to help with their investigation as the area bristled with anger over the boy's death.

More than 2,500 people attended Faheem's funeral.

And yesterday, a once-cooperative prosecution witness abandoned ship.

"That was long ago," Wiggins testified before Common Pleas Court Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan; Spady and Johnson had waived their right to a trial by jury.

Applying lip gloss and sipping iced tea at various times, Wiggins testified: "I don't remember everything. I don't remember about nothing. That's why I didn't want to come up here."

You'd think Skinny Joey Merlino was out of the joint or somethin'.

Bologna showed Wiggins statements to police that she had signed. In them, she laid out the relationships between the players in the shooting and what took place before and after.

Still, even after prosecutors played a video of her spelling out her recollections two days after the shooting, she said on the stand that she did not remember any of the details.

"You can't make me say nothing I don't want to say," she testified.

Under cross-examination by Johnson's lawyer, Daniel Rendine, Wiggins said not everything she swore to in the statement was true.

Prosecutors were livid.

"She was set until her father showed up," said Assistant District Attorney Mark Gilson. "I didn't expect her to do that. She had been one of the few people who was cooperative. She called Homicide."

She and her father should be thrown in jail and then forgotten until she remembers. Call it memory enhancement custody.

Though prosecutors heard the brief exchange between father and daughter - and one later had words with Wiggins' father - they said they did not expect to bring charges against him.

"It's disappointing when a witness goes south," Bologna said.

With eight jurors already chosen in a jury-selection process made difficult by the notoriety of the case, Spady and Johnson - over the objections of their lawyers - waived their right to a jury trial.

Rendine said he did not want to comment on their decision. Greenspan will now be the arbiter of Johnson's and Spady's fates.

Their purported target that day was Cassius Broaster, one of two brothers Police Commissioner Johnson has called "the worst people in the city as far as violence is concerned."

Broaster was charged with but acquitted of a 2002 triple murder in a North Philadelphia speakeasy, and was said to run a vicious drug gang. He was sentenced in January to 33 months in prison on federal charges of being a felon in possession of a handgun.

A wild shoot-out ensued outside the school at 23d and Cambria Streets, with more than 90 shots fired, leaving Faheem mortally wounded and a crossing guard who went to aid him shot in the foot.

The crossing guard and Faheem's mother are scheduled to testify today in the trial, which is expected to last until Friday.

* Huh? High Times (Surprise!) fills you in.