Toomey and Williams: The Justice Nominee and The Cop Killer
Debo Adegbile’s disturbing support for Mumia Abu-Jamal should disqualify him.
Mr. Toomey, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania. Mr. Williams is the district attorney of Philadelphia.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304610404579401483616494254?mod=Opinion_newsreel_2
In the coming weeks, the Senate will consider the nomination of Debo Adegbile to be assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil-rights division. There are those who object to the nominee on various grounds, and others who defend him. We raise concerns here about only one issue: Mr. Adegbile’s support for convicted Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Let there be no mistake. Our concern is not based on the fact that Mr. Adegbile acted as an attorney for a criminal defendant. The right to counsel is a fundamental part of America’s criminal justice system, and no lawyer should be faulted for the crimes of his clients.
But it is one thing to provide legal representation and quite another to seize on a case and turn it into a political platform from which to launch an extreme attack on the justice system. When a lawyer chooses that course, it is appropriate to ask whether he should be singled out for a high-level national position in, of all things, law enforcement.
Attorney Debo Adegbile Getty Images
To understand Mr. Adegbile’s involvement, you must first consider the nature of the case. In December 1981, Abu-Jamal shot and killed Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Immediately following the incident, Abu-Jamal confessed and stated before three witnesses that he hoped the officer died.
The murder was not a random street crime. Abu-Jamal was an ardent supporter of the “MOVE” organization—a racist, anarchist group founded in Philadelphia in 1972. The group’s radical positions included encouraging violence against police.
By murdering a police officer, Abu-Jamal became a MOVE hero in the 1980s. He relished the role, and he made every effort to turn his trial into political theater and incite racial conflict. Repeatedly, he and his supporters interrupted proceedings, insulted the judge, and abused the officer’s widow.
Ultimately, overwhelming evidence led to Abu-Jamal’s conviction and subsequent death sentence in 1982. Three decades of appeals followed, in which Abu-Jamal’s appellate lawyers echoed their client’s antics in legal maneuvers that made a mockery of the justice system. These appeals primarily functioned as a stage for Abu-Jamal’s hateful ideologies, painting him as the unjustly accused victim of a racist conspiracy.
Given this context—and the fact that Abu-Jamal was already well represented and had funds at his disposal—it is difficult to understand why, as acting president and director of litigation at the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, Mr. Adegbile chose in 2009 to enter the circus created by Abu-Jamal and inject his organization into the case. Under Mr. Adegbile’s leadership and through rallies, protests and a media campaign, the Legal Defense Fund actively fanned the racial firestorm. In a news release issued when it took over as Abu-Jamal’s counsel, the Legal Defense Fund proclaimed that Abu-Jamal was “a symbol of the racial injustices of the death penalty.”
At a 2011 rally for Abu-Jamal, Mr. Adegbile’s co-counsel on the case stated that “there is no question in the mind of anyone at the Legal Defense Fund” that [Abu-Jamal’s conviction] “has everything to do with race and that is why the Legal Defense Fund is in the case.”
In 2012, even after Abu-Jamal’s appeals had been exhausted, and after the Philadelphia district attorney’s office had put the controversial case to rest by not seeking a new death sentence (which a court had voided in 2008 on the ground of faulty jury instructions), Abu-Jamal’s website reported that the Legal Defense Fund would remain active in the cause by investigating new ways to challenge his conviction.
Nevertheless, at Mr. Adegbile’s confirmation hearing last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when he was questioned in detail about his own opinions of the incendiary allegations of a racist police conspiracy made by the Legal Defense Fund, Mr. Adegbile avoided answering the inquiries. Instead he repeatedly deflected questions, stating that he was not the lead lawyer on the case—as if, while acting as litigation director and later president of the Legal Defense Fund, he had failed to notice what was said by its lawyers about the group’s most famous client.
The Justice Department touts its civil-rights division as the “conscience of the federal government.” In light of that role, it is disturbing that Debo Adegbile—a man with impressive credentials but an unconscionable record in the Abu-Jamal case—is poised to become the next assistant attorney general to lead this division. On Feb. 6, the judiciary committee voted 10-8 along party lines to back his nomination.
Only three years ago, Mr. Adegbile was nominated to serve as a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Months later that nomination was abruptly withdrawn by the administration. That would be the best course here. Mr. Adegbile is not suited to serve in this sensitive position.
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