Senator Toomey AND the Democrat DA from Philly at the Wall Street Journal. 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.”
“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.”
”