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.
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