BY WILLIAM LAWRENCE – In 2001, after logging seven years of litigation work at several prestigious law firms in New York City, Debo Adegbile took a substantial pay cut after making the decision to become an advocate for Civil Rights and Social Justice as part of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF).[1] As the LDF’s president and director of litigation, Adegbile successfully argued many civil rights cases before the Federal Appellate bench, including the United States Supreme Court. Perhaps most notably, Adegbile co-authored the appellate brief and argued before the Supreme Court in the landmark voting rights case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder.[2]
It was at this point in his career, while working with the NAACP’s LDF, when Adegbile became involved with, and subsequently filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jumal, an individual who was convicted of murdering an on-duty Philadelphia police officer.[3] A number of procedural issues during Abu-Jamal’s trial resulted in the filing of a plenary appeal. All four of the issues considered on appeal centered around ambiguities in the trial court judge’s sentencing and conviction guidelines that were provided to the jury, as well as potential racial bias during jury selection.
While voting 2-1 to uphold Abu-Jamal’s guilty verdict, the Third Circuit agreed that the jury instructions and verdict form were sufficiently ambiguous so as to warrant a decision to vacate the death sentence.[4] While Adegbile’s efforts on the case, which included drafting the amicus brief and performing other legal work, did not garner the award of a new trial, they were undoubtedly influential in the Third Circuit’s decision to reverse the death penalty.
Approximately five years later, in March of 2014, Debo Adegbile was on the cusp of the crowning achievement in his illustrious, self-built career of public service. Adegbile had been nominated by President Barack Obama to fill the position of Assistant United States Attorney General for Civil Rights. The only procedural hurdle that stood between him and the U.S. Attorney General post was a confirmation vote by the United States Senate. Regrettably, with a vote of 52 to 47, the Senate blocked Adegbile’s nomination. The critical issue, at least publicly, to the 52 United States Senators who voted against Adegbile was his representation of Abu-Jamal, a convicted “cop killer” who was allegedly unworthy of legal representation.[5]
The increasing politicization of judicial and quasi-judicial nominees has become a troubling trend in our Nation’s Congress. Simply put, the Debo Adegbile saga represents a continuation of the ever-increasing ideological gap in American politics. In Adegbile’s case, the Department of Justice, and to a derivative extent, the American taxpayers, suffered a great loss at the hands of political gridlock and demonstrable personal bias. As a result, a world-class academic and a highly decorated litigator will not be serving as an Assistant United States Attorney General.
The American public is generally both ignorant of legal ethics and professional responsibility, and, at the same time, inherently distrusting of attorneys and the legal profession as a whole. An American Bar Association study, polling 450 random Americans, clearly demonstrates that the general public is unabashedly wary of lawyers. 74% of respondents stated that lawyers are more interested in “winning” than seeing justice served. 73% thought that lawyers act improperly and argue “technicalities” in order to get violent criminals “off the hook.” Over half of the respondents thought that our society needs fewer lawyers.[6] These numbers are significant, eye opening, and directly applicable to Debo Adegbile’s saga. If the American public feels this way about lawyers in general, how can we expect them to understand (much less accept) the constitutional guarantees given to convicted felons like Abu-Jamal? Relatedly, how are they to understand the great importance of the right to counsel for indigent criminal defendants — particularly in high profile Death Penalty cases, where the stakes are incredibly high and public outcry is at a fever pitch.
To take it a step further, if the general public is not able – or perhaps, not willing – to understand the importance of this matter, then the Senate, in turn, has no incentive (amidst already staunch political barriers) to understand either. In large part, the individuals who are ignorant to these most basic notions of professional ethics and criminal justice make up our national electorate. After all, the impetus for change must often start from the bottom.
Nevertheless, it is nothing short of shameful that our Senate, a lawmaking body composed largely of individuals with law degrees (and many with significant legal practice experience, to boot), voted against a nominee as qualified as Debo Adegbile because of his representation of an indigent criminal defendant. Such a policy runs in direct conflict with everything that these attorneys have learned, or should have learned, in their three or more years of formal legal education. What, then, is to explain this behavior? Perhaps many lawyers in the Senate did not take Professional Responsibility, or went to law school in a Pre-Watergate era before such a class was a required part of the core curriculum. Maybe they are too far removed from law school, and too entrenched in politics to remember these basic tenets of our legal system. Or, maybe, the vote condemning Debo Adegbile was in large part a response to public outcry against having an Attorney General who defended a “cop killer.”
It is apparent that the issue here is larger and much more disconcerting than what first meets the eye. Unfortunately, until both the American public and Washington lawmakers alike educate themselves on the importance of such advocacy, the Debo Adegbile saga is bound to repeat itself.
[1]Timothy M. Phelps, Justice’s Civil Rights Nominee Has Resume That Includes ‘Sesame Street’ and Voting Rights, The Washington Post, December 31, 2013.
[2] United States Senate, United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary: Questionnaire for Non-Judicial Nominees, Debo Adegbile, December 6, 2013 <http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Debo-Adegbile-SJC-Questionnaire.pdf>
[3] Wesley Lowery, How Mumia Abu-Jamal Doomed Debo Adegbile In The Senate, The Washington Post, March 5, 2014. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/03/05/how-mumia-abu-jamal-doomed-dego-adegbile/>
[4] Abu-Jamal v. Horn, 530 F.3d 272, 303 (3d Cir. 2008).
[5] Susan Davis, Senate Blocks Obama Nominee over Cop-Killer Case, USA Today, March 5, 2014. <http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/03/05/debo-adegbile-senate-vote/6074443/>
[6] American Bar Association, Public Perceptions of Lawyers, Consumer Research Findings, Section of Litigation – American Bar Association, April 2002. <http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/marketresearch/PublicDocuments/public_perception_of_lawyers_2002.authcheckdam.pdf>
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William Lawrence is a 2016 Staff Editor of the Race and Social Justice Law Review.
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