Guilt by Association
▻http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/03/debo_adegbile_senate_blocks_obama_s_pick_to_head_the_justice_department.html
Debo Adegbile was selected by President Obama to be assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The Senate, aided and abetted by seven Democratic senators, just killed his nomination. Why? Adegbile worked at the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and in that capacity, he helped out on a brief seeking to overturn the 1982 death sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted in the killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.
Adegbile’s cardinal sin? He worked on a Legal Defense Fund appeal (that the NAACP had already been involved in before he took the position) contending that there was racial discrimination in Abu-Jamal’s trial and then, later, on a brief arguing that the jury instructions in Abu-Jamal’s trial were constitutionally improper. This was a contention that prevailed in a federal appeals court. Later the LDF represented Abu-Jamal in a Supreme Court case when prosecutors sought to reinstate his death sentence.