Senate Rejects Obama Nominee Linked to Abu-Jamal Case

NYT:

The long shadow of Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose trial for the killing of a Philadelphia police officer became an international cause célèbre, fell over the Senate on Wednesday as lawmakers from both parties rejected President Obama’s nominee to head the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

Debo P. Adegbile, who headed the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund when it represented Mr. Abu-Jamal decades after his conviction, could not overcome a concerted campaign by Republicans, conservative activists and law enforcement organizations, still infuriated by the murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

In the years after the killing, Mr. Abu-Jamal was embraced by the likes of Norman Mailer, E.L. Doctorow, Günter Grass, Maya Angelou and Salman Rushdie. Parisians named a street after him. But it was Mr. Adegbile, 32 years after the slaying, who took the fall when the Senate voted, 47-52, to reject his confirmation.

The vote marked the first defeat of an Obama administration nominee since Senate Democrats strong-armed a rules change in November that blocked Republican filibusters on virtually all presidential nominations. Since then, numerous judicial and administration nominees have sailed through the Senate, despite loud Republican protests over Democratic tactics.

In this case, Democrats supplied the votes to bring Mr. Adegbile down.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was in the Senate chamber to cast the tiebreaking vote, but he did not get the chance.

“In this case, the nominee inserted his office in an effort to turn reality on its head, impugn honorable and selfless law enforcement officers, and glorify an unrepentant cop-killer,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. “This is not required by our legal system. On the contrary, it is noxious to it.”

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