Williams believes that Abu-Jamal is innocent. Needless to say, this turn of events with Abu-Jamal partisans seemingly turning on each other does not look good for the home team. Using a sports analogy, this is like the owner of a football team firing his coach and quarterback in the closing minutes of the Super Bowl when his team is driving for a win with the ball inside the red zone. Needless to say, advocates of Abu-Jamal's immediate execution greeted this turn of events with glee, extolling it as proof that the wheels are falling off the Free Mumia train. Ethical integrity is not an insignificant issue.
Ethical conduct is an essential element in the proper functioning of the American legal system.
Legal ethics, according to legal dictionaries, involves moral and professional duties that members of the legal profession have toward one another, toward clients and toward the courts. The sordid history of the events that put Abu-Jamal on death row in the first place and have kept him there is filled with unethical conduct by his trial attorney, the trial judge, state Supreme Court jurists and prosecutors. This motion is another effort in Abu-Jamal's long battle to obtain the ethical behavior that the American justice system supposedly guarantees. A judge being impartial during a trial is a pillar of the American justice system. Plus, impartiality is a provision of the Pennsylvania ethics code for judges.