Above Photo: REUTERS/Bob Strong
Free Corey Walker!
February 24, 2016—Fifteen months after launching legal action to remove Rachel Wolkenstein as attorney for Corey Walker, the Office of the Pennsylvania Attorney General (OAG) concluded its evidentiary hearing in Harrisburg on February 9 to support its motion to have her pro hac vice admission vacated. Walker, an innocent man serving a sentence of life without parole, has spent the last 19 years behind bars.
Post-hearing legal briefs will be filed by the OAG and Walker’s attorneys 45 days after receiving the transcript of the proceeding. Senior Judge Lawrence Clark will then rule on the OAG motion to remove attorney Wolkenstein as Corey Walker’s pro hac vice, pro bono lawyer.
The OAG’s action to get long-time political activist and attorney Rachel Wolkenstein out of this case is retaliation against the efforts of Corey Walker to overturn his frame-up murder conviction. Since Wolkenstein began working with Walker pro bono in May 2014, first helping with investigation and his pro sepetitions and then as his attorney pro hac vice, Corey Walker filed three sets of legal papers. Each time yet more evidence was given showing his conviction was the result of extensive police and prosecution misconduct.
There was no witness to the shooting, no fingerprints or murder weapon, no blood evidence or confession. Instead, witnesses, whose false testimony was obtained through coercion and promises of leniency on charges they faced, were knowingly and deliberately put before the predominantly white jury by the Deputy Attorney General. Exonerating evidence was kept from Walker for close to 20 years.
The OAG explicitly claims that Wolkenstein’s practicing law in Pennsylvania is “intolerable” due to her public statements that the criminal justice system is racially and class-biased. The OAG also specifically cited Wolkenstein’s courtroom arrest by the notorious Judge Albert Sabo while she represented Mumia Abu-Jamal in the weeks before his scheduled execution date in August 1995. The OAG also falsely claims Wolkenstein violated rules of Professional Conduct.
Two defense motions prevented the OAG from compelling Walker and his trial co-defendant, Lorenzo Johnson, to be witnesses at the hearing. The subpoenas were an attempt to stop the decades of collaboration between the two men in fighting for their innocence and freedom. The subpoenas were part of a fishing expedition by the prosecution to undermine their respective pending legal cases.
The OAG presented only one witness, Lorenzo Johnson’s lawyer Michael Wiseman. It was Lorenzo Johnson who urged Wolkenstein to take up Walker’s legal case. It was the OAG who seized on Wiseman’s disagreement with a legal strategy advocated by Wolkenstein, that includes publicly exposing the facts and details of the frame-ups of Johnson and Walker, to accuse her of violating rules of professional conduct. During two-years working closely with Johnson, Wolkenstein helped bring public attention to the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson and provided legal advice. Wiseman testified that Wolkenstein had informed him she was communicating and working with Johnson from the outset. Wiseman’s testimony also confirmed Johnson’s and Walker’s declaration of their own and each other’s innocence. Wiseman also strongly asserted the state had suppressed significant favorable evidence at Johnson’s and Walker’s 1997 trial.
Senior Judge Lawrence Clark made repeated comments during the hearing that amounted to denying Corey Walker his First and Sixth Amendment rights to have the lawyer of his choice. Clark consistently supported the OAG’s interpretation of the Rules of Professional Conduct.
The OAG’s legal attack on Wolkenstein and her client has effectively stopped any judicial action on the post-conviction legal challenges of Corey Walker on grounds of actual innocence, police and prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel. A full year has gone by with the Judge taking no action. This is state conspiracy to keep this innocent man locked up for the rest of his life. Free Corey Walker!
“A SWAT team raided Corey Walker’s home in July 1996, and arrested him on a 1995 frame-up murder charge from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He has been behind bars ever since. Evidence of his innocence was withheld. He is the victim of prosecutorial misconduct and incompetent legal representation. And now the state is trying to deny him the attorney of his choice, Rachel Wolkenstein, who has defended Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Corey Walker is flesh and blood, not a statistic. He is son, father, brother and lifelong companion. He cries out for freedom and justice and tries to keep body and soul together under excruciating conditions ….” to continue reading …
