President Obama’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has formally withdrawn following opposition over his ties to the legal defense of imprisoned journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Senate rejected the nomination of Debo Adegbile in March following a fight that focused almost solely on his role as part of an NAACP Legal Defense Fund team that successfully argued the trial judge’s jury instructions violated Abu-Jamal’s rights in his conviction for killing a Philadelphia police officer. In an interview with The Huffington Post, Adegbile said the Obama administration did not expect such scrutiny over that case. “I think if you look into it, it would be a rare situation in which somebody was blocked from public service for having successfully vindicated the Constitution of the United States,” he said.