Philadelphia Weekly

Hope springs eternal: William Barnes (above) fired his court-appointed attorney.

Ever since Thanksgiving time 1966, the William Barnes/Walter Barclay story has proceeded with an inherent aversion to silver linings. Such is the case with most cop-shot-by-robber tales, but the plot of this one remains beyond compare, even now.


As it wound through subsequent decades, Barnes (the robber) bounced in and out of prison due to misdeeds of his own making. Meanwhile, Barclay (the rookie cop who got shot when he happened upon the so-called “East Germantown Cowboy” in the middle of a burglary) was confined to the prison of a wheelchair. 


Barnes served two decades behind bars for the shooting of Barclay, who lived a fitful existence of limited work, injuries from car accidents, heavy smoking, hepatitis, depression, rage that rendered him unwilling to cooperate with physical therapists, a possible stroke in 2005 and more hurdles than any man should bear. He died in 2007. The cause was listed as a urinary tract infection. 


Yet the rest of Barnes’ life behind bars is what outgoing District Attorney Lynne Abraham demanded when she took the unprecedented step of rearresting the 73-year-old as he swept the aisles of a Roxborough supermarket as a janitor. The charge was homicide.


Her angle—that Barclay’s death directly resulted from the bullets Barnes fired in 1966—sparked debate amid press scrutiny. And all the while, the elderly suspect has been sitting in a maximum-security penitentiary awaiting the Feb. 10, 2010, start of his trial.


Yet if you ask Barnes’ brother Jimmy how William Barnes is feeling these days, the response brings to mind the lyrics to “High Hopes.” Anytime he starts to feel low, instead of letting go, he thinks of the ant that defied expectations. But in lieu of moving rubber-tree plants, Barnes has to move a jury away from what prosecutors will try to sell as a cop killing in a city that’s grown sick of them.


“Me and my brother may be knuckleheads, but we’re not your average knuckleheads,” says Jimmy Barnes, explaining why in early June he decided to part company with court-appointed attorney Bobby Hoof by soliciting pro-bono representation from Sam Silver, of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP. 


Silver, who was lauded by the Philadelphia Bar Association for his legal public-service record in 2006, confirmed this week that he’s “in the process of getting in [the case] and entering an appearance.” A gag order prohibits any attorney involved to speak about specifics.


In fact, the shift made it unnecessary for Barnes to follow through with a motion to appoint new counsel that he and a fellow inmate drafted in May. In it, Barnes alleged that his attorney of 19 months didn’t follow through on requests to further investigate the cause of Barclay’s death, obtain his medical records prior to 2002 and provide prosecutors with a “defense medical report … that may well compromise the Defendant’s case” by tying the infection directly to the shooting.


“This case hinges on 42 years of medical records,” Jimmy says, and Hoof was “using just four.”


Jimmy Barnes says that after Common Pleas Judge Shelly Robins-New scheduled a hearing on the motion for one day before the trial date, “we panicked and started making calls out of the Yellow Pages. We knew we were really stuck. That would have delayed the trial another year or two.”


District Attorney Abraham will be out of office by the time the trial starts, which might be a good thing for Barnes. Not only does it seem unusual for two and a half years to pass before trial—“The guys killing police officers within that time are already on trial,” Jimmy says—but if William Barnes had won the case, “Lynne Abraham would’ve appealed it to keep my brother locked up forever.”


The change in DA might not matter much, though. The likely next DA, Seth Williams, told PW in April that, “Whether someone dies four days or 40 years after being injured during the commission of a crime, the same punishment should apply.”


That matters little to Jimmy after decades upon decades of drama. Besides, everyone who said that the ant couldn’t move the plant was ultimately proven wrong.


“At this point, we don’t want to take any chances,” Jimmy says. “This is a new direction. They want to champion the underdog and win this case.” ■