By confronting the judicial system as an organized, coordinated group not afraid to go to jail, MOVE was able to run circles around the procedures and expose the fallacy of justice. Ignoring the status and elevation of judges, MOVE remained seated when the order “All rise!” was given, and never addressed the judge as “your honor.” They also rejected plea bargain offers and public defenders.

In the early years defendants who were released on bail and given a court date would often send a brother or sister member to the trial if they couldn’t make it themselves. Most judges at that time couldn’t tell MOVE members apart and sentenced the apparent “defendant” who would be taken into custody and held for the duration. The original defendant, often arrested again before his or her sentence expired, would just give police the name of another member, leading the system into ever deepening confusion over who was who.

During a trial, MOVE attacked the legitimacy of the court, demonstrating contradictions in such concepts as the presumption of innocence, freedom of religion and the right to free speech. When defendants refused to blindly submit to a judge’s arbitrary dictates, they were either ejected from the room, bound and gagged, or cited for contempt. MOVE spectators were often cited for contempt, too. Sheriffs proved to he just as brutal as the city’s cops, at times beating MOVE members in the very presence of judges. All these incidents only generated more cases, and as time went on, MOVE’S practice of appealing at every opportunity further compounded an already overwhelming caseload.

By 1976 literally hundreds of MOVE cases were clogging Philadelphia’s justice system. Court administrators realized that in a typical MOVE case the city was spending thousands of dollars to prosecute what had often started out as a trivial trumped up misdemeanor charge. To save money, the courts began to dismiss MOVE cases in wholesale lots.

— 25 Years on the Move (Page 15)