Although the holiday honoring Christopher Columbus has passed this year, the passions of many of the legal combatants over the statue are still running hot, and several legal challenges are still unwinding in court which could determine the fate of the statue in South Philadelphia’s  Marconi Plaza. George Bochetto is the primary attorney at the forefront of several legal cases in which he is trying to keep the statue in its place and uncovered for years to come.

But when he was engaged in the well-publicized overnight flurry of court activity from Oct. 8-9 about whether a box covering the statue could remain, Bochetto now further alleges he observed what he thought was a severe breach of the spirit of the rule of law from Mayor Kenney’s administration — something the administration denies.