At Ramona Africa's trial, both Judge Michael Stiles and prosecutor Joseph McGill indicated to the jury that police and city officials would be equally punished at some other proceeding by a separate jury.

Ramona's jury found her guilty of riot and conspiracy and she was sentenced to 16 months to 7 years. Lt. Frank Powell, who dropped the bomb, and Officer William Klein, who assembled it, refused to testify, citing the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

Mayor Goode appointed a special commission to investigate the catastrophe. Their findings were critical of city officials but the commission had no power to indict. In 1986, District Attorney Ron Castille impaneled a grand jury to investigate criminal wrongdoing on the part of the city. Notwithstanding 11 deaths, 60 homes burned to the ground, unauthorized possession of military explosives, and a fire that was deliberately allowed to burn out of control, Castille's grand jury followed his recommendations and returned not a single indictment. (Castille later had only hollow excuses to explain why a scathing report by an independent team of nationally known forensic experts, hired by Castille's own office to review the evidence, was never shown to the grand jury.) A federal grand jury investigating civil rights violations also returned no indictments. All of these investigations limited the scope of their inquiries to events surrounding May 13, 1985 and ne-glected to look at earlier legal improprieties, most notably the continuing unjust imprisonment of the nine MOVE members arrested on August 8, 1978.

In 1987, Wilson Goode was re-elected mayor. He and his supporters considered this a vindication of the disastrous handling of May 13th. Others saw his victory as a grim necessity. The opposing candidate was Frank Rizzo.

Before cold blooded murder in broad daylight could be permanently swept under the rug, Ramona filed a civil suit against selected officials and the city itself for violation of her civil rights on May 13th. The case proceeded at a very slow pace as federal judges changed their minds regarding who could ultimately be held responsible. At one point, federal magistrate William Hall actually ruled that dropping the bomb was not excessive force. Ramona immediately appealed this ruling which a three judge panel later overturned, but the issue was again appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by the city.