[News] Jamil Al-Amin appeal denied

[News at freedomarchives.org]

May 25, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/national/25convict.html?ex=1086062400&en=237e6642c52ad0d9&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE


Georgia Upholds Former Militant's Conviction

By ARIEL HART

8c8e6.jpg
TLANTA, May 24 - The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday unanimously upheld the 
2002 conviction of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin for the murder of a sheriff's deputy.

Mr. Al-Amin, 60, formerly a militant civil rights leader known as H. Rap 
Brown, was convicted of shooting two deputies on a street at night in March 
2000 as they approached him with an arrest warrant for offenses including 
impersonating a police officer. One deputy, Ricky Kinchen, died of his 
wounds. The other, Aldranon English, testified against Mr. Al-Amin, who is 
serving a life sentence.

Citing a prosecution error that the court acknowledged but discounted, Mr. 
Al-Amin's lawyer said he would appeal.

His brother, Ed Brown, said the decision was disappointing. "I think we 
were all placing hope in terms of it," Mr. Brown said.

Mr. Al-Amin's lawyers had pounced on a tactic by prosecutors that even they 
admit was a mistake, fueled, they say, by a sudden end to the defense's 
case that left little time to prepare a closing argument. At the trial, the 
prosecutor, Robert McBurney, had presented the jury in his closing argument 
with a slide titled "Questions for the Defendant." The list of questions 
pointed up what prosecutors said were holes in the defense.

Mr. Al-Amin had exercised his right not to testify in the trial, and his 
lawyers objected to the title. It was changed to "Questions for the 
Defense," and the judge instructed the jury not to hold it against Mr. 
Al-Amin that he had not testified and answered the questions.

Mr. Al-Amin's lawyer, Jack Martin, said that was not good enough. "You 
can't throw a skunk in the jury box and tell them not to smell it," Mr. 
Martin said. "And that's what happened here."

The court said that Mr. Al-Amin's "constitutional and statutory rights were 
violated." But in light of the judge's instructions, as well as the 
eyewitness identification and physical evidence that "overwhelmingly 
established" Mr. Al-Amin's guilt, it said, the violation was "harmless 
beyond a reasonable doubt."

Mr. Martin said he would ask the court to reconsider its ruling, and if 
necessary would appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

The Georgia court dispensed with a handful of other challenges to the 
conviction, including criticism of the composition of the jury and the 
inclusion of evidence that Mr. Al-Amin's defense said was prejudicial.

Though Mr. Al-Amin and his supporters have long argued that he was framed 
by a government that has feared him since his days in radical racial 
politics, the justices wrote that "the evidence was sufficient" for a 
rational guilty verdict.

Eliciting support for a conspiracy theory was complicated by the fact that 
both of the shooting victims were black, as is Mr. Al-Amin. The defense 
suggested that another man had committed the crimes and fled.



The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20040525/f8c4b69a/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 8c8e6.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 2262 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20040525/f8c4b69a/attachment.jpg>