In the name of Allah, the most Beneficent, the most Merciful.

Student Alliance for Imam Jamil (SAIJ)

Inconsistencies in the Police Account

By Joshua B. Good (courtesy Atlanta Journal-Constitution 11-15-2000)

Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin hopes the color of his eyes and the words of a dying man will set him free.

Al-Amin, the former 1960s radical once known as H. Rap Brown, is accused of fatally shooting a Fulton County Sheriff's deputy and wounding another in an exchange of gunfire March 16.

Al-Amin's defense attorney took quotes from both deputies found in police evidence and cited them in two of 84 pretrial pleadings filed in court this week.

The survivor, Deputy Aldranon English, was adamant that the gunman's eyes were gray, according to one pretrial motion.

"My mom always told me, 'Look a man in his eye, always look a man in his eyes,' " English is quoted as saying. "So I remember 'cause I was looking at him in his eyes. ... I remember them [being] gray eyes."

Al-Amin's eyes are dark brown, not gray.

Before dying, Deputy Ricky Kinchen told fellow deputies: "I shot him. I know I shot him," according to one defense motion. Al-Amin was arrested March 20 and he was not injured. In an interview before Al-Amin's arrest, English claimed he, too, had shot the suspect.

Police found a blood trail at the scene leading to an abandoned house and received reports that night of a wounded man trying to flag down a ride five blocks away. Police and prosecutors have not explained the blood trail or the wounded man. On Tuesday, defense lawyers and prosecutors would not comment.

English identified Al-Amin as the shooter. Both deputies went to Atlanta's West End neighborhood to arrest Al-Amin on warrants.

The discrepancies about eye color and the killer being wounded appear to be a big part of Al-Amin's defense.

Al-Amin's lawyer, Jack Martin, wants the judge to prevent English from identifying Al-Amin as the gunman in court because the discrepancy about the eye color and the fact Al-Amin was not wounded suggest "the strong likelihood of a misidentification," one motion reads.

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Last modified: April 04, 2001